A video from the CEO

Learfield CEO Clyde Lear started blogging in March of 2006. And he’s been very consistent since then, writing or rewriting every post. This morning he asked me to come to his office to help him add a video to a post he was working on.

clyde-videoHe shot the video by setting his Casio Exilim on the window sill (to get the best light) and ad libbing his post in one take. By the time I got there, he had the file on the desktop of his iMac and just wanted to know best way to trim the front and back. I showed him how to do that in iMovie and then gave him the login to my YouTube account.

You can watch the video on his blog if you’re interested. I think the quality is pretty darned good.

Equally impressive –to me– is Clyde’s use of his blog and –in this instance– video to communicate something to the entire company. This is the next best thing to him walking into every employee’s office and talking to them, one on one. The entire process took maybe 30-40 minutes.

So there are two things at work here. First, our CEO wants to let us know why he does the things he does. He cares that we get it from him “directly.” Second, mastering the tools and skills needed to do this.

Am I making too much of this? Maybe. But had he had someone write (and rewrite) a script that he “delivered” to a crew who gave it to some editors who ran it past some lawyers and PR types… the message would have been a different one.

3 thoughts on “A video from the CEO

  1. No argument there, Keith. A yawn for non-Learfielders. But I wanted to demonstrate the ease and effectiveness of video as a communication tool, so…

  2. The quality (video etc) was excellent, but to a non Learfield person, I think I’ll keep this til bedtime (know what I mean yawn).

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