How Video Content Complements Multi-Channel Storytelling

In this article I want to explore how video marketers must now plan their content strategies across numerous channels and platforms, employing both long and short form video content to create a powerful brand presence. Increasingly the TV ad is being seen as just one aspect of a wider online brand building campaign that seeks consumer engagement as much as it does brand exposure. This is less about establishing what you are selling and more about how you want people to perceive your brand. Caption: UK bank Nationwide’s lauded TV commercial shows off the power that a brand film can have in establishing a powerful and evocative brand narrative. Vine: Vine videos are extremely short in length and are the perfect complement to your high exposure brand ads. In this sense, they tend to be less about brand exposure and more about calls-to-action and building brand advocacy in target audiences. Long-form content tends to be inbound and more likely to attract existing customers or those who are already social media followers or YouTube subscribers. Let’s take a look at some effective long-form video content. As a video production company, we often take behind the scenes footage when shooting a film. Presentation Film: Establishing your company and your people as experts in their field is a very powerful tool in creating an enduring and trustworthy brand image amongst your existing and potential customers.

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The internet is changing…

The proliferation of new communication channels and social networks, built on peer to peer endorsement and content sharing, has created as many challenges as it has opportunities for this generation of brand marketers.

Whilst the rewards are obvious – potential virality, consumer advocacy, industry influencer exposure, market research and real time data – the challenges are nuanced and difficult to navigate.

In this article I want to explore how video marketers must now plan their content strategies across numerous channels and platforms, employing both long and short form video content to create a powerful brand presence.

The non-linear brand narrative

Before globalization and the internet revolution, brands tended to tell their stories through the one way medium of a TV commercial, with accompanying print media employed in well-targeted publications and locations to reinforce this standalone narrative.

Gone are the days of marketing campaigns built around a single television commercial. Increasingly the TV ad is being seen as just one aspect of a wider online brand building campaign that seeks consumer engagement as much as it does brand exposure.

Take any big brand narrative today and you’ll find it exists in various forms and guises across a huge number of online and offline marketing channels whether bought, owned or earned media.

Much of this content actively encourages user engagement and participation, which in turn helps to steer the developing narrative. Although the billboard and print advertising tactics are still there, they now feed into an evolving non linear brand narrative that is increasingly taking place online.

The new media consumer

Creating a single compelling and distinctive brand narrative across numerous platforms, to numerous audiences, is one of the greatest challenges that content marketers (video or otherwise) face in this diffuse and deconstructed digital marketplace. The non linear approach to creating brand stories implies an understanding of the new media consumer and the decline of ‘interruption’ marketing.

The new media consumer no longer passively imbibes content in this way, but instead actively seeks it out. In other words, the digital revolution has bestowed a sense of agency upon consumers, giving them the ability to quickly shift from one piece of content to another, choosing to reject anything that comes their way with a simple finger tap or mouse click.

This has precipitated a huge shift from outbound to inbound methodologies and the development of diverse content strategies that appeal to consumers at every level of the marketing funnel and build brand identity over time.

I now want to explore how short form and long form content feed into a multi-channel non linear narrative.

Short-form video content

Generally speaking, short-form video content can be thought of as anything clocking in at under five minutes (although some video marketers would put this as high as ten minutes).

The growth of mobile marketing, fuelled by the expansion of public Wi-Fi networks and increasingly fast and affordable 4G mobile internet, is driving the popularity of short-form video content, which tends to perform a lot better on mobile platforms.

A recent survey by Opera Mediaworks found that engagement levels were as much as 36% higher using video content of between just 6 to 8 seconds in length. Short-form content therefore tends to be geared more towards building brand exposure and establishing identity, than it is about conveying meaningful information or driving sales.

This data is reflective of shifting consumer behaviours as mobile becomes an increasingly important touchpoint in the customer journey from awareness to purchase.

Let’s look at some common types of short-form video content.

  • Brand Film: Whether it ends up as a television commercial or is promoted solely online, your company’s brand film should form the backbone of your brand narrative, driving through your key message in the most compelling way possible. This is less about establishing what you are selling and more about how you want people to perceive your brand.
  • Product Advertising: Unlike brand films, product advertising tends to focus more directly on the product or service on offer, as opposed to your company and brand. These short ads will nonetheless form a vital part of your brand narrative, although the emphasis may be more on a call-to-action rather than brand building.

Caption: UK bank Nationwide’s lauded TV commercial shows off the power that a brand film can have in establishing a powerful and evocative brand narrative. The video was first shown…

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