Weavly: legally create video mashups from YouTube

So, as someone who has spent their “career” in the creative realm, a product like this puts one more notch in the massive headboard that devalues creative content. And when I say creative content, I’m talking about, not only, video, but music, live events, experiential marketing, writing and a host of other things. For whatever reason so many people that I and others in this space deal with, think that creative content shouldn’t have to cost anything, or as much as it does. So businesses wind up going for the cheapest option possible and then when it sucks, they blame the creative (person and/or content.) As opposed to the fact that they weren’t willing to spend what was necessary/hire the right person or agency/develop the right creative to begin with. Odds are, as a client, you’re not nearly as funny as you think, your “nephew” isn’t nearly as creative as you think and no one wants to see your god awful talking head video. A client builds a good product or service. A good creative (should) develop great, relevant content that builds brand recognition and helps move the sales curve north. And with the number of horrible videos, commercials, music, presentations and events that we’ve all seen and/or heard, I would hope that my point is pretty evident. A product like this takes this devaluation many steps further, and parallels what happened in the music industry. Not only does it encourage clients to continue to ignore the costs of developing a proper creative campaign, it also encourages stealing of existing content from others. Now if Weavly has a way for people that want to use existing video/music/etc. to contact the creators and discuss compensation then that’s fine (free market principles apply.) But I didn’t see any mention of compensating the creators for their work, only a mention of avoiding copyright issues. And no I didn’t go over the Weavly site very thoroughly. From a brand building perspective, I would hope a client would avoid using others content like the plague. Your brand should be unique. Nothing else out there should be able to say what your brand says. Everything that your brand says has to be authentic. Your brand should be about building relationships with your consumers. How many real friendships do you have with phony or inauthentic people? And with social media having the power it does, anything that has even a hint of a lack of authenticity is dead in the water. Yes building these relationships will take more time, but if you do it right, you’ll also have many more loyal customers.As a consumer I wouldn’t want to deal with a brand that values my attention so little that they think they can just cut up someone else’s existing content, add new music (that they probably didn’t pay for) and think I’ll want to buy what they’re selling. I’ve got a lot of other options for how I’d want to spend my time and if you’re pushing something someone else did, especially to sell what you’ve done, you just went several rungs down the ladder in my opinion, if not fell off completely. Now, mind you, I’m well aware that there are exceptions to every rule, so if you or anyone has a good one, by all means let me know (I’ve got a few too.)OK, that’s enough of a rant for today. Sweet Jesus. And did you notice? Not one F-bomb.