The greatest compliment I can give another marketer is my undying jealousy—jealousy that I didn’t think of it first and now it can never be done like the original again. It doesn’t happen too often and most often something great inspires me. But occasionally, I see something so good that it actually makes me kind of sad that it wasn’t me who did it. And then the green-eyed jealousy monster sets it.
As we’ve said on our blog before, video is no longer an option in digital marketing. I could get into the ins-and-outs and whys-and-hows (and trust me, I will), but sufficed to say that consumers want video content, search engines favor it and social media channels get more engagement with it. For now, however, I just want to share what is rocking my socks to the point of sadness online.
There are really only two online videos I can say that hit that high (or low) mark for me in the last year and they did so for different reasons.
Honda ‘The Other Side’
The premise is simple, but the execution is flawless. The video shows the fuel-efficient and fun family car version of the Honda Civic, as well as the powerful and exciting version of the Honda Civic Type R concept car. The video is two simultaneous stories that you can navigate between by pressing and holding the R key on your keyboard. One video player with two stories: picking the kids up from school and a getaway driver after a museum heist.
Cinematically this video is stunning, but that isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for success in digital marketing. Instead, they took a beautiful, yet simple, idea and made it interactive. Showing two sides of essentially the same car is something I’ve seen attempted many times before, yet not to this success.
Purina Puppyhood
Maybe it’s the dog lover in me (in fact I’m sure it is), but the Purina Puppyhood video series and educational microsite is a fantastic example of hitting your brand and executing well on all of the content marketing principles. Anyone who deals with cute animals online has the deck stacked in his or her favor. But Purina has taken this beyond, “We get 10,000 likes everytime we post a picture of a puppy on Facebook; therefore we are a success” to “Let’s move this forward in a meaningful way for our brand.”
Purina effectively takes the story of a simple guy bringing home a cute puppy to a comedic level by basically treating Chloe, the pup, as a roommate and showing their awkward first days together as they feel each other out. The original Puppyhood video (below) was released through Buzzfeed, which helped gather views and shares upon launch.
Subsequent videos have been released on Purina’s YouTube channel. All of them direct viewers to their Puppyhood website that is an educational resource to train, groom, keep healthy and feed your new puppy.
The customer lifecycle is clear here:
- Create a video people want to watch.
- Make sure it gets seen through distribution strategy.
- Have a clear CTA to a destination that is a natural continuation of the story.
- Provide good and useful content at the destination.
- Create more content that starts the lifecycle over.
Video is what’s moving the needle online—now more than ever. And that isn’t going to change anytime soon. It’s time to start taking your video strategy seriously, and Raidious is here to help. Learn more about our unique approach to online video with distribution and associated content all under one roof by contacting us today.
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