Here's a question for you.  If you couldn't see Susan Boyle, and the audience's skepticism ...if all you heard was her voice, would this woman's performance have become the global sensation that it's become?

I doubt it...because what makes this recording so powerful is seeing her, judging her, and being shocked that this particular woman would have "the voice of an angel." Shamefully, for most of us, the power of the video is the epiphany we experience as we watch it.

For those of you who haven't seen the clip, you can view it here.

If anyone continues to doubt the power of video in our ever more visual society, this pop culture phonon inspires a few observations:

• 1) Video is the world's most powerful communications method. Only communicating in-person rivals the impact that video has on every one of our senses.
• 2) Video can be uploaded to YouTube and virally sweep the globe in a matter of hours. Boyle's video reached over 12 million viewers in less than four days. There is no other form of mass communication that's ever approached these astonishing numbers.
• 3) Video is the truth: You watch it with your own eyes, you interpret it without editorial nuance or second-hand interpretation. People instinctively believe it more.
• 4) If your organization isn't using online video to tell your story - whether to the outside world, or employees or partners - your communications are not as powerful, viral or believable as they could be.
• 5) The younger your audience is, the more this applies: Millenials and younger workers have grown up creating, manipulating, distributing and leveraging online media everywhere - in their social, educational and even professional transactions.

So let Susan Boyle be your inspiration. Take the plunge: get your executives or professors or doctors in front of a camera - whether you start with a production company, or build your own studio.  The amount of time your speakers will invest in their online presentation will dwarf what they would have had to invest traveling around the campus, or the globe, to be sure that everyone got the message.  And, as this viral video poignantly demonstrates, your audience will experience, and engage, with online video content in ways that simply aren't possible with conference calls or the written word.