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Tag: video production company

  • Why Content is King Even in Case of Video Marketing

    Why Content is King Even in Case of Video Marketing

    There is no denying that video marketing is the biggest thing in the digital world these days. There is a whole slew of statistics to back up this statement. According to a study by Cisco, as reported by Ad Week, as of 2014, internet video traffic was at 64%. The study predicts that this number will rise to a massive 80% by 2019.

    Businesses and marketing firms have also latched on to this trend, as a study by IAB on video ad spends elaborates. As per the study, which interviewed over 300 brand marketers, “More than two-thirds (68%) of marketers and agency executives expect to see their digital video ad budgets increase in the next 12 months.” Other pertinent observations from the study include, “Steady increase over last 3 years in the share of digital video budgets dedicated to original digital programming” and a future where the divide between traditional TV ads and online video production will disappear, “Most advertisers agree that original digital video programming will become as important as TV within 5 years.”

    Clearly, video-based content marketing is taking the internet by storm, and not just on traditional video portals like YouTube, Vines and Vimeo, but a variety of social media outlets that support the format. This includes the likes of Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Snapchat among others, all of which are being populated by video content.

    Content at the epicenter of digital video marketing

    The way videos are created and presented also has to change along with the medium, and it has. There is now a marked distinction between ‘branded video content’ – content created specifically for the web, and ‘video ads’ or traditional video advertisements that appear on television. It is no longer enough for marketing content to just espouse the qualities of the product or the brand. Brands have to become storytellers these days, create engaging, emotional, exciting content that goes beyond the surface and connects with the viewership on a deeper level.

    Take the top 10 trending ads from 2015 for example, a list published by YouTube every year on what ads were the most viewed in the past calendar year. You might recognize some of them. The most popular one was the epic Liam Neeson starring Clash of Clans ad, quickly followed by Hyundai’s adorable Message to Space. Other highlights include the Boom Beach animated ad, a vivid example of how a product is explained through the means of a gripping narrative. Then there’s the gripping Adidas #Unfollow ad starring footballing legend Lionel Messi, shot completely from a fan perspective and full of memes and internet pop culture. Then there is the empowering Always #LikeAGirl campaign that won some many hearts.

    One common thing you will notice in all these ads is that not one of them talks about any product. The ads are about the emotion, the ethos, the message. These ads tell you that the brand cares about more than just preaching its own virtues. Instead, these brands use a strong emotional impulse to connect with the viewer, like Hyundai drawing inspiration from its customers and helping them out, or Liam Neeson’s ‘Taken’-esque monologue on revenge. Adidas’ effort to idolize but not imitate your heroes, and of course, Always’ endeavor to help young women get over societal prejudices and achieve their dreams. This is the essence of branded video content.

    If you are looking for something more current, then the BBC’s excellent animated Rio Olympics 2016 introductory video is a must watch. It has been making waves on social media of late, and has already garnered over a million hits since it was first published.

    Increasing investment in video marketing

    Since it is clear that internet-based video marketing is the biggest growing advertisement stream, one with its own language and specific needs and approaches, the question still remains – are corporates investing enough in video marketing? Well, according to a study by the Content Marketing Association (CMA), there is a clear upward movement in this area, as this Campaign article explains. Here is an excerpt from the report:

    “The CMA’s Video Content for Engagement study found that 58 per cent of senior level marketers are planning on increasing the proportion of marketing budgets spent on video content in the next 12 months.”

    “Currently, on average, 78 per cent of content marketers spend less than a quarter of their budgets on video content. The survey showed that 71 per cent believe that brands are not investing enough in the medium.”

    “Over half of those surveyed cited mobile as their primary channel for branded video content, while a third said mobile is the biggest growth area for video, followed by social media at 29 per cent and short-form content at 24 per cent.”

    Clearly then, one of the top priorities for content marketers is video content. As a brand, are you looking to take your consumer engagement to the next level with video content? Toolbox Studio can help. Find out how our team can help you create rich video content that keeps ‘the message’ front and center, and can drive your brand recognition numbers up through quality digital videos. Contact us today!

  • 7 of the Most Viral Branded Videos of 2015 & 2016

    7 of the Most Viral Branded Videos of 2015 & 2016

    What does it take to make a video go viral? Honestly, it is a combination of many different things. There is no fixed rule or list of things that is guaranteed to make your video go viral. It is completely possible for a well-thought-out, brilliantly-directed branded video, produced by an incredibly expensive video production company to get less views than a random video of a cat sneezing. It all depends on who your audience is.

    Knowing your demographic, their likes and dislikes, their culture, their social inclinations, etc. can really give you an edge when making a good video, such as a branded video. It can seriously up your chances of making a viral video. But again, it is not a guaranteed cheat that allows you to win the game every time.

    To better understand how videos spread and, more importantly, why they are shared or viewed, let’s examine seven of the most viral brand videos of the past two years.

    1. Dillan’s Voice: Apple

    A little over three months ago, Apple made a video featuring one of their tablets. The branded video has already had over 4 million views in three months.

    The viral brand video is about an Autistic boy who finds it challenging to verbalize his thoughts, needs and emotions. Because of his disability, he is viewed differently by people around him. They don’t understand his challenges and are hence apathetic towards him.

