Creating Remarkable Awareness and Buzz

Through a masterful execution of online video, Harvard, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., the Smithsonian Institution, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) announced a project which aligns biology, zoology, and software experts from around the world to create a beautiful wiki of all known living species.

Why, you might ask, do I bring this to our attention?
We all struggle with the implications of online video. CNET and Yahoo! have tried and, at least in my opinion, struggled to redesign their online experience to one heavily involved in video. Advertisers constantly test video creative in 300×250 ad spaces to find the holy grail between TV commercials and the internet; failing to acknowledge that media is not consumed the same way online as off. And platforms such as Joost or Amazon’s Unbox, though wildly exciting and popular, have yet to find their mass audience. The only success seems to come from humor (Doritos) and ingenuity (Se:e Burger King’s Subservient Chicken and Honda’s Cog); namely, viral video that perpetuates itself.

Having created an engaging video that tugs at our “Inconvenient Truth” warped emotions, The Encyclopedia of Life has reached its target audience, creating a buzz for this, most ambitious of online endeavors. And they’ve done so without the requisite ball to the groin.

Check it out:
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