Corning Spins Glass Into YouTube Gold

CORNING INC. HASN'T SOLD DIRECTLY TO CONSUMERS since it sold its tableware and cookware divisions years ago. But it does make a lot of materials that go into the products consumers and businesses use: things like the glass for LCD TV screens, the optical fiber used in IP networks, or ceramic materials for automobile emissions systems.

So last year, the company and its agency of record, Doremus, decided to make a video that could project these products into the not-too-distant future — say, 10 years or less — and show how the company's products might form part of a typical day. The expectation was that the video would be shown at a meeting of major Corning investors in February and then again at the general shareholders meeting in April.

And, oh yes, it would also go up on Corning's YouTube channel.

Go up, as in rhymes with “blow up.” The video, “A Day Made of Glass,” has become a major viral hit, at press time scoring more than 10 million views on the YouTube channel. That's not at all bad for a 6-minute clip with no dialogue, just a long, optimistic look at what life in the near future would be when integrated with the products that are on Corning's drawing boards now.

Other metrics that matter include the fact that the video has generated 4,200 comments on YouTube and 23,600 viewers have named it a “favorite.” The video has also been seen 830,000 times in Facebook embeds and 807,000 times on mobile devices.

“We are one of the world's oldest and most successful innovation companies,” says Corning corporate communications VP Daniel Collins of the drivers behind creating the “Day Made of Glass” video. “But we found that when we went to enter markets outside of our core, such as aeronautic design, people didn't know about us. We also felt the investment community was underappreciating the value of our R&D. Even our own employees don't know all we're doing.”

So Corning set out to encapsulate that R&D vision in something concrete and send it out to the interested parties.

“We didn't make it solely for the major investors meeting,” says Collins. We always had plans to use the video for a number of business purposes. We will use it in our shareholder meeting. We're using it in customer meetings. We're distributing it to people who want copies. We learned the other day that the Disney Corp. used it in internal training to show people what innovation looks like. And since we're just beginning to get active in the social media space, we also put it on YouTube — where people have really taken to it.”

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