You've undoubtedly developed a great elevator pitch for your company, product or service—that informative-yet-concise summation designed for delivery in the time it takes to travel from the lobby to the 17th floor. But what about visitors to your Web site—do you have a punchy way of telling them, in two minutes or less, what you do?

In a post at the American Express Open Forum blog, Guy Kawasaki extols the virtues of short videos that successfully communicate complex ideas in a streamlined, comprehensible way.

To make his point, Kawasaki uses a video he made for the Web site Start Cooking. In under a minute, the demonstration succinctly shows viewers how to prepare his recipe for chicken teriyaki. "[The site's] method of showing how to prepare food blew me away in terms of effectiveness, speed, and simplicity," he notes.

The same principles apply to just about any business topic, and Kawasaki highlights a video from Email Center Pro. "Email services can be hard to explain to people as everyone thinks of 'email management' as different things," Sabrina Parsons, the company's CEO, told him. "We were challenged in making the tutorial to clearly explain what our email management solution was, and why people need it."

There's more to this Marketing Inspiration than simply making videos. "The explanation has to be fast, interesting, and compelling," notes Kawasaki. "I don't know of a better way to do this than this type of video."

More Inspiration:
Ted Mininni: Outside-In Innovation
Paul Barsch: Retail in China: Traditional Marketing 4Ps Still Relevant
Elaine Fogel: Moses in the Desert

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