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This video will be on our new website which launches Monday, April 7. We tried to make a complex idea, simple. I dig the music so if your speakers are off, turn ‘em on and crank it.
I’ve seen the thing so many times now I may have convinced myself it makes sense so let me know what you think it means before you get the context of the rest of our new site. Love to hear your ideas.
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I like the fact that you weren’t overtaken by the need to add a big booming voice that over-explains things.
Nice work. I was expecting to see you dancing a bit at some point though Sam.
Cool animation but a tad salesy for my taste.
I like it. To me. it’s a video about collaboration. The video means connecting people at multiple levels. At multiple levels within the company and with customers outside the company. I agree with the premise–companies that share information with customers more quickly and efficiently will have a big advantage over competitors.
I’d prefer the music to go from random to more elegant and inspiring –transition to accompany the concepts on screen more
Also I was expecting to see the jail cell bars disappear or at least become transparent; what flashes in my mind is the hanging cell in Sin City
Good but I was expecting more wow. Also expected the cage to explode, emulating the freedom that Jive and ClearSpace especially provides from the Microsoft prison and its SQL-shackles. I also expected to see some Microsoft logos on the cage but didn’t see any. Maybe that was due to legal reasons?
Hey, Apple has down very well with their Mac Guy vs Windows guy ads for years. Why not Jive Software too? Use David vs Goliath spoof too.
Still, good stuff. We’re just spoiled, that’s all.
I might just be bang in the middle of the target demographic, but I thought it was awesome.
Techno music, connected blobs, laser beams! I mean, Blobs with frickin’ laser beams…
Nice one 
Nice concept. I also appreciate the lack of a voice-over. I was also expecting something to happen to the cell bars, not necessarily explode but fade into the background somewhat. I like the music but thought the transition between the two pieces was slightly abrupt. These are all nit-picks though.
Love the simplicity, descriptiveness and fun. (Blobs/bouncing balls disappeared too soon after I started going to movies in the 60’s, and the music lends itself to that as well…)
It gives me an idea of what you do, how I’m going to feel, and the benefits of the Jive solutions (and of collaboration in general – are you ready for that?).
Would love to know with whom YOU collaborated to put this together. It’s refreshingly non-technical. Well done, Sam…
It’s hard to judge without knowing the audience or context. Knowing what Jive does, the implications of the animation are clear. Showing that animation to someone who doesn’t know what Jive does, and I”m afraid it would just confuse them.
If I remove myself from concerns about how the video will be used and who the audience is, I personally enjoyed the video.
I also understand the breaking down of walls that the video is supposed to represent, but at the end, it looks like the building has turned into a cage. I think this may be why other people talked about thinking it was going to explode or something.
I like it! It definitely conveys the whole “get connected, find the wisdom in your crowds” thing. But, I want the jail to explode. It looks like the well-protected relationships and conversations remain well-protected, within the “good ol’ boys” network.
Oh. I geddit. The “Jail” is the firewall. You’re connecting people on the outside with people on the inside. Still, I want it to explode! Also, at first, I thought the round thingy was an egg, and I was waiting for it to hatch. I’ve been watching Happy Feet too much.
Good stuff. I like the fact that it tells a story with no voice.
It does, however, presume the audience knows what Jive does.
Depending on the target audience, this might not be a problem, but I can’t send this to friends and co-workers that don’t know Jive.
Echo the point of others about the jail cell cum cage impression: it really counters the liberating sense conveyed by the rest of the imagery. Maybe just a wireframe with no vertical bars (transparency + boundary without confinement)?
Other than that, I really like the way it illustrates collaboration, coming together to build a greater whole, connections being made that weren’t apparent or possible before, etc.
I agree completely with the previous comment. I cant send this video around and expect people to get it without additonal context. So if the video is embedded on the page with supporting content, it could work as a brand builder.
Also, when I watched it, it evoked thoughts of science.
Hi Sam! WOW! Love it! The visual images behind it are awesome! I love the SNA concept you folks have tried to apply to it! Very descriptive and empowering, specially seeing the final effect of growth!! Contrary to what some folks say above, I wouldn’t make it explode, it would be sending the wrong message, imo, that of exploding after too much social networking overload going on. Not the right thing… I feel it is good enough as it is showing the growth factor and also the various social networking relationships with the nodes.
Perhaps I would change the colours of the nodes to show how it all tries to go across the boundaries of various groups, teams, communities, to help them come together into a single unit, that massive social networking platform that rocks! Solid!
Also, the music is good, but I think you would need to try it out again and look for something more shocking! More exploding as the key differentiator. The transition is not very noticeable and feel it should be. Trying to break the ground, not just sake it!
I think for the rest it looks a very nice and descriptive way of delivering strong messages with just few seconds of powerful animations! Loved it! (Got strong reminders from the Commoncraft folks on its simplicity and straight to the point mission!)
Time for a bit of transparency.
Having worked very closely on this video I also feel that perhaps I am too close to judge. Sam and I have butted heads a bit on this.
For the project I wanted take simplicity into a different direction, explaining things a bit more literally. Something like the Springnote video – http://www.springnote.com/en/video/
I’ve been quite worried that too much metaphor leaves too much room for misinterpretation. Every time we’ve discussed it Sam would just look at me and say, “Trust me.”
I’m still not sure if it will make sense in the context of our website. It feels like a video you might play before a presentation at conference.
I’m glad to see people here seem to understand it. I’d be very glad to be wrong.
Nice use of visual metaphor. The breaking down of the cube walls to connect all the ‘workers’ in the building was when it clicked for me. After that, everything flowed. I was expecting to see the the barrier of the building also get removed.
However, I see the point of keeping it to show the different between internal and external groups. Maybe the cage isn’t the best image, since your customer will (presumably) be the company that owns that cage. 
But, overall, it’s a much clearer conceptualization of what Jive does than trying to explain it with words.
It doesn’t really tell me anything. And as mentioned by Jason Grigsby above, it would only make sense to folks that already know what Jive does.
The prison bars are especially confusing as I somewhat expected the blob to break out of it somehow. Perhaps it’s the IT guy in me hoping for less metaphor and more direct information.
But man, our logo looked awesome at the end.
I loved it. Am I the only one who thought the beginning tune was very Katamari Damacy? Regardless of music I thought the openendedness of the video would draw folks to the jive site to find out what this crazy jailbreaking thing was. For those who know what Jive does the video is all the more sweeter. The only change I’d make would be to have the bars on the cage fade away at the end. The fact that the jail keeps getting bigger as more external links are made is both powerful and subtle too.
Makes me think of something I read, somewhere… If you can’t sketch your idea on the back of napkin, it’s too complex.
The video is the equivalent of a back-of-napkin sketch. It encapsulates the idea of ClearSpace and of Enterprise 2.0 in general. It’s cool.
As noted in other comments, I don’t think it stands on its own — needs to accompany a presentation or something. Or a tradeshow booth.
Sam – very cool video. I like the music and like the metaphor. I didn’t understand the bars/cage until I read Gia’s clarification. I’m also not 100% I would get what this means if I didn’t know who Jive was and what they did. With that said, I’m guessing you guys don’t get a ton of uneducated traffic coming your way.
I love your “testing” methodology btw. Great crowd to ask for feedback.
@astrout
I agree with many of the aforementioned comments about how the animation is confusing when out of context and NOT blowing up the cage (as much as I like smashing things).
However I have one additional thought:
“Go Big Always”
The animation appears to be helping/connecting the balls inside the building and the customers directly outside of the building. The building is in a giant city. Are the customers/collaborators only in the immediate vicinity? What could convey the bigger picture and power of Jive’s collaboration tools?
Oh, and one more agreement: Jim is right, the end logo ROCKS!
First: Great idea to use collaboration with us, your community, reaching beyond your own corporate walls to critique the impact of your marketing content before you make it generally accessible. That is commendable. It’s like a play within a play. So maybe, just maybe that smartness (that I’ve come to expect as your trademark here, Sam) was suddenly a tad missing for me in what followed. I’m glad others liked it, my reactions were these:
1. The starting ball/egg/entity appeared disproportionately large to the others joining it and that detail distracted me.
2. The opening music was somewhat innocuous. Then it changed gears, but seemed like a bland mechanical trick rather than a dramatic transition.
3. My eye demanded more viral and syntactical connections to have happened. I wanted to be wowed by some kind of amazing speed or connectivity or epidemic, which didn’t happen for me. In that segment, the playback delivered more than the visuals.
