Vine-Ripened

For those of you not familiar with it, you may want to check out the Vine mobile app. It's one of the most popular free iPhone apps ever created, yet many people aren't familiar with it. (If you have teenaged kids, you probably already know about it, as teens are among the biggest users of the mobile video platform).

The app, launched by Twitter last year, allows users to share 6-second video clips that continuously loop when they are posted -- either on the Vine platform or directly embedded into the Poster's Twitter feed.

What is unique about the Vine platform is how the videos are filmed, which is why it's become so popular among teens, but is also what opens up some unique opportunities for retailers if they get a bit creative.

Once you are registered and linked to your Twitter account, you film a stop-motion video by pressing the touchscreen of your iPhone (an Android version is coming soon). The recording only happens as long as your finger is pressed on the screen, so you can divide up the six seconds of total recording time into several different snippets by simply lifting and pressing your finger, and you can squeeze in a collage of mini-scenes within this time.

This enables you to do some creative things. This includes a collage of several displays in your store, for example, or maybe several one-second clips of a few customers trying out food at a demo station.

Here is the clip I created of cups stacking and unstacking by themselves. (Okay, I just finished up with deadlines and my creative juices weren't at their peak).

One great idea my publisher Jeff Friedman suggested for retailers is to show a quick shot of a prepared meal, then successive clips showing each of the ingredients that went into the meal, then end the video with a shot of the store's logo. It's a simple, yet very visually-appealing way of getting a message across. To see some samples of just how creative some people -- and ad agencies -- get using Vine, just look at some samples when you sign on.

Your finished video plays in a continuous loop as a post in your Twitter feed, and by clicking a link you can get the embed code to place the video on your website.

Like most of today's multimedia apps, the best way to learn how to use it is to jump right in and experiment -- you can always delete the video!

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