‘Golden Age’ Of Live Streaming Video

It might seem as if live streaming video has been available in one form or another for years now, but the truth is it is only just coming into its own.

Live streaming video accounts for just a small fraction of the used bandwidth around the globe as Internet surfers find new and interesting things to watch. There are live streaming video feeds from sporting events and concerts; seminars and performances; live streaming video of animal babies and street scenes.

It seems as if anything that could be transmitted via live streaming video has been or will be soon, making the ‘Golden Age’ of live streaming video something which has not quite happened yet. And the key ingredient which has been missing, is revenue….

Honest Tea is wrapping up a live social experiment today with unmanned pop-up tea stores in major U.S. cities. The campaign demonstrates how streaming video can play an important role in modern marketing campaigns.

Honest Tea placed bottles in prominent locations, unattended, and let passers-by purchase them on the honor system. The San Francisco location, near the historic Ferry Building, is pictured to the right. Each bottle cost one dollar, and it was up to each individual to decide if they would pay for their drinks. Honest Tea used hidden cameras and Ustream’s live interactive broadcast platform to see how honest folks were.

The campaign found Chicago was the most honest city, with 99 percent of visiters to the pop up paying for their tea. New York came in last with 86 percent paying. San Francisco was 8th with 93 percent.

Even if your city wasn’t competing, you could still be polled online. 99 percent of online users polled said they would pay for a bottle. (Sure, that’s easy to say when a cold bottle of tea isn’t staring you in the face.)

“The digital component really brought the brand to many many more consumers,” said Honest Tea VP of marketing Peter Kaye, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We want more people to ‘like’ us and follow us on Facebook. The live streaming certainly helped. We will have doubled our number of ‘likes’ to over 60,000 in one day.”

The campaign was effective, and cute, but it was the live streaming that got our attention. Perhaps many unknowing participants didn’t see the the hidden cameras, such as the the one aimed at the San Francisco pop up, pictured to the left. Signs explaining the legal rights to live broadcast and record the event were posted everywhere, but the ice-cold bottles of tea were what passers-by noticed.

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