With the recent implementation of video posts for popular photo app Instagram, and the swift uptake of the Vine platform when it was released on iPhone and later Android, video has continued to make bigger inroads into the marketing tactics for brands and agencies alike.
Whereas previously marketing budgets would allocate a certain amount for professionally-filmed video for promotion and media ad spots, the rise of YouTube as a content-rich medium for brands saw tactics change.
Videos could be more “real”, with less focus on polish and more on the brand: its story, its products use cases and, most importantly, what its customers felt.
Big Things Can Come in Small Packages
This richer interaction has led the way for Vine’s short, snappy videos, which – despite early criticism of the six second limitations of the format – saw successes for brands that adapted to its style.
- Nascar gave racing fans an idea of what it was like to be behind the wheel of a race car;
- Fashion retailer Nordstrom created a funky video of a shoe being passed between Vine apps;
- Child non-profit Barnardos ran a very powerful Vine short highlighting child abuse for their “Believe in Children” campaign.
Instagram’s new video feature isn’t slouching when it comes to brand usage, either. Despite being later to the market , their longer videos – 15 seconds, compared to Vine’s six – has seen a variety of ways to showcase a brand’s message and culture.
- Ice cream retailer Ben & Jerry’s use it to show how they make fan favourites;
- Computer technology manufacturer Dell shows how to create a laptop sleeve using a ?sweatshirt;
- Women’s lingerie and clothing manufacturer Victoria’s Secret offer a stop-motion gallery on changeable summer accessories.
These are just some examples of how brands are not only using video effectively for promotion, but using short-form video and making it count.
So how does this impact where marketers focus when it comes to integrating different tactics when it comes to social media?
The State of Video for Social Media 2013
A new mini-report from digital publishing company Uberflip shares some statistics regarding video’s continued ubiquity when it comes to online and social media crossover.
Using data from reports by Google, Forrester, ComScore, The Guardian and The Globe and Mail, they’ve compiled this overview into a short video that shows just how much we’re using video, both from a creation and curation standpoint.
Some of the key stats that stand out include:
- 40 billion videos are streamed in the U.S. every month;
- 75 million people watch video in the U.S. every month – a quarter of the population;
- 87% of marketers use some form of video for their content marketing campaigns;
- $6.3 billion – that’s how much the video ad market is projected to be worth by 2015;
Search Google for “online video marketing statistics” and you’ll get about 97 million results, with stats, figures, predictions and more around this ever-growing medium. Simply put, it’s about to be very big.
How this impacts your brand marketing is up to you – but as both the Vine and Instagram examples linked to in this post show, as well as the more traditional marketing videos, it’s an impact that is growing.
Are you ready for it?
[youtube]http://youtu.be/VyqD0Vzo_K8[/youtube]
image: Daniel Proulx