7 Tips For Better Branded Videos

How brands can become bet­ter broad­cast­ers and forge more impact­ful cus­tomer rela­tion­ships.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Increas­ing­ly, as brands seek to forge more mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with con­sumers, they are behav­ing more like media com­pa­nies and cre­at­ing their own con­tent. So how do brands cre­ate video con­tent that their cus­tomers want to con­sume and that is actu­al­ly share­able?


At the recent ad:tech event in San Fran­cis­co, Jonathan Perel­man, vice pres­i­dent of motion pic­tures at Buz­zFeed, said he has a the­o­ry that brands will be the next great pro­duc­ers in Hol­ly­wood, point­ing to “The Lego Movie” as one exam­ple of this con­cept, as well as Hasbro’s poten­tial deal to buy Dream­Works.

For his part, Marc Ecko, founder and CBO of Com­plex, a con­tent site that focus­es on music, style, enter­tain­ment, sports and sneak­ers, said mov­ing beyond tra­di­tion­al media, “which is, ‘Buy my shit,’ to con­nect­ing the dots between con­tent by either delight­ing, mak­ing my day short­er or giv­ing me insight” is what is gen­er­at­ing a much more impact­ful rela­tion­ships with con­sumers.

This means a lot more videos. To wit: Perel­man said the growth of video has been phe­nom­e­nal – by a fac­tor of 56 since just 2013 – and that’s due in part to Facebook’s native video play­er.

Jes­si­ca Ulin, vice pres­i­dent and part­ner of port­fo­lio man­age­ment at media agency UM World­wide, shared three guid­ing prin­ci­ples for mar­keters to cre­ate brand­ed videos that bet­ter con­nect with con­sumers.

1. Authentic Value Exchange

This means brands must uncov­er true val­ue and need, Ulin said.

Whether that’s util­i­ty, infor­ma­tion, or humor, it’s impor­tant for brands and pub­lish­ers to dive deep and fig­ure out what that nugget is,” she said.

Ulin gives the exam­ple of Charles Schwab, which part­nered with Yahoo to cre­ate a video series with tips for every­day trades. It is a twice week­ly live show with promi­nent brand­ing through­out.

We look at con­sumers as the cen­ter,” Ulin said. “The con­sumer is at the heart of it.”

2. Strategic Syndication

In oth­er words, mar­keters need a media plan to sup­port the video.

You can have the coolest piece of con­tent out there, but if there’s no media plan, it will get lost,” Ulin said.

She points to Denny’s, which cre­at­ed a humor­ous brand­ed con­tent series, the Grand Slams, and paired it with inte­gra­tions with like-mind­ed brands such as the Onion and sup­port­ed the series with native media.

Con­tent is king, but dis­tri­b­u­tion is queen and she wears the pants,” Perel­man said.

3. Realistic Results

Brands must fig­ure out their met­rics and align their objec­tives with key stake­hold­ers.

Mea­sure­ment is impor­tant. It’s impor­tant to under­stand the ROI,” Ulin said. “There is no mag­ic for­mu­la for share­abil­i­ty, but you can be pre­scrip­tive when it comes to increas­ing chances of engage­ment.”

Four addi­tion­al tips for mar­keters beyond these basic guid­ing prin­ci­ples:

4. Finding And Using A Unique Voice

Ecko said not fit­ting into a box with his brand voice is in part what has dri­ven share­abil­i­ty. H said Com­plex is now up to 250 mil­lion month­ly views. The brand has worked with part­ners like McDonald’s on its music series, Mag­num Opus, and Moun­tain Dew on online mag­a­zine Green Label.

5. Forge Intelligent Partnerships

Ulin notes mar­keters are start­ing to get smarter about part­ner­ing with like-mind­ed brands in authen­tic ways to bring val­ue.

She also not­ed that when brands work on their own and are not part­ner­ing with pub­lish­ers, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to put spend and strate­gic thought behind their plays.

It’s about get­ting it out there and pay­ing mon­ey, but in a smart way and to make sure you’re using data,” Ulin said.

6. Seek Out The Right Talent

Accord­ing to Ecko, tal­ent plays a cru­cial role in cre­at­ing engag­ing video con­tent.

Not just known celebri­ties, but intel­lec­tu­al­ly curi­ous expres­sive tal­ent is the cen­ter of grav­i­ty for the media busi­ness,” Ecko said. “You sheer away tech­nol­o­gy and data and at the end of it, there’s core emo­tive tal­ent. Ulti­mate­ly the media busi­ness is won and lost on tal­ent.”

7. Create Videos That Hit On Emotion, Identity, Information

Perel­man said brands should strive to con­nect with view­ers in at least one of these ways, by mak­ing them feel some­thing or see some­thing they can relate to and/or learn about.

He points to Friskies’ Dear Kit­ten video,which has more than 22 mil­lion views to date as a good exam­ple of this con­cept.


Do you have any video mar­ket­ing tips to add?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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