The Power of Youth and Video to Capture Culture

We’ve been sharing with schools and colleges the profound impact that video has on bringing culture to the curb.  While standard high resolution photography in promotional electronic media has historically been both effective and traditional in both print and web formats, video has transformed our ability to make the viewer feel as if they are on location, real-time.  In fact, I have given talks on the power of viral video on two different occasions in the TedTalk style EdSocial Media Summits in San Francisco and Boston.  Both of these talks can be found on our video watch page. 

No one understands this better than our youth today, who spend vast amounts of time posting YouTube videos and Vine’s on social media.  With Twitter’s announcement yesterday, where use of video upload will be both easier and integrated into their new platform early in this next calendar year, we expect the growth of viral video to continue and to improve.  Armed with a quality DSLR camera, the right lens, and a knack for capturing culture, we continue to expect video to be an emerging and easier strategy for those “hidden gem” schools to roll out their special sauce to a world that may not know too much about them.

Check out the video above, which was shot by no other than Makayla Symmonds, my daughter, a freshman at Loyola Marymount University in LA, at a recent Lewis Watson concert.  The rising singer/songwriter was performing at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and Makayla captured this video of his closing song, making the viewer feel as if you were sitting in the front row of the show.  Sure, call it a #familyfriday plug, but given the right context, camera, software, with the added ingenuity of of promotion, great videos can go viral fast.  In this case, Makayla posted the video to YouTube, then sent a link to Watson’s manager, and found that the star had already posted and retweeted her video to his over 78,000 followers.