As an ex-journalist, words have power. They can deliver a wide variety of messages and stories that can resonate with readers across the spectrum of emotions.

Despite my enthusiasm for wordsmithing, I’m also a huge fan of the demo video to help companies communicate who they are and why it matters. In a world in which people are multi-tasking and increasingly time-strapped, I tell clients that you can offer people compelling and well-written text but, if given the choice, they will watch a demo video most of the time.

It was interesting to read a post this morning by Michael Arrington about a new demo video for Blippy, the social service in which you share purchases publicly by providing the company with your credit card information. The video was done by Transvideo Studios, whose clients include Mint and Box.net.

The video is certainly good but I would suggest (and this is a very un-Canadian thing to do, especially on July 4) that some of the videos that Seth Singer and myself have created recently compare favourably.

We’re particularly excited of a demo video done for GridCentric, a Rogers Ventures portfolio company that makes virtualization software so companies can scale their computing resources in real-time to meet demand as opposed to having excess “just in case” capacity. In creating the video, we not only gave GridCentric something they could use for sales, marketing and financing purposes but helped them with their core messaging.

Here’s a video that we created for Sysomos for a new service called Audience that will measure social media ROI.

Demo videos are not inexpensive, which can be surprising given the online world’s obsession with free. But – and this is clearly self-serving – they are very solid investments with a great ROI because they can be used for a variety of things – everything from explaining to consumers what you do to marketing, sales, business development and finances.

If you’re interested in learning more about what’s involved in creating a corporate demo video, drop me an e-mail at mark@markevans.ca.