While every brand today knows they should be using video to connect with their audience, not everyone is exactly clear as to the why and the how, argues Mark Blair, vice president of video platform Brightcove.
Executed correctly, video has the potential to jump-start conversations about your brand, draw your audience into the brand experience and ultimately build loyalty and a connection with your customers that cannot be achieved through other mediums. If you’re not excited about your brand, your customers won’t be either. Any piece of marketing collateral you produce should convey the personality of the company and what it stands for. A strong authentic personality is the market differentiator that attracts your target audience and allows you to begin building an ongoing connection with them. If you’re in need of a little inspiration, below are some brands who have, in my opinion, nailed it. They are clear winners as far as innovation, execution and creativity are concerned. They demonstrate just how effective innovative video solutions can be when it comes to shaking up traditional campaigns, injecting a little personality into your company, and creatively capturing the imagination of your audience.
Michael Hill Jewellers
Leading Australian and New Zealand retailer, Michael Hill, last year partnered with e-commerce consultancy Amblique to launch shoppable video initiatives in a successful effort to generate awareness for its brand and increase customer engagement. The videos are indicative of the next wave of innovation for online retailers and represent a whole new avenue for e-retailers and digital marketers looking to drive sales. Beautifully executed, the Michael Hill shoppable videos range from a journey through the design and handcrafting of an engagement ring, a cheeky Valentine’s Day love-story…
…and a funky behind-the-scenes shoot for the Emma & Roe ‘Wild Hearts’ range, which captures the attitude of the brand’s younger label. As each narrative continues, viewers are drawn to the specific products in the video – which they can buy from the video – creating an all-consuming and totally interactive brand experience, which has led to increased conversion on the site.
As well as the shoppable videos, the brand also launched an exciting video collaboration with Vogue and well-known Australian bloggers Jessica Sepel and Claire Fabb, who each shared their lifestyle and style tips with customers, along with their own favourite pieces from the range. Michael Hill is a brand that ‘gets’ its audience. Jewellery is an inherently personal purchase, which can evoke an emotion, convey an attitude or recall a memory for the wearer.
The video content strikes the balance between promoting the products, but also creating a brand personality that is young, positive, fresh and resonates with customers. By tying the products to a unique moment in each narrative, the brand establishes a real connection with the audience.
Tourism Australia
If you want to talk about brand personality, no-one has as big a personality as Australia. Land of Tim Tams, great coffee and a wealth of natural beauty, who wouldn’t want to live here? That’s the exact premise of the Tourism Australia ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign which encouraged Australians to submit stories and photos of their favourite domestic travel destinations to the agency’s campaign website, www.nothinglikeaustralia.com.
Tourism Australia recognised that consumers no longer just spotted advertisements on the side of a bus, or by sitting on their couch. The campaign had to reach consumers across smartphones, tablets and the web and it was vital that it have a strong digital, social media and advocacy focus.
‘There’s nothing like Australia’ entered the market showcasing a 180-second broadcast ad, which was supplemented by a series of shorter video clips, and combined to highlight spectacular glimpses of Australian states, capital cities and icons. It was shown across Tourism Australia’s key markets, including China, India, Indonesia, the UK, USA and, of course, Australia.
The campaign is a prime example of powerful technology and a fantastic creative concept coming together to create the ultimate brand experience. The campaign attracted over 9.6 million views and resulted in high levels of viewer engagement with the website. The video cloud technology meant that Tourism Australia was able to publish, manage and distribute video content to multiple devices and destinations. This eased the burden of needing to concentrate on the technology and instead allowed them to focus on creating inspiring content and conveying the personality of Australia in their videos.
ExactTarget
Global digital marketing company, ExactTarget (owned by Salesforce) is renowned for innovative marketing solutions. Its target audience is comprised of content creators, digital marketers and creatives who want to leverage cutting-edge technology in order to amplify their message. It adopted Brightcove’s Video Cloud to manage the development and publication of video content to its web site through a custom video portal in order to increase user engagement.
Maintaining a strong digital brand is key for ExactTarget. The ability to quickly publish video content to the portal has helped the company offer the most current video content relevant to new client success stories, changes in industry trends, and its own evolution as a company, and to deliver this content to virtually any device. The marketing team are able to collaborate seamlessly on video production to efficiently manage its video content library and elegantly publish that content to its video portal.
Video has become a primary tool in online marketing strategies to engage customers with a more interactive, live-action experience that can demonstrate a company’s products, brand identity, and cultural values. A single video has the potential to capture the attention of an audience, but a video portal, with a collection of content, can have an exponential effect on engagement.
Visitors to the ExactTarget site spend on average more than five minutes using the portal, two minutes higher than the average time spent on other areas of the website, giving the company the chance to share more content with each user and more time to help them understand and connect with the brand. Executed correctly, a good content strategy that includes video can convey the warmth and depth of personality of your brand. At the end of the day, customers are people. Once you begin marketing to people and not ‘customers’ the brand personality will shine through.
Mark Blair is the Vice President of Brightcove Australia & New Zealand
