Can Video be Social (& all business)?

In case you hadn’t noticed, social media isn’t going anywhere.

If we throw Facebook’s 1 billion users into a pot with the 175 million tweets per day, add to that the 104 million Pinterest users and flavour with the more than 4 million hours of YouTube video that watched every month, you got quite a stew on.

Now, if you’re looking at video for your corporate website, why on earth wouldn’t you make that marketing tool work double-time for you in a social arena? After all, predictions are such that social video campaign spending will hit the $10 billion per year mark by 2015. Now those are some impressive numbers.

Stop Plunking

We all know corporations that take their standard video and plunk it in front of your favorite TV episode online to sell cars or shampoo. Same is said for those conventional ads you have to sit through before showing your kids a funny video on your Smartphone. But what if video were more social? What if it were short, relatable and bold? What if consumers (especially your target audience) wanted to watch and share?

A research study by MetrixLab revealed that viewers were 28% more likely to purchase if a video was viewed socially rather than wedged in before Mad Men. Seems 94% of people skip those ads given the chance and 54% of viewers admit to making a habit of it. As opposed to social video which viewers are more likely to recall (both brand messaging and product) and buy.

#Example

Take Nike’s 2013 #CountOnKobe campaign. These are only shoes, right? But here’s a 1:03 minute video that Millenials sought out, shared, repeat watched and swore their allegiance to. The product: Kobe 8 System, the lightest, lowest Nike Basketball shoe to date. The message: After 17 years in the league, Bryant’s drive to dominate and constantly improve his game is part of the world’s natural order. This is the way it was. This is the way it is. This is the way it will be. Count on Kobe. It rolled out on January 17th of this year across all platforms and shoes were sold.

Nike Basketball | Kobe Bryant: #COUNTONKOBE

In A World of Filters

It’s apparent that taking the same old-same old to a mobile app, Facebook or YouTube will no longer work. Not in this brave new world where upwards of 72 hours of video is added to YouTube every minute. Where Facebook’s algorithm only allows a small percentage of your fans to actually see your posts. Where 92% of ads are still served up to desktop computers.

This cannot be a video your teenaged neighbour or your Uncle Jack puts together. That much is sure. Check out the choice words and humour that sell the Dollar Shave Club business launch in its now famous $4,500 video campaign on YouTube. “Shave time. Shave money.” You’ll discover a video that’s highly visual, easily sharable on blogs, social networks as well as social hubs and mobile apps. Viewers will seek it out. As a result, it will reach its target audience and through discovering, watching and sharing, go far beyond.

DollarShaveClub.com – Our Blades Are F***ing Great

Taming the Unpredictable Beast

Now, rumour has it that social video is unpredictable and not easily measurable for ROI. History doesn’t lie. The Jeff Gordon Pepsi video (14th most shared branded video, beating out the Old Spice Guy) is helping in the soda wars where Coke has 61 million Facebook fans to Pepsi’s 9 million. Pepsi’s video campaigns in the past 12 months have achieved 2.32 million shares to Coke’s 606,000. Both stock and sales climbed. And the Monday morning after the 2013 Superbowl, Budweiser’s ‘Brotherhood’ ad had already chalked up 1.5 million shares ranking it #3 (right behind Volkswagen’s “The Force” at 5.5 million and Bud’s own 9/11 ad at 2.3 million).

Branding strategy, emotional connection and promotion all rolled out over social. With Anheuser-Busch sales flagging in the third quarter by 7% (according to MSN), their North American profits (at 1.82 billion) needed some bolstering. Nothing like a viral ad campaign to achieve that end.

So to answer the question, video can and should be social, not just all business.

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Cadillac’s new online video marketing campaign – grown up but not old

When the new Cadillac ATS was unveiled in January 2012, first impressions were overwhelmingly, “that’s not your grandfather’s Cadillac”. It’s clear from anyone who has followed Cadillac’s brand shift over the past few years that the move away from the early-bird dinner, “I can’t hear what you’re saying!”, pants pulled up way to high crowd to the middle-aged business person is no accident.

Hot off the heels of the ATS vs The World campaign (a familiar feeling, TopGear like campaign where two guys take the ATS around the world), Cadillac and their Minneapolis based agency Fallon (@wearefallon) has hit a home run with their latest 4 spot campaign “Luxperiments”.

The best two Luxperiments spots follow. What do you think?

Cadillac Luxperiments | Fancy Dining Room

Cadillac Luxperiments | Fancy Piano

Cadillac ATS vs The World | Morocco | Brembo® Brakes

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The Somersby Store Apple Parody

And while Apple’s shares continue to fall in value (is end in sight?) demonstrating that the honeymoon may be over for the (once) most valuable company in the world, as the latest spot by Somersby Cider demonstrates, the magic surrounding the Apple brand may still be there… at least enough to Parody in a great way.

Now I dare you to watch this ad and not be feel thirsty.

Somersby Cider – The Somersby Store

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Dogs Eating Like Humans… are these the next “screaming goats”?

