What a world we live in! Are we really going down the drain? It certainly looks like it with both Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch vanished and AIG under the patronage of the US government. The good news is that corporate video production can still be green.

If times are going to be tough, video productions should stay within budget. Even ambitious occasions like product launches can be broadly shared without requiring expensive travel. Employees can access training programs in the most convenient setting instead of their time being consumed by scheduled on-premises programs. A video production can communicate only some of the messages. It should not present a large number of ideas and concepts.  Keep the program short and only long enough to carry the message. A shorter program will be more widely accepted and certainly will cost less.

One of the best decisions that you should take is to choose carefully a video company turnkey production early in the process. A company full service should be power, which may carry higher performance in all three phases of the production process: preproduction (scripting), production (shooting) and post-production (published). Ask three companies for proposals and provide the same information to all three. Listen to their explanations of how they generate the productions. It is crucial to have creative and enthusiastic people on your team. Use real people to tell the story. This is important because people like to see and hear real people, not actors. And it is cost effective, too, because usually you don’t pay them where as actors can be quite expensive.

The intranet can be your primary delivery system. Podcasts, and blogosphere are booming and  are all worthy learn about and explore. Apparently, the video is everywhere: in stores, on gas pumps, grocery carts, on planes, in mini-vans, on Segways, and even on iPods and cellphones. So no matter where you are, no matter how you feel, you can still watch a video. And the message, regardless of the medium, is always the same!

Like death and taxes, change is one of life’s certainties, and how companies manage it determines success in both the short- and long-term. As the authors ofGlobal Manifest Destiny: Growing Your Business in a Borderless Economy wrote, “Entire markets and industries from around the world are changing faster than most business leaders can reinvent and transform their companies.” But reinvent and transform our companies we must if we want to succeed in the global marketplace.

In this column, I’ll introduce a powerful new approach, ChangeCasting, which promotes the use of focused video messages to expedite organizational change and which can be implemented quickly and easily.

Business information today is communicated primarily through email but also through instant messaging and texting, in phone calls and voice mail, and over intranets, extranets, and websites. As a result, the message is often buried in an avalanche of communications that can be easily lost, overlooked, or ignored. As Jackson Nickerson, professor of organization and strategy at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School and co-author of the upcoming bookChangeCasting says, “E-mails and phone calls don’t attract enough attention, convey an emotional connection, or lay the foundation for a conversation that builds clarity and trust.”

According to a Harvard Business Review study, these communication media as well as improvements in network bandwidth and collaboration software have caused an increase in the use of virtual collaboration and a significant decrease in actual meetings. The advantages of virtual collaboration are inarguable; however, it lacks the efficacy of face-to-face interaction. The key to meeting the challenge of constant change is the ability of business leaders to share insights and visions with those who can turn strategic plans into action and revenue.

With affordable digital video cameras and video-enabled cell phones, almost anyone can create, distribute, and view video. Younger employees have grown up in the digital age, and all things digital are second nature to them. In fact, if you want someone’s undivided attention, nothing supersedes multitasking like video.

Enterprise video is currently undergoing a transformation to a more agile and effective approach. Traditionally, businesses have used contract production companies and in-house media groups to produce video of various events, primarily presentations and training. But these productions can be quite complex and expensive and lack natural spontaneity.

That’s where ChangeCasting comes in. Executives and managers can use ChangeCasts—which are 1 to 5 minutes in length, communicate a single main point, and involve both talking and listening—to communicate with employees on a regular basis. A ChangeCast solution also includes an anonymous feedback mechanism for honest, useful communication, which reduces misunderstandings and uncertainties. ChangeCasts can be viewed live as part of a streaming broadcast or via VOD to accommodate employees’ schedules.

To implement ChangeCasting effectively and efficiently, your solution should work with your existing IT infrastructure. The last thing an enterprise needs is a whole new overlay infrastructure devoted to video. Here are some technical issues to consider with ChangeCasting: