I feel like I should declare this “video in public places” week. I’ve been noticing video in some interesting places recently.

The first one I’ll highlight is a video I saw playing at a restaurant. Now you might be saying to yourself that isn’t all that unusual. You can walk into tons of restaurants and see TVs everywhere. What made this particular restaurant interesting was that I wasn’t at the restaurant. I was walking by.

It featured some flat screen TVs in the windows facing out, and they were playing video shot inside the restaurant. Shots from inside the kitchen, the dining area, and of course, shots of the food.

Standing out in a crowd

I have to admit, it caught my attention. The restaurant is in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. For those of you unfamiliar with Chicago, this is in the heart of downtown and one of the city’s main nightlife districts. There are restaurants on every street, every corner.

Pretty easy to get overlooked in a place like that, but the video made the restaurant stand out. At first I thought it might be a tacky indicator that this wouldn’t be a nice place to eat, but after peaking inside it looked like a nice, high-end restaurant.

My point is simple. Video is an attention grabber. The owners could have put up a giant photo of their food, but I would have walked right by. Instead, they chose video and it worked. They got my attention.

You can do this too

This isn’t just a tactic restaurants can use. Any business wanting to grab prospects attention can use video to do it. Whether it’s someone walking by, or surfing through the internet. Good quality video stands out.

Now, I’m sure the restaurant’s owners would have loved for their video to inspire me to stop in, but I had already eaten dinner. Video can only do so much.

–Tony Gnau

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