Arena Flowers, Funky Pigeon add personalised video messaging

Online florist Arena Flowers has partnered with video hosting platform Vzaar to showcase online video on its website as well as to support a personalised gift offering.

After selecting their floral gift, during the checkout phase, Arena customers can then opt to upload a personalised video message to be delivered along with the flowers. When the flowers are delivered, they are accompanied by a card with the URL where the video message can be viewed on the Arena Flowers site.

Will Wynne, Arena’s chief executive, believes video messages are the perfect addition to the company’s offerings. “This is just one weapon in our armoury of personalisation and is a great way to highlight how different and innovative we are,” he says.  But, he adds, there was no need to rebuild the wheel and invest resources into building support for video uploads, hosting, and delivery, leading Arena to choose a third party to facilitate the service. Arena uses Vzaar to power the videos on its homepage, while simultaneously uploading to YouTube to take advantage of the audience there

At Funky Pigeon, a greeting-cards website, customers buying a greetings card online are given the chance to record a video greeting from their webcam. Funky Pigeon’s service launched in the run-up to Christmas 2011 and saw mobile entertainment services provider Melodi Media partner with video streaming specialist Bluefish Media to create an end-to-end video greetings offering.

Uploading the video to its cloud storage solution, Melodi manages the on-the-fly coding and delivery for each video with the recipient being able to view via QR or SMS codes printed in each card.