One of our overpaid consultants emailed us the Amazon Silk Launch Video today and asked us “Could you guys do this video better”?

The answer was, of course! Check out the Silk video:

The video is actually done fairly well. There is a lot of good technical information, and the team has good camera presence and are able to communicate confidence. But it could be a lot better:

1. Subject Matter
Overall, the technical details are presented simply and done very well, but there are a lot of other, bigger ideas that are conveyed between the lines that don’t come up to the surface. I would have liked to hear more about the vision in a separate video, and have the thought leadership positioned a bit stronger. Yes, Amazon silk is trying to appeal to a technical audience, but the audience is wider than that.

2. Length
The video is far too long at over five minutes. The video ought to have been broken into three or four discrete videos to appeal to those that just want the gist, versus those that want the technical details.

3. Animations
The “chalkboard” animations besides the speaker are distracting and compete with what the speakers are saying. You cannot pay attention to what the speaker is saying, and what the animations are trying to convey. Would have been better to use the animations in a separate video with some Voice Over to communicate visually.

4. Type
The Type Write Ons feel like a pending seizure, and are distracting.

Summary:
If Viewstream had created this video, we would have recommended a series of three videos about one minute each. The first one would have positioned the thought leadership, and the other two would have drilled down on the two big technical takeaways. We would have saved some resources by not doing the animations, or if we did, we would have used them in a separate video. Finally, we would have made the type animations more digestible and more in line with Amazon brand.