Videos promoting Northfield are up; no, you can’t promote them

Northfield Video TourBookIn the May 22 Friday Memo, Northfield City Administrator Joel Walinski announced the new CGI Communications videos (Northfield Video TourBook). They’re now viewable, linked from the left sidebar of the City’s home page or via this link on CGI/eLocalLink. Unfortunately, unlike YouTube and every other video service on the planet, they don’t provide the embed code for the videos. (continued)

This would allow lots of local web sites and blogs to embed the TourBook sidebar or even their choice of the videos, thereby taking advantage of the viral nature of the internet to, um, promote Northfield.

And the whole set of videos should be placed on the Chamber/CVB Visiting Northfield website, not just the City’s web site home page.

And it would seem that the businesses who paid to have videos produced and placed around the perimeter of the six videos would also want to have those videos embedded on their websites.

Joel wrote:

nfld-tour-book-sshotThe CGI contract offers free video work for the city with their revenue being derived from advertising that appears around the video clip, the advertisements being local businesses; the businesses working directly with CGI for the development of those advertisements. There are six short City video clips focusing on the various characteristics that give Northfield its quality of life: the colleges, businesses, city celebrations, environment, and residential living.

8 Comments

  1. Jerry Bilek said:

    I completely agree Griff. why would you not want these videos everywhere? it’s kind of like hiding your advertising. The videos are nice, not great. they talk about St. Olaf’s Regent Hall and show a picture of Buntrock Commons. I would encourage Joel or whoever pulls the strings on this one to share these videos on the CVB website and any other site that could use them. I’d put them on my blog if it were allowed.

    May 29, 2009
  2. Melissa Reeder said:

    Good idea Griff. Not having the complete agreement in front of me, I’ll at least ask the question of CGI.

    May 29, 2009
  3. David Koenig said:

    Griff,

    What’s the surprise? If they were free, the company needs to drive people to its advertising to pay for them.

    Jerry is right…they are nice, but not great. Quality of Life begins with a bank robbery and then talks about snowmobiling while showing a green-grass trail. Rushed-job, it would seem, with graphics like an inexpensive wedding video. And where are our schools, education level of our populace, etc?

    Okay..it’s too easy to complain. It’s better to have these than not having anything. So, thanks to the City for getting these done.

    Yes, it would be nice to be able to embed them, but that doesn’t seem to be their business model…and it was free, correct? I assume no Northfield City Staff time, at all, was spent on this….or it wouldn’t really be free, correct?

    May 29, 2009
  4. I’m in full agreement with you guys. The clips are OK, but the experience of watching them made me feel like I’d traveled about ten years back into the past.

    May 29, 2009
  5. Curt Benson said:

    A recent article in the NFN had a link to the city’s website where one was to find a film showing the shortcomings of the city’s overcrowded safety center. I clicked the link, but alas, I couldn’t find the film. Am I missing something obvious?

    http://northfieldnews.com/news.php?viewStory=48467

    May 29, 2009
  6. Curt Benson said:

    Actually after scrolling down the city’s page a ways, there is a link to the task force video. However, I had to click through a few unrelated videos until the task force video appeared. Huh?

    May 29, 2009
  7. Griff Wigley said:

    Yeah, they don’t have the link right, Curt. The Safety Ctr. task force page at:
    http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/projects/pd/2009/02/09/safety_center_task_force

    has a link to the video:

    http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/whatsnew/pd/2009/04/20/safety_center_video

    The outfit who did the video doesn’t have the embed code feature of Vimeo turned on (AARRGGHH!!) to let other people easily embed it but at least they gave it to the City to host on the City’s website. And it’s pretty easy for minor techies like me to ‘view source’ on the page and grab the code for placement wherever, like here:

    May 29, 2009

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