How Enterprises and Brands Utilize Video to Maintain Consumer Engagement and Continuity

Video AdvertisingContent MarketingGuest Authors

By George Meek On Nov 8, 2020

Keeping up with advertising, marketing and customer-outreach trends might feel like an impossible hill to climb. Or maybe more like a footrace with 20 other brands, all of them sprinting at once, clambering up a narrow escalator headed down. There’s always some emerging technology, a new platform, another channel that must be understood and embraced. You’re always hustling to connect with an increasingly fragmented market – and to do it better, faster and more efficiently than your competitor.

But the classics never die. Video, for example, has stood the test of time – and it isn’t going away anytime soon. Tactics and delivery channels may change, but video as marketing content is now deeply embedded in the fiber of companies’ branding strategies. Whether it’s meant to inform, attract or inspire, video has the power to reach out and grab consumers, then hold them in rapt attention.

Of course, if it were that simple – hey, just plug, play and watch the profits roll in! – every business would hire a bustling multimedia team and, before you know it, the Fortune 500 would be forced to expand by tenfold. But shooting video for video’s sake alone is just costly wheels-spinning. Strategy matters. Tone. Objective. Digital video is cheaper and easier than ever to create, but you’d better understand your message, who you’re speaking to and what you want that audience to take away from the experience.

That said, these days it’s possible to produce effective and engaging video with relative ease and affordability. Both hardware and software are more accessible and user-friendly than ever before, and the vast majority of websites, social channels and, increasingly, email platforms are designed to host digital video.

How do you easily tap into the power of video production to build your brand and community? How can you bring branded immersive live and always-on events to any size audience?

Organizations need to rely on a push-button approach to video monetization and streaming content production, making it easy for companies of all sizes to amplify their brands’ voice with real-time connections and wall-protected livestreams. With today’s new technologies, brands, concerts, festivals, corporate meetings, broadcast events and media companies across the world can now rapidly deploy custom video experiences, livestream and monetize compelling content from live or on-demand, in-person or hybrid virtual events

Shares and comments on YouTube, Facebook and many others can spawn organically viral events, even when the source isn’t the parent company itself. (Just ask Ocean Spray and the cranberry-juice-chugging, Fleetwood Mac-crooning TikTok guy.)

Not every business is lucky enough to have a blockbuster campaign fall in its lap, however, so most need to think through how to engage a target market – and how to keep beating that drum. Videos could be testimonials, product walkthroughs, explainers or thought-leader spots that approach consumers directly by describing uses, product behaviors, value propositions and more. These tactics work best for products and services that require a bit of how-to or differentiation from a competitor. On Blue Apron’s YouTube channel, for instance, you can learn how to slice scallions on the bias. Go to Bowflex’s website and you’ll find workouts and tips that incorporate the company’s equipment – as well as some that don’t.

Cultural captures and immersive videos are more delicate and visceral in their approach, evoking a feeling while creating an association between consumer and brand. On the landing page of indoor skydiving operator iFLY is a full-width, looping video of a customer floating inside a giant transparent tube. Cool. Now imagine a skate park doing the same with GoPro video recorded from the helmet of someone shredding the course, or golf course and amusement park proprietors featuring bird’s-eye drone footage of the grounds.

Some video can act as content marketing – a service to the consumer that also positions the brand as an industry leader. Think Lululemon beaming video of a fitness class from its website or Grey Goose vodka streaming a bartender competition. The potential angles for consumer engagement are practically endless, and creating multiple video deliverables that are customized for separate channels isn’t just simple to execute – it’s the stuff great campaigns are made of.