The digital advertising world is always full of pleasant (and sometimes unpleasant) surprises. After all, “Marketing is a contest for people’s attention,” Seth Godin. I’m not talking about the cool graphics in the ad that made you give it a double take. I mean the ad campaigns that decide to run again after years of being dormant. Or the potentially boring, dry organizations that decide to try something new and put enough effort forth to impress a wide audience. A kind of surprise that captures attention like a bright flare in a night sky takes dedication and hard work, as well as timing, flexibility, and creativity.
For example, Got Milk recently launched new ads to encourage a new young generation of milk drinkers. By appealing to health and then to the sentimentality of time spent drinking milk, they target both the soul and the body, as well as, the parent and child. Each video triggers the imagination and uses intense visuals to capture your attention.
In addition, Scope, which looks to be a potentially out-of-touch non-profit, recently put together a series of videos for their new campaign to raise awareness for workers with disabilities. Called “End the Awkwardness” this UK based campaign is a series of YouTubes that analyze the awkward moments that occur when encountering someone with a disability. By scrutinizing the facial expressions of socially awkward people without physical disabilities and predicting their potentially humiliating next move, these ads create ample amounts of dramatic tension so that the viewer is interested enough to see it again. A campaign with this amount of sarcasm and blatant scrutinizing may not launch as well in any country outside the UK; however, it appeals to its local audience and uses a creative approach that keeps them wanting more.
The campaign also follows up with a quiz which is shortly followed with an email sign-up. Such smooth call-to-actions have worked brilliantly for their cause. “The ads have been viewed 1.4m times on YouTube, we’ve hit our target for sign-ups and we’ve had a 5% increase in awareness. The campaign has been covered in the Metro, the Telegraph, the BBC, Good Morning Britain and Sky News,” states Daniel Mazliah in the NCVO blog.
As Scope will tell you, to have a successful video campaign, you must have accomplished a ton of research. Scope spent a year observing and discovering what makes people feel awkward around those who are disabled, and recorded all of their findings until they were ready to move forward with the right recipe of humor and comfort to raise awareness.
A useful video marketing campaign takes commitment and resource- the time and money to film, find the talent, creating original content, organize the talent, and edit, as well as, brand every visual and audio aspect of the feature- brings us back to how important it is to research. For if proper research is not performed, the time, money, and resource spent on creating video features has been for nothing. Research goes beyond the audience and the image you want to create for your company. Solid planning means you also know how to tackle PR, raise awareness, and measure conversion.
KPIs (Key performance indicators) need to be in place with set goals, before you fully launch your new innovative ideas. Scope, for example, was already a household name, so they had already built awareness. After some inquiry; however, they realized no one actually knew what they did. Starting from where they left off, Scope took their already popular name, and put meaning behind it.
In contrast, the Got Milk campaign, has a history and its own reputation to live up to. They are recognized faster than any other ad in the country. In their case, they did a slight shift in their target from “the cool thing” to the right thing to do for your children…seemingly growing up with the generation their slogan originated in.
We want your new video campaigns to run smoothly. So often when companies start out, they miss a step of awareness or target the wrong audience which can lead to fatal decisions in advertising, resulting in wasted time and money for all involved. It is important to ask the right questions, take time to raise awareness, establish your name as an authority, and appeal to those who take interest until they are compelled to invest. Building a campaign is like building a lasting relationship, it cannot simply happen overnight. As all worthwhile things in life, it takes time, patience, perseverance, and investment.