4)Coherency of style. Wish it had stayed with entirely abstract. The buildings felt “over-stated” and broke the continuity of something that had potential to be more creative and intriguing.
Summary: Appreciate the idea of an abstraction, liked the idea of music with no words, liked what was understated and mysterious. For some reason though this just didn’t elicit my excitement. Jaded?
Love the video – conveys a lot of personality and definitely says “connectivity, networking, thinking out of the box, etc”… but I too was expecting the jail cell to blow up. Like the blobs on the outside pull and break ‘em out western movie style.
Love the music, the transition isn’t too harsh to me – then again, I’m a musician and have a good ear for it.
Overall – thumbs up!
Music is great, but would be even better if your purple nodes are expanded even more. The focus seems to be on the green nodes within the corporate building.
You people rock. I love all this feedback. I hated the jail part, too but we didn’t have time to re-render it. We’ll fix that as well as some other tweaks based on all this feedback.
Thanks a ton for all your creative energy.
Eric ButlerHi Sam, cool concept…some thoughts:
* The crazy music makes me think that once I start expanding my network, things get super busy, super crazy, and I’ll likely need to turn down the volume soon.
* Agreed that the jail feel needs some tweaking.
* I’d replace the city metaphor with something that feels more global so it doesn’t feel like a city.
* A nit…the rendering of the view going up the building early on is confusing.
* When you pull back to show the external communities, I’d show them as already existing, thriving, purple communities.
* I’d add more connecting points between the green and the purple communities.
Hi Sam, Overall I really liked the approach. Illustrates collaboration without hitting you over the head. I also like the music and the lack of voiceover and explainatory text. I have similar nits to other folks along with some other ideas:
a) Cage/jail — Maybe only using lines at the corners to show the building without the feeling of being caged.
b) Control point for external collaborators — It seems that the external folks have to connect via a single control point instead to multiple folks within the company. Is that what you want to convey?
c) External collaborators feel individuals not other companies — Yes there are groups of external collaborators but they are on the street not in building. You might have other buildings become “Jive”d and connecting.
d) External collaborators are stuck at ground level worshiping the growing building — like b, it feels like a control issue.
Cool video. Great animation and a solid message of connecting dots (people, data, etc.) as the core differentiator of your product.
I wonder about two things, though.
1) The “jail/free” metaphor breaks down at the end. Why does the jail get bigger? Of course, this is a firewall depicting internal vs. external “dots.” I get this, because I (barely) understand corporate network structures. Which leads me to my next point…
2) Who is the target market for this? Is it IT folks that will push your software to the marketing side of their organization? Or is it marketing folks that will understand the need for this type of social interaction and push it to their IT coworkers? I think this vid is especially IT friendly, it’s a home run if that’s your target market.
Great job and great blog. Thanks for your work!
I guess I don’t understand how the video will be framed. The video conveys a networked concept but I think you need people in the video to show Jive is the platform for “people” to collaborate–not networks. I think you need some text or something to clarify the concepts of connecting people and to explain what Jive’s all about even some screenshots to bridge the concept to a tangible product.
Sam,
Very cool! I do agree with Dennis McDonald about the music getting perhaps less crazy as the connections are made. You might also color the outside groups each slightly differently so show that they represent distinct groups in the real world.
@slmader
Really awesome feedback. It’s our first foray into video like this (afaik) and it’s been a really interesting experience. 3D is such a long process and you have to judge on wireframes and assumptions. That jail thing was supposed to be a building. Whoops.
I’m glad Sam started this conversation. It’s certainly helped me feel better about it, especially when its in the context of our site and someone has stumbled upon us when searching for “collaboration”.
Looking forward to our next video gauntlet!
Cool, but are you relying too much on metaphor? If my Operations Program Manager watches it….does it really tell her what Clearspace is/does unless she all ready has some sort of understanding?
The new site rocks and the product pages couldn’t be better. Though the video is super cool, not sure if it is even needed.
[...] Sneak peak at new Jive video Portland-based Jive Software has got some stuff simmering on the stove and cooking in the oven. But they’re going to give you a little taste of what’s in store. Sam Lawrence writes “I’ve seen the thing so many times now I may have convinced myself it makes sense so let me know what you think it means before you get the context of the rest of our new site. Love to hear your ideas.” [...]
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