A few months ago, Advertising Age honored the world’s best brand storytellers at the fifth annual Viral Video Awards in New York City. For the second year in a row Samsung took the coveted crown (Beating out runner up Google). By now brands understand that it takes more than a good product to draw new customers and keep existing ones. It’s a competitive jungle out there and content marketing continues to be one way to keep a competitive edge. Video content is emerging as an ever-increasing popular means in which to convey brand messages. According to a study conducted by The Futures Company, the most popular site among all teens now is YouTube with fifty percent of teens surveyed citing YouTube as their favorite site versus 45.2% for Facebook. Lets take a look at the three things your brand should be doing to tell its story in 2014.
Samsung ran 61 video campaigns that garnered more than 348 million views. The most popular were its “Magna Carta Holy Grail” campaign that offered free downloads of the Jay-Z album to Galaxy users, and “Looking 4 Myself”, which starred Usher. Each racking up more than 50 million views respectively.
What that tells us is, if 2013 was the year of content, 2014 will be the year of the story, although not everyone agrees. In an opinion piece by The Guardian the writer poses: “Why take a key element of human nature and slap an industry label on it? Have you ever heard of a ‘storytelling department’ anywhere? So, why now?” Okay, okay, I see your point. But one cannot deny that what resonated with consumers even 2 years ago, just isn’t doing the job today.
2013 was a great example of this. Vine launched on Twitter, video came to Instagram and Netflix won an Emmy for a Web-only series. But what does all this mean for brands? Well, sadly, not everyone is going to get Jay-Z and Usher to endorse their products. But what they can do is expand their content arsenal to include platforms such as Vine, YouTube, Slideshare and Instagram.
Taking all of this into consideration, below are 3 things your brand should do in 2014 to better tell its story:
Keep it Simple: According to Simply Measured some 59% of the world’s brands are active on Instagram alone. This is a vast untapped audience for some brands and a great way to engage without spending a lot of money.
Easy Access: According to Forbes half of executives look for more information after seeing a product or service in a video. Consider open-source platforms for your videos such as YouTube, Vine and Facebook. A few others to consider are: Testimonials, Landing Pages and Thank You Pages.
Say Something That Matters: This one can be tricky as its mostly subjective. That’s where really knowing your audience and understanding their pain points come in handy. If you’re trying to speak to everyone, you might not see the kind of success you set out to achieve.
Tell us what’s working or not working for you? Have you recently embarked on a video storytelling mission? If so, we’d love to hear more about it.
