Ever wonder if those those boffo videos you made in 2018 are still doing the job?
While video content is still centre-stage in any marketer's content strategy, keeping up with what, how and where your customers want to watch is hard work.
We've got you. Over the next few months, we're going to share our fave video marketing trends with you, kicking off with:
1. Branch Into Something New
Hands up who remembers those ‘pick your own adventure’ books from primary school? Video marketers are bringing these bebes back with interactive and branching ads, where you make your own choices as you watch!
Deloitte NZ is pretty awesome at creating these. We especially love this one, ‘Will you fit into Deloitte?’, where you get to pick your response to some real-life office dilemmas and see if you have what it takes to thrive there.
Interactive videos are great for keeping your viewer’s attention, making them feel involved your story and bringing the feels for your brand. They can also be shoppable with viewers able to click on the product in the video and be redirected to your landing page right away.
2. Buy Me a Ko-Fi
Video marketing has traditionally needed a platform to advertise on and content creators willing to host advertisements.
2021 turned that on its head with subscriptions and pay per view. Think of Patreon. Onlyfans. Ko-Fi. Buy Me a Coffee. Twitch.
Creator-centric platforms like these are growing in popularity with millions of fans supporting their favourite channels, podcasts and influencers. Even YouTube has jumped on board with their channel membership feature.
What this means for marketers is a super targeted (and affordable!) opportunity to sponsor creators in return for shout-outs, product placement or other promo actions.
3. Where Do Clocks Upload Their Videos?
TikTok.
(Lol). We love bringing the funny. And stories. More to the point, over 800 million TikTok users love them too.
Stories, like this one we created for Westgold, are fun, personal and give users and brands a chance for regular engagement - and results. A campaign by clothing brand Gap integrated stories and achieved a 73% increase in same-platform clickthrough.
Not on TikTok? In 2021 YouTube launched their Shorts platform, which is averaging over 30 billion views per day. Recently, this platform has shoppable videos ads, aiming for “immersive and visual ads…when people are looking for ideas”.
If you’re not already there, get amongst it!
4. Shhhhhut the Front Door!
Did you know that the majority of videos on mobile devices are watched without sound?
That’s why more video marketers in 2022 are using captions, context and other ‘zero-audio’ tactics to convey information. Subtitles alone can increase view-through by 80% - super important since most marketers put their call-to-action at the end. Here's a recent example we created with Christchurch City Council and the Canterbury Tactix:
For global marketers, videos with great visual storytelling that don’t depend on audio can actually scale to new geographies better than those with audio in a fixed language.
It’s a paradox, but the absence of audio can make your content more accessible.
Mind. Blown.
5. Cinema-what?
With video marketing trends moving towards microformats and loops, our clients have been falling in love with cinemagraphs again! These ‘re-animated’ photos are one of the coolest and accessible content formats available, and they’re getting results.
Some study that we saw on the internet showed that compared to stills, cinemagraphs achieved:
51 times greater engagement for PepsiCo;
45% more cost-effectiveness for Microsoft;
9pt brand awareness boost for Holden; and
34% increase in ad recall for Mercedes-Benz.