From correspondents in NY, India, 09:47 AM IST
Corporate and institutional marketers are providing record amounts of rights-free video content from the Beijing Olympics to news media outlets for use in their reporting, according to data released today from The NewsMarket, Inc.
Sponsors such as adidas, VISA and OMEGA as well as institutions including the World Anti-Doping Agency, The Asia Society and the London Development Agency are producing more video than ever before from and on the Games, catering to the strong demand from online and television news outlets for rights-free video from Beijing.
In the first week alone, sponsors and marketers released more than 80 separate announcements and stories from Beijing. Content includes the release of VISA's new Go World commercial featuring Michael Phelps and a behind-the-scenes look at how official time-keeping is done from OMEGA.
Olympic-related content being distributed through www.thenewsmarket.com this year has registered a 10-fold increase compared to the last Olympics in Athens in 2004. "The popularity of news video on the Web and the ease with which video can today be produced and disseminated digitally is proving a terrific opportunity for marketers wishing to achieve high rates of return from their Olympic sponsorship," says Shoba Purushothaman, CEO & Co-Founder of The NewsMarket.
The increase in sponsor-produced video also speaks to the trend amongst major global brands that are rapidly seeing themselves as content creators in the new digital landscape. The strong demand for their content -- provided free of rights and cost to the news media for editorial use -- underscores the effects of cutbacks and resource constraints hitting the global news industry. In particular, online editions of traditional print media that have limited internal resources for original video creation are accounting for the biggest uptake of this video.
The NewsMarket launched a dedicated Beijing 2008 Channel (www.thenewsmarket.com/Beijing2008) earlier this year to enable corporate marketers to upload relevant news video and market it to more than 16,000 media organizations, blogs and mobile news providers globally.
Brands including Atos Origin, Haier, McDonald's, Panasonic, Pepsi, PUMA and organizations such as the International Olympic Committee and the London Development Agency amongst others, are currently providing content for the channel. Amongst the most prolific video producers are adidas, OMEGA and the World Anti-Doping Agency. All video is available at no cost for editorial use and available to order in broadcast-quality, streaming and embed in both English and Chinese.
Some of the most popular videos to date:
- "Go World - Congratulations Michael Phelps" VISA TV commercial
- Cindy Crawford visits OMEGA's pavilion at the Olympics
- London House opens in Beijing ahead of official Olympics handover
- Panasonic's invites Olympics fans to join the "World Wide Wave"
- Journalists interested in ordering video about the Olympics, can visit www.thenewsmarket.com/Beijing2008.
About The NewsMarket
The NewsMarket (www.thenewsmarket.com) is the leading platform for global brands to market and deliver their video to all their audiences. The company enables corporations and government and non-profit organizations to easily share their video content with the media, blogs, consumers, online communities and other audiences globally. The company's media site (www.thenewsmarket.com) is used by more than 16,000 media outlets in 193 countries to view and order free news video for use in their programming. The NewsMarket works with many of the world's leading brands including General Motors, Volvo Cars, Mazda, IBM, Intel, UNICEF, Facebook and Google. The NewsMarket is headquartered in New York, with offices in Beijing, Delhi, Dubai, London, San Francisco, Munich, Singapore, Hong Kong and Mumbai. To learn more about our capabilities, visit: www.thenewsmarket.com/postingcontent/
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