Ben Chodor is CEO of Exciting New Technologies, a New York streaming media company. He talked to Direct about how politicians are using this area of e-mail.
DIRECT: Refresh our memory, Ben. What exactly is streaming media?
CHODOR: It's the ability to send audio and video over the Internet, so anyone who has a computer can participate.
DIRECT: Why is it good?
CHODOR: One reason is, it appears on the Internet. The Internet is a new channel for grassroots dissemination of information. More people have the Internet at their desks than have radios or televisions. More people get their news and information from the Internet than any other medium. I'm probably typical of most people. I listen to the radio for five minutes when I get up, read the paper during my commute and then get most of my news over the Internet throughout the day.
DIRECT: You rely on the Internet more than magazines or newspapers?
CHODOR: Sure. If I care about how New York State is cutting funding for the arts, where do I go to get information? There's no periodical I can go to. I'm going to Google and type in Arts Reform NY State. And then I figure out who wrote the articles and whether I trust them.
DIRECT: What are the other reasons marketers use streaming?
CHODOR: It's a way for getting the truth out. For example, a politician can say ‘Here's my message, here's who I am and here's what I stand for’ in a video that lasts a few seconds. A constituent can click on links at the politician's Web site and hear him or her talk on specific issues. They don't have to watch a 30-minute video.
DIRECT: Just how important is it to see the politician in action?
CHODOR: You can't get their intensity and their power without seeing them. I've read a lot about Gephardt and thought I knew about him, but when I saw him speak, I realized this guy can be president. [Rep. Dick Gephardt is a Democratic representative from Missouri who is running for president in 2004.]
DIRECT: Isn't it expensive?
CHODOR: I can deliver a message to a million people for under $6,000 with a video in it. The only element that's not coming out of that cost is the cost to produce the video.
DIRECT: What's the average response rate?
CHODOR: Open is on the average of 25% higher than regular e-mail. The retention you get from video is so much better than text or HTML e-mail. The whole point of streaming is life span. While HTML e-mail is opened and viewed by recipients for a few days to a week, streaming lives an average of 180 days on the Internet. At LorettaSanchez.com [the site of Loretta Sanchez, Democratic representative from California, who won her election last year], constituents could return and click on links that were posted each week and see how the candidate felt about various issues. She posted a different message each week.
DIRECT: Streaming can't be better than TV.
CHODOR: Television is the greatest medium ever — but the Internet you can go back to.
DIRECT: Is the pass-along value in streaming particularly important with political candidates, such as in your work with Gephardt?
CHODOR: Gephardt recently had a lunch in California and we filmed that and afterward there was a little meet-and-greet and we recorded that. Since the people who attended the luncheon are big fundraisers, we sent a video e-mail of the event and asked them to pass it along to 10 friends. So when the friend opens the e-mail, instead of seeing a message from his friend that says ‘Write a check to Gephardt, he's a good guy’ — he opens it and says to himself, ‘There's Gephardt and there's my friend John, man!’ We sent 10 e-mails on behalf of 10 contributors. It's a great custom thank-you to those contributors.
