Fresh from watching yet another CEO stumble his way through a piece to camera on his company's website, I do wonder whether some corporations are giving sufficient thought to the YouTube generation.
Video is everywhere; it's inescapable.
We're all watching so much more of it than we used to: on our laptops, our iPhones, my kids even watch DVDs in the car -- spoiled little brats.
So on one level it's very positive to see corporations embracing the moving image on their sites.
Get it right and suddenly this year's results are brought to life in an entirely different way; employees who might never have met anyone from senior management are suddenly mesmerized by their charisma, and even bad news can be conveyed with nuanced body language and tone of voice that by definition the written word can never match.
But getting it wrong is all too easy. A stilted, 'I-am-reading-this-because-my-comms-director-has-told-me-to' performance is actively counter-productive. And those businesses who are not prepared to invest either in video-savvy CEOs or Chairmen, or provide media-training to their non-savvy counterparts, might as well as not bother with video.
Like it or not, we now live in a media age. Those who are not polished in front of the camera stick out like a sore thumb. And their embarrassing appearances say a lot about the businesses they represent.
As with anything in life, if you're going to do it, do it well.
Be excellent. Otherwise, leave well alone.
Because if a picture paints a thousand words, a video must speak a million.