There’s no denying that video content is king at the moment, with even a cursory glance at social media showing the direction that online media is taking. Yet video production is something that many companies side-step, especially those with smaller budgets. The feeling is often that videos are frivolous, and require more effort than they are worth. Yet a good video is anything but. It can be one of the most effective strategies for getting straight to the heart of a topic, both more quickly and more effectively than any written piece could. And people are asking for them, if not outright expecting them.
Luckily, branded video production is no longer the reserve of those with large marketing budgets. Technology has made it easier and cheaper than ever to boost your brand and stand out against the competition. By investing in video content, you’ll be keeping up with social media changes and maintaining a sleek professional edge – all from as little as a day of work with video production experts.
Why video over other forms of media?
Brand awareness serves three purposes: it allows people to know who you are, and what you are about; It makes people want to buy from you, and it makes you a subject that they want to tell their friends about. But why should you choose a video to convey information over other forms of media?
Video content is an umbrella term that covers a huge range of brand assets, all with multiple uses. There’s so much more you can do with video than merely transactional advertising. From corporate videos that can be shared in-house or B2B to advertising or promotional content to graphics created for social media or to cultivate a certain image. All of these can be utilized to elevate your brand awareness, and – with careful consideration – can be used multiple times for multiple purposes or campaigns.
Video tells a story
Humans are natural storytellers, and we thrive on narratives. If you can use video to tell a story, the chances are that viewers will remember you. Video is particularly effective for evoking emotion (Christmas ads, for example), and with emotion comes a greater chance of recall. This is because the brain prioritizes emotional memories. The only caveat is that an emotional video campaign has to be carefully executed and created with a light touch. After all, there’s nothing that turns a consumer against a brand more than faux emotion or ambulance chasing.
It helps to think outside the limits of purely conveying information when creating a video. Even if the information you have to get across in the video is fairly dull and generic, it can be a fantastic opportunity to instill some of your brandings, boosting your company image all while serving a practical purpose.
Video helps with brand awareness
When you use the word “brand”, people tend to think of staid corporate rules, grey boardrooms and strict style guides. But branding doesn’t have to be boring! In fact, it is your chance to be the opposite: to convey the voice of your company with fun storytelling and visual cues. With a bit of brainstorming and creativity, video can help you convey less concrete aspects of your business such as ethos and values, as well as displaying your personality.
Consider Innocent Smoothies. How much do you know about the actual items they sell compared to the company itself? While their campaigns are technically about their latest products, they are more focussed on how the company doesn’t take itself too seriously, and its contribution to campaigns such as Age UK’s Big Knit. They’ve achieved this with a very specifically designed marketing strategy that covers everything from pun-based product names, to, the mocking style of their social media platforms, to the tiny words that cover their bottles. The driving force behind all of this? You guessed it: video content.
The point is that everything can convey your message. Every aspect of a campaign should match the others to ensure uniformity, and video is no exception. Regardless of the content and purpose of the video, you want to make sure that it is definable as a part of your company, and evokes your unique culture.
The video makes use of psychology
A useful aspect of the video is that it utilizes more than one of our senses. This allows us to make use of subliminal and suggestive marketing techniques such as color, music, and emotive language and associations.
In much the same way as volatile companies avoid the colour red (as it stands for danger), and not-so-eco-friendly businesses use green (as it is associated with nature), you too can softly manipulate your audience by associating your company with a certain ethos, mood, place or trend, without explicitly spelling it out.
It is worth noting, however, that today’s audiences are much savvier about this. There have even been some very successful video campaigns that rely on the audience understanding that they are being overtly manipulated, such as an actor cuddling kittens in an obvious attempt to appear soft and friendly. There are limits to this kind of messaging, however: you wouldn’t want a jolly song over a somber announcement for a brand closing, for example. There has also been a massive backlash to ‘virtue signalling’ from businesses in recent years, such as when large companies make use of minority figures in their ad campaigns or change their branding for Pride Month in an attempt to appear inclusive when their business model doesn’t match that ethos at all.
While all of this might sound a bit sinister, subliminal marketing techniques have been in use since advertising first began, and are based on various psychological studies. We aren’t saying that you can mask a bad business with a shiny song, but something as simple as song choice and setting can go a long way in influencing how people react to your brand, as well as to that particular campaign.
Video can allow you to influence the narrative
Remember that today’s consumers are hyper-aware, and can fact-check in an instant. The flipside of this is that you can respond just as quickly, and provide expert and accurate input. Video allows you to add your side of a conversation in a professional but eye-catching way. It helps you control the narrative, or at the very least influence it.
Whether you are struggling with damage control after an event that negatively affected your brand image, or is proactively trying to boost how people think about your business, video can go a long way towards changing opinions. If this is the purpose of your video, collaborating with other organisations on a campaign of videos could provide added leverage.
Video can be used multiple times
One of the best things about creating video content nowadays is its sheer adaptability. As we mentioned above, video is so easily shared that a long piece of content can be edited and formatted for a variety of different platforms. You might choose to use a few cropped scenes for a pop-up advert or promotional web content, save B-roll footage for generic use in future videos, or post longer clips on platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. All of this could spring from a long video designed for television placement, a promotional video, or to feature on your homepage. The use cases are endless, and a great video can have a very long life.
Video content isn’t going anywhere, with recent growth estimates showing that it is only going to get bigger, and easier to produce over the coming years. A well-thought-out and produced video can cover your social media and wider marketing commitments for years, filling your feeds and establishing a distinct brand image.
If you don’t have the time or resources to create a video in-house, Broadcast Revolution are experienced video production expert. We can work with you from pre-production and planning, all the way through filming, and on to post-production, editing, and content placement – all helping you begin harnessing the potential of video for your brand.
And finally, if you think your business and products are too boring for video content, think of all the adverts for toilet rolls or dish soap you have seen. If you can make those memorable, the sky really is the limit.
Jeena Alfredo is a passionate digital marketer at The Business Goals. She is working with other companies to help them manage the relationship with The Business Goals for the publications.
