Last week, we sorted some of 2010 best videos. This week, we’re going to talk here a bit about some predictions or trends for 2011.

So here we go, feel free to discuss or suggest your own:

Book trailers will become more frequent. In the past years and specially in 2010, some book trailers have been coming out. These have been more related to genre fiction (particularly sci-fi, fantasy, or horror), like for example Stephen King’s latest “Under The Dome”, or the book trailer for “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”:

They constitute a great teaser for the reader and have a lot of attention on the main blogs, constituting a good vehicle for potential new readers. I suspect publishers will get to this more and more, and will be crazy not to.

Brands will have videos made for niche target segments. Upon realizing how nowadays video can be done for lots less money than going to an agency, brands will spend equally (or less) not just in one video but several, each produced for:

- different features of their product or service;
- different target segments (say geographically, or by age, for example);

This way, they’ll use the power of video to better communicate with niche parts their audience, a more direct and targeted communication.

More lyric videos coming your way. Cee-lo Green had a runaway hit with what he called a “lyric video”, ie, a kinetic text animation that was supposed to be a teaser till the official music video was ready.

It got a few million views in the first week (now at 8 million). Sometimes artists or fans released tracks of a new album to Youtube just with a photo and the music, and this is much more effective. Although not many have already, music artists will realize this is a great way to engage with their audience prior to the official music video release and will have “lyric videos” done. In some cases, this “lyric video” will substitute the official music video entirely.

Flash mobs will have a slow death. I mean, come one, enough with the flash mobs already! This year there have been one or two that were original (like the Samsung one), but the others, despite all the million views, have been just awful. Case in point:

If you’re doing a flash mob, then make it original, don’t bother doing just another one. There will be flash mob videos in 2011, make no mistake, but they will slowly be less appealing to the general public, and ultimately vanish.

More videos with have easter eggs in them. You know DVDs, now Blu-Rays sometimes have easter eggs right, when you find a special making of or some production photos. Well, movies always had them, little references sometimes, and in 2011 online videos will start to have more of them too.

In this video from Google…

… they hid a puzzle:


An equation, scribbled out in old school chalk in the background of one scene, attracted the attention of a Sylvain Zimmer, who, together with a group of like-minded geeks, set about trying to solve it and discover its meaning. A full day’s worth of cryptographic work later, Sylvain was left with a set of numbers he was able to convert into letters, which in turned spelled out “speed and destroy.” Appending goo.gl, Google’s URL shortener, to the front of those words got him to a screen congratulating him for being “first to figure out our MENSA-certified puzzle” and promising to send him a Cr-48 laptop as his prize.

See? That’s awesome, and provides further value to both your brand and your video. We’ll see more of this in 2011.

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Ok, that’s it for now, these are just a few we thought of. If you have more or disagree, let us know :)