Continuing the videocentric week CCLaP is having, today's obsession concerns yet another collection of online content where I've recently been spending some time...

There are at least a couple of websites out there for all of us, I think, where we're aware that it's a good site, and that lots of other people go there all the time, but for one reason or another we never pick up the habit ourselves; in my case, for example, one such site would be Nerve.com, which I know that all my friends simply adore so am not sure why I never got in the habit of going there myself. But an upcoming feature I'm doing here on Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg took me over there recently, so I could start watching the sexually explicit web-based soap opera Young American Bodies he made for them; and that's when I realized for the first time that not only is Nerve producing original video content now, they in fact have an entire website devoted exclusively to the subject.

See, I admire Nerve as much for the business lessons involved as the content itself; and that's because of how strongly I think they've created a brand identity in the mind of the public, and is now pretty much the first group people think of when they think "smart projects dealing with edgy sexuality, that take prurient subjects and deal with them intelligently and humorously." And let's not forget, for a long time it was not a foregone conclusion that Nerve would hold this "go-to" position in so many people's minds; throughout the '80s and '90s, in fact, there were a whole string of edgy sexual publications that came and went, including Libido, Pucker Up, Black Sheets, Future Sex and more. (Feeling old yet?)

What I like so much about Nerve Video, then, is how intuitively it feeds into the brand identity they'd already created, and supports the overall image of the company while still branching off in new directions: how they sponsor a variety of web-based series, plus standalone videos, plus nonfiction shows, plus funny and edgy user contests, like submitting videos of yourself talking about political issues in your underwear. And not only that, but how they sponsor a series of amateur blogs as well, which take advantage of the precise reputation Nerve already has -- that is, instead of running around trying to censor all their bloggers' racier material, they encourage their bloggers to post more of it. (One I turned to randomly this morning, for example, started with the news that the blogger had just failed a pregnancy test, so was celebrating with a deliberate overdose of Prozac. Oh my!)

Add to this a staff blog, which surprisingly is mostly about highlighting interesting content at their competitors' sites, not trumpeting their own material, and you've got yourself one nice, tight package; a place with an iron-strong brand and message, using cross-promotion to save on marketing costs, that is ultimately putting money (good money) into the hands of some cutting-edge filmmakers, a place which inspires insanely zealous customer loyalty, which in turn is very juicy for advertisers. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you become the "go-to" group when it comes to customer expectation on a specific subject.

Anyway, I encourage you to stop by if you have a chance, although be aware that you should most definitely not be doing so in an office environment or around kids. And like I said, budding arts administrators should take a lesson or two from Nerve here as well, and understand the ways they so successfully "sell" the often envelope-pushing material found there. They're a great case study as to how to do things right.