Businesses Use the Medium To Advertise Jobs, Products And Promote Their Histories
By BRAD GRAVES
San Diego Business Journal Staff

Internet video is a burgeoning cultural phenomenon.

The 2008 presidential campaign has given Internet viewers a scene of Amber Lee Ettinger, also known as the Obama Girl, singing a ditty called, “I Got a Crush on Obama.” By now the unofficial video, produced by BarelyPolitical.com, is a year old and has inspired several parodies and sequels.

Nothing says success as much as a video gone viral, following the path of the Obama Girl or comedian Will Ferrell’s short drama, “The Landlord,” about an abusive, 2-year-old landlord.

User-generated media, and the phenomenon of the YouTube video-sharing Web site, inspired Time magazine to make its video-creating readers its collective Person of the Year in December 2006.

Big business in San Diego is not just sitting idly by.

More adven­turesome executives are putting video on their Web sites, though this video is more professionally produced — and arguably in better taste — than the stuff on YouTube.

Robert Craghead is one of the people to benefit from the phenomenon.

Craghead, 35, is creative director and partner in Ten Stories, a film and video production company based in the Midway neighborhood of Point Loma. The company’s clients include wireless telecommunications firm Qualcomm Inc.

Qualcomm and its ad agency, Digitaria Interactive Inc., hired Ten Stories to create a trio of videos about the lives of three individuals who use various aspects of Qualcomm technology in their working and personal lives.

For example, an executive simply known as Jonathan uses his wireless phone to keep business projects on track, monitor his heart rate during a morning run and buy roses from a vendor in Paris.

High-definition video adds a cinematic touch to the stories. The use of Flash animation software lets viewers choose whether to take a timeout from the narrative, to explore the way technology can be applied, or to skip the technical talk and watch the narrative unfold.

The effort is visible on the Web at wirelesslife.com.

Craghead reports he’s working on other projects for Qualcomm, including some programming designed to be more viral.

Craghead founded Ten Stories in 2002. At first the company specialized in post-production work such as editing and visual effects. Then partner Bryan Bihari came on board in 2005, bringing expertise in production.

The company has grown slowly, Craghead said, financed with personal savings. Ten Stories is privately held and does not disclose revenue. Today the company has four full-time employees and a part-time crew that swells to as many as 30 freelancers.

It also has a new location near the San Diego Sports Arena. Ten Stories’ previous studio in Little Italy had sound troubles, since it was under the Lindbergh Field flight path.

Heartbeats And History

Qualcomm’s WirelessLife site doesn’t delve as much into history as another media-rich site from another San Diego institution, that of Sharp HealthCare.

The hospital chain uses video to take viewers back five decades to its early years in semi-rural Kearny Mesa. Using World War II newsreel footage, black-and-white photos and vintage newspaper headlines, Sharp recalls a civic effort to build a new hospital, and a grieving father’s effort to create a memorial to his son, Donald N. Sharp, who died in 1944 during a bombing run over Nazi Germany. San Diego-based Rich Badami & Associates put together the video for Sharp in 2005.

The hospital system’s Web site is loaded with other video as well as audio podcasts.

Some material deals exclusively with health matters: One of several podcasts features psychiatrist Mark Melden of Coronado offering a six-minute discussion of stress and its physical and behavioral consequences. Sharp produces its podcasts in conjunction with Badami and has a goal of producing 27 this year, said Todd Miller, the health care system’s senior vice president for marketing and communications.

The style of the podcasts has evolved to make them more effective, Miller said. “We’ve learned we need to be short and sweet,” said the executive.

Ten Stories has also worked with Sharp, producing segments such as a documentary about the Sharp Coronado Hospital, which is also visible on Sharp’s Web site.

Of Balance And Billable Hours

While video can bring customers in the door or raise an institution’s profile, it can also lure prospective employees.

That’s the strategy San Diego law firm Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP is taking, with the help of another San Diego video-production house, Groovy Like A Movie.

Procopio recently decided to put video clips of its attorneys on a new version of its Web site. Web visitors can click on still portraits of Procopio staffers (shot by DiZinno Photography Inc. of Los Angeles). That takes them to videos of 20 seconds to 2 minutes each, featuring employees discussing the advantages of going to work for Procopio. Topics include the law firm’s culture, gender equity, community involvement and work-life balance. One video has paralegal Erin Alcantara speaking about cutting her workweek to 32 hours because she has a toddler. “I think that’s sometimes hard to do, to balance family and work, and Procopio’s been very supportive in that aspect,” Alcantara says on video.

Kristen Esposito, the law firm’s director of marketing, said the firm is trying to attract professionals with three to seven years of experience. “We’re looking for the lateral recruits,” Esposito said. While national law firms require their attorneys to bill 2,100 to 2,200 hours a year, Procopio is emphasizing its expectation of 1,850 billable hours, she said.

Groovy Like A Movie, owned by Brent Altomare, offers special rates for multiple videos. Six clips cost $4,200, while two dozen clips go for $11,000. Altomare recommends customers load new clips to their Web sites periodically to keep sites fresh.

Altomare started his company in 2000, using money from a previous family business: he and his father were partners in the local Auto Trader Magazines. Groovy Like A Movie grossed $781,000 in 2007, and this year had already come close to that figure by mid-June, Altomare reported. The company will make “well north of $1 million” in 2008, he said. He employs 13 people, up from eight last summer.