Since the advent of film the moving image has been used to influence, advertise and market. With the exception maybe of virtual reality technology, video is the nearest we have come to creating a sense of direct experience remotely with an audience. It can convey personality, trust, authenticity and emotion directly through onscreen appearances and indirectly through sub communication, implied meaning and other elements like music.

How has video become so effective in marketing?

In decades past where cinema and TV were the only means of video entertainment, placing relevant adverts in between programs had a captive audience. On TV the public accepted video advertising as the norm. At best they enjoyed the light relief of video advertising in between programs and at worst thought of it as a necessary evil.These days where online video is becoming the prominent source of video consumption, viewers are understandably more discerning in their receptiveness to marketing. As content marketing became the driving force in advertising, video marketing carved its own niche.

Content marketing

With the wealth of information and entertainment provided by the Internet, and the freedom to navigate autonomously The public has become less receptive to brands shouting about their merits directly. They are however very much open to content that provides value and they can develop deep emotional connections with brands that command respect by providing value. In this, video production can excel. It is unparalleled in its ability to educate, communicate entertain and inspire. Providing valuable content to an audience while implicitly and subtly advertising the brand became the basis of content marketing. Video marketing is becoming a huge force in this.

Video marketing

Training videos and how to videos

Education and information is an easy and direct way of providing value to an audience. At promo video, we’ve done a lot of this over the years. Industry experts offering tips and advice on everything from marketing to health care to restaurant chains offering tutorials on cooking. Many companies and organizations can tap into this way of offering valuable information and Implicitly position themselves as authorities in the industry.

Entertainment

Creating entertaining videos can be incredibly powerful though can be harder to achieve. Classics of this include the will it blend series of videos by the company blendtec. Simple videos of random objects in a blender have been among the most viral videos on the internet and made the manufacturers something of a household name. Here’s a video of the iphone 6 in a blender.

The dollar shave club was a brilliant and hilarious video made by a small company selling razorblades in 2012. It has had 20 million views and counting and has spawned many tribute and copy cat videos since. Since then they’ve produced a number of other enternaining online videos and tv ads.

The poster child of entertainment video marketing has to be Redbull. Their videos have become so iconic and successful that the company selling a soft drink with dubious health implications has become a global media company. Their speciality in filming extreme sports has attracted many devotees to the brand. Their mini documentaries of athletes and sports people can be entertaining and inspiring.

What is the future of video marketing?

Video production will certainly be around for the foreseeable future and almost certainly will increase in popularity. It may morph into virtual reality technology over the coming years but for the time being 2D video will probably continue as the biggest driver of traffic on the internet. As the public becomes more discerning in the look and style of video content, production values will become more important. Where video is used to represent a brand as in commercials, promotional videos and brand videos the production values are obviously crucial though social media content is less so. Social media often favours regular quality content over production values. In some video production work, we’ve actually been asked to keep the look of the video simple so as to appear home made and unpretentious. With the increase in volume of video consumption online the public with likely become more finely attuned to authenticity and integrity and the video production is a window into the soul of a company.

The prediction from Cisco is that consumer internet video traffic will rise from 64 percent in 2014 to over 80 percent by 2019. Video on demand traffic will double by 2019. High definition video content will rise from 59 percent in 2014 to 70 percent in 2019. Video is clearly here to stay.