Have fun with social video marketing!

Content marketing has been a buzz word now for a while – not that the concept in itself is new, but marketers have started to rediscover the value of bringing true, good content to their audiences.

“Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, etc” [Wikipedia, May 28, 2014]

Lately, people have been getting more creative when it comes to their story telling-strategies. As always, the Internet provides information overload, and it isn’t always a simple task to reach through all the noise to get people’s attention. One of the top marketing strategies on everyone’s lips right now is: Viral Video.

Video

People have been praising video content for quite some time now. And daily, we are seeing more and more evidence that the rise of social video at it’s best is soon upon us. On Youtube, Instagram and Vine. Even Facebook began auto-playing muted videos in the news feed a while back, and also introduced the auto-play video function to marketers, claiming to increase views and interactions with 10%. Our largest video based social media, YouTube, presents impressive statistics (May 2014):

• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth
• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

According to statistics, YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network [Nielsen], meaning that you could be better of spending your time uploading content (both professional or rookie) to YouTube than to actually be purchasing television advertisement. Even now, I find myself going back to the classic example of Old Spice – who currently have over 48 million views for the video “This is the man your man could smell like”:

I hear many companies talk more and more about using video. Agencies are uploading seminar videos to YouTube for knowledge sharing. Bloggers (yes, they are brands too) upload video blogs to youtube, and lately, the vlod (video pod) has had an upswing. I met the team behind Yummy Japan at an event in Roppongi last week. Their idea is to create fun and cool videos about Japan’s food content and upload it to YouTube to create a buzz about Japanese food culture. And of course we can’t forget to mention YouTube celebrity PSY who took the whole world by storm with “Gagngam Style” a while back, becoming the most viewed YouTube video ever (closing in on 2 billion views as we speak), gaining him the status of unofficial ambassador for South Korea and Seoul (I saw Psy merchandise all over Seoul).

More inspirational video to watch comes from GoPro who have a much cherished channel on YouTube, providing inspiration for “World’s Most Versatile Camera”: https://www.youtube.com/user/GoProCamera

Now what’s (even more?) interesting is that Instagram and Vine have also been offering us easy-to-use and fun video services for the past year. And user-created social video has exploded. When Instagram first launched video in June last year, there were 5 million videos uploaded to the app in just 24 hours. The short format, fit for a mobile screen, makes it easier for anyone to create interesting video content on the go. What’s even better – Instagram and Vine videos can be more simple, but just as effective. That way, you don’t need a gigantic budget to create cool video content.

This is Adidas on Instagram announcing their innovative photo print app from #miadidas that allows you to print your own photos on your sneakers – to be launched in August 2014:

And then we have KFC celebrating the box office success for the new Godzilla movie, at the same time claiming that “Nothing beats the Double Down” (one of their chicken sandwiches):

And then we have the UK pop star Lily Allen, claiming her love to the ice cream cone Cornetto in an acoustic song – challenging the public to upload their own video: “Think you can do better than @lilyallen ? Share your own version using #ShareTheLove and show us! #Regram”

Also, Swedish Popstar Veronica Maggio together with Saatchi & Saatchi have launched a visual pop charades game on Instagram – asking people to guess what artist Maggio is portraying. Whoever guesses right first wins two tickets to this summer’s Popaganda festival in Stockholm. More on this campaign in Dagens Media: “Maggio kör popcharader på Instagram“. (Thank you again Fredrik Holmberg for the tip!)

For some Vine inspiration – check out Pepsi‘s half time celebration for the Super Bowl:

And the best part is it’s so easy. All you have to do is take up your camera and start shooting. This is me from my visit to the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo last week – a 15 second film on Instagram capturing a whole round:

Time to get that mobile phone out and start shooting video content for your brand maybe? (Oh, but don’t forget to actually have a strategy going into the content – so that that the videos actually fit with your corporate identity). Have fun, and to be fun!