It’s surprising (and somewhat annoying) to me what goes viral and becomes an internet meme these days. Hot off the heels of the Harlem Shake came the “Goats Screaming Like People” craze. What’s next? Well maybe “Dogs Eating Like Humans”…

The latest video appears to be making the rounds amongst dog lovers, posted a little over a week ago.

In January, the video below began to make the rounds and currently has over 18 mil hits.

A lesser known video featuring a dog in a robe eating breakfast was released 2 years ago.

Who’s to say if this will be the next craze but if it is – let’s just say I called it (and if it’s not please ignore this part of the post).

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B2B Video Content Must Be Creative, But That’s Not All…

I’m sure by now we all realize that 84% of people view online marketing videos on a weekly basis. And information coming out of SES NY 2013 tells us that the B2B industry is worth $400 billion and drives 20 times more than the B2C industry. It’s true that both big budgets and small B2B ventures want to achieve the same ends with their marketing – changing behavior, effective message recall and positive branding. In a shifting landscape where impressions are cheap and context is often forgotten, creative messaging has to be more than just another data point to be optimized.

Psychologist/Designer Claire Rowland spoke at almost a dozen conferences around the world in 2012 on the subject of creative. She didn’t wish to address coloured hats or sides of the brain. Her take was that creative had to be fluent, flexible, original and then well executed. In other words, she said, “you need to find the good problems and then find the great solutions.” For B2B, this is more important than ever.

What seems to be the problem?

Google’s Account Executive for Business and Industrial Markets, Judith David recently suggested that B2B marketers start “with broad reach and goals, prioritize the platforms that offer the most engagement [for] the viewers who matter and allow them to drive future engagement.” Sounds simple.

Orabrush spokeman Austin Craig went even farther by suggesting, “you want creative, data-driven video. If your content isn’t creative enough to engage your audience, you lose your marketing opportunities.” After which he introduced a new approach to video marketing – creating a relationship-building asset. “Use video to deliver personal content to potential partners and prospects,” he said. Now, that’s a tall order for any average B2B marketer or business owner.

We’re not in the business of ‘content creation’, we’re in the business of moving hearts and minds

Ruth P. Stevens, speaking at DMAi 2012 told her audience that these days everything is considered data. She suggested that developing and delivering compelling offerings – crafted messaging – would most effectively support lead generation, conversion and marketing management. She went farther stating that integrated marketing communications placed a new importance on content. At SXSW Interactive 2012, the approach was to challenge marketers to raise the creative bar. Then to execute and assure client satisfaction.

Add to this the fact that investment in content is on the rise, although few companies have realized what best practices are for creating high quality content.

And that includes video

Discussion was lively at SES NY 2013 around developing a framework to win hearts, minds and wallets in today’s market. After all, it’s not simply about throwing time and money at the problem. How often do we hear, how much time? How much money? But these are the wrong questions for an effective strategic marketing plan. We need to back up and develop clear business messages.

The foundation for success

So in today’s market, leaders like Rowland and Craig agree that creative is huge. But if you attempt to start any project with creative alone you’ll find yourself lost in the weeds. The foundation for successful projects is rooted in the regular. The mundane. Not always overlooked but certainly underappreciated points of consideration like understanding objectives, audiences, motivation and distribution, to name a few. When carefully considered and fully explored through a process-driven approach (one like we do @ Phanta), creative can flourish. You’re free to explore new, fresh ideas and push the limits of what’s possible relatively risk-free because you will always circle back to ensure your new creative is true to your objectives and audience.

Creativity is awesome within B2B marketing – especially when you have a proven process to back up your decisions.

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Errol Morris – Tabloid

Documentaries can grab you and shake you if done correctly. By watching how a film-maker produces a good documentary, you can get a feel for what your business needs to build its identity. The Tabloid Trailer 2011 is a promotion video for the full-length documentary. It tells the story of how tabloids can take a story and run with it. In this doc, Errol Morris, one of the leading documentary film-makers of our time, has his signature approach all over it.

Morris uses a studio environment and jump cuts throughout the video to tell a riveting story. He interviews subjects for hours at a time and when it comes to editing, he is brutal. As he tells the story, he uses just enough of the interview to drive his message home. The Tabloid Trailer 2011 video gives you a taste of his style and skill. As you watch old movies and television spots, you hear the interviews with the real people involved, as well as experts who were there at the time of this story.

As the trailer progresses, Morris throws tabloid headlines at you to get your attention, then jumps back into the interviews. Each interview has exceptional lighting so you can see the expressions of the people’s faces being interviewed. His jump cuts to old and then back to new takes you back in time and brings you back to the present. The title sequence keeps you looking at the trailer and you see the exceptional editing style Morris does with all his films. In just over two minutes, you know what the story is about because it uses everything that gets people’s attention; sex, drugs, kidnapping, religion and a well told story.

Tabloid (2011) – Official Trailer

Here at Phanta Media we do the same thing. We meet with our clients to get their story. If it is marketing, selling or communications, Phanta Media builds your branding through corporate video production. This is all we do. We work closely with you to identify the important parts of your business that will interest clients, market your products, sell your service or communicate to your employees. Video impacts people quicker and with more information than any written material can do. By working together, we can help you brand yourself and build your business.

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