AvidTube and Other Brand Properties that Should Have Been
Avid, the makers of the high-end video editing software, were once the unparalleled name in digital audio and video editing. They had market share, profitability and could acquire most upstarts to prevent infiltration. So how come a company that had all the resources and capability required, didn’t extend they’re own brand and deliver us YouTube before YouTube?
As an intro, I attended the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) one-day session in Boston today and got to a hear a really great collection of ideas about the state of the union of online marketing, and of course the omnipresence of social media. Before I continue, as a plug to OMS, they are really putting on solid, dense, NON-sales events… and they celebrate alcohol. To encourage engagement and participation with the last panel of the day, if you ask a question the founder of OMS bought you a cocktail. Nice. [/end plug]
So after a well-framed question (goal of a martini AND knowledge achieved), I ended up continuing elements of the discussion with Christina Howe from Avid, who was on the panel. Reading a little bit into why they had avoided massive engagement with YouTube and the ilk, I gathered that there was a general desire to avoid non-professional video outlets with the brand perception that they were about professional video. Disregarding the immediate notion that they’re abandoning a market that grows into professional products (think Apple’s iMovie and it’s big brother Final Cut Pro), I suddenly got hung up on the idea that Avid should’ve invented YouTube. Ten years ago, they were THE name in non-linear editing software. So it would’ve made great sense to extend the horizontal from video editing to video deployment.
I wish I could remember the webinar, because I’d like to award credit to the great idea, but someone had noted that had AOL really had a thoughtful strategy and leveraged their at-the-time dominant community expertise we’d all be on AOLBook instead of Facebook. But of course they didn’t, and are still sending CDs encouraging people to switch to bonded 56kbpm modems.
Most of us are likely not situated at the helm of a dominant industry player, with the finance to crush challengers, but there’s a lot of opportunity to logically extend our brands that *sparkles* with corporate strategy.
I got a martini.