Ever watched some really interesting video on YouTube and hours later found yourself watching something completely different? Well, we’ve all been there. Videos are compelling. They keep you engaged and have the power to make you feel things more intensely. Sound and visual makes a terrific team and brands have realised this. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised over 115 million dollars. Every person with internet knew what it was, and was aware about ALS. Videos have a way of reaching out and when brands understand their importance, they have better odds when it comes to awareness and influence. When paired with a good experience, videos can change the face of your brand for the better.
The Essence of Videos
Purpose – Videos serve your purpose only when it is clearly stated before the production of the video. If your aim is to create better brand awareness, then the script of the video should be tailored to showcase you as a brand, your brand’s personality, and mission. If your aim is product awareness or product launch, then the video will have a completely different agenda which needs to be highlighted in the video. If it’s a product video then your video will focus on customers experiencing the product through the video, while an ‘about us’ video of the brand will give the customers a personal experience of how the brands work.
Consistency – When people say consistency is the key, it almost applies to everything you come across in your daily life, and it certainly applies to videos as well. If you showcase contradicting ideas in your video series it will not fit well with the people who actively follow you. A video series should put across the same idea and remain consistent throughout. If Dove comes out with a commercial for cosmetics it will go against their Campaign for Real Beauty. Consistency is essential to building trust and recall about the brand with customers.
Anatomy of videos – Just as there are different ways of writing when it comes to blogs, novels & short stories, videos too serve different objectives. A five-minute long video may not work on your social media, but it will work on YouTube or your brand’s website. Whilst social media videos are crisp, videos on YouTube can afford to be longer. Although social media is used as a generic term, there are branches within it that need to be taken care of individually. A story on Instagram only lasts 30 seconds, so your video needs to be crisp enough to make an impression in those 30 seconds. Another factor that comes into play is the dimension of the video. A Facebook or YouTube video can be landscape as well as portrait, but for Instagram the video has to be 1:1. If a video is not specifically created for the said platform, it will fail to deliver the complete experience.
Social trends – Even if you can’t keep up with the Kardashians, you need to keep up with social trends. They keep you in the loop with your customers. Hopping on the bandwagon is a need of the hour since trends keep changing every moment and if you keep yourself away from these trends, it will hamper customer recall. Involving your customers in such trends will make them feel like they’re a part of something important too. This is when meme marketing comes in.
Videos are not new, and they are certainly not going away. They have the power of visualised effects to make you experience something at your own luxury. The shift of people watching television to streaming TV shows online speaks volumes about the drastic change videos have brought about in today’s times. More than 10 million videos are watched daily on Snapchat itself. It is anticipated that by 2021, 82% of internet traffic will be due to video. The scope of videos is vast and when the videos come packaged with an experience for the users, it’s bound to reflect in your brand’s increased reach.