    Dillan Voice Apple

    Eventually, he (Dillan) uses the tablet’s “Speak” option to communicate with the people around him. The video ends with him giving his class graduation speech. Dillan narrates the entire video, which enhances its impact tenfold.

    They did a good job pulling on the viewer’s heartstrings with this one. What we most appreciated about this video is that it isn’t all “up in your face” with the product. The tablet is mostly in the background, while the video attempts to create awareness and provide a helpful solution.

    1. Coca Cola: Friendly Twist

    It is no secret that Coca-Cola makes viral brand videos pretty well. This is probably because their video production team really knows their demographic and it helps that they have been around for ages! Most of their videos target teenagers and young adults.

    This branded video is about making friends on the first day of college when everything is awkward and no one knows anyone.

    Coca Cola

    The video is relatable to a huge percentage of the world’s population, which is why it was viewed and shared all over 9.8 million times on social media.. Another reason why this video went viral could be that they designed a whole new bottle just for this ad campaign. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is definitely worth a watch. 

    Although this viral branded video was made in 2014, but it really is one of Coca Cola’s best, and definitely deserves to be on this list. 

    1. Red Bull: The Athlete Machine

    This viral brand video is probably one of the most famous branded videos and is definitely the ultimate video for any stunt-crazed sports junkies out there.

    Red Bull

    It is basically a series of really cool stunts set up in a chain reaction obstacle course-type arrangement where only the completion of the previous stunt can begin the next one. The stunts feature everything from sky diving, to skateboard stunts, bicycles, motorcycles and even a race car. The video ends with the last stunt setting off an arrangement that breaks a block of ice inside which there is a frozen can of Red Bull.

    This viral brand video’s sheer intensity is what probably made it go viral. It literally has you at the edge of your seat the entire time, s0 it is no wonder that it has over 25.6 million views on YouTube today.

    1. Durex #Connect

    Yes, Durex, the condom company. And no, this video is not inappropriate, and it has nothing to do with sex. However, it sends a powerful social message to people who allow entirely technology to take over their lives.

    Durex

    The viral brand video is a series of interviews conducted by a therapist that features various couples talking about how big a part technology plays in their daily lives. After realizing that most couples value their devices more than their partner, the therapist suggests that they use their phones and tablets to enhance the time they spend together in the bedroom. How? Watch the video to find out!

    Surprisingly, condoms are not featured in this video, yet they have reached 37.6 million views!

    1. Proctor & Gamble: Like A Girl

    This video, a series of interviews conducted on girls and women of different ages, tackles the issue of the derogatory connotation of the phrase “like a girl.” For instance “don’t throw like a girl” or “he runs like a girl.” Instead of portraying strength and confidence, the phrase is immediately associated with weakness and lack of skill – immensely offensive, in our opinion.

    proctor

    What’s really sad is that even women have subconsciously begun to use the phrase as an insult. However, the video tastefully tackles this issue and slowly throws light on how the phrase can be spun into a compliment. This video has received over 62.1 million views since it was posted in June 2014.

    Yet another video with a social message! Social messages seem to be the trend with viral videos today. Take a hint! 

    1. Hyundai: A Message to Space

    This is another one that will pull at your heart strings. The video is about a girl, Stephanie, whose father is an engineer on a satellite in space and does not get to meet his family for long stretches of time.

    Hyundai

    With a little help from Hyundai, the daughter writes a message on the ground, large enough for her dad to see from space. It definitely has the “cool” element but mostly, it’s a sweet father-daughter love theme that is bound to get at least 4 out of 5 viewers to share the video.

    With over 77.4 million, this video is definitely one of the most viewed brand commercials of the past 2 years. 

    1. Volvo Trucks: The Epic Split

    If you haven’t seen this one, the only thing we’re going to tell you is that it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme, it is the coolest video on YouTube, and it most certainly deserves way more than 83.9 million views. So go watch it now!

    Volvo

    Most people don’t like Enya but this video’s soundtrack creates a beautiful contrast to the intensity of what is actually happening. Yes, the video is real and has not been tampered with.

    And that concludes our 7 viral brand videos. As you can see, all the videos are entirely different in style, theme, and agenda. The bottom line is you have to create an entertaining video. If you’re out to sell, chances are your video won’t make it. Also, as we have seen, picking a social cause will do wonders for your video.

    Contact us to know how we, at Toolbox Studio, can craft a brand video for your brand – a video that has all the essential ingredients that could make it (and your brand) go viral!

  • They watch! They Book! -The Charisma of Video Marketing!

    Marketing strategies have evolved over the years. Newer and better technologies have replaced age old methods of marketing. And as we talk about the latest marketing trends, one can’t really miss out on Video Marketing.  And when it comes to the hospitality sector, Video Marketing is extremely essential as your customers, believe what they see! And if pictures speak a thousand words, a video speaks a million more!

    The invention of the internet opened the gates to online marketing and enabled a much wider reach. However, the absence of visual experience and physical perception was sorely missed. This gave rise to a series of more inventions and innovations towards what we may call a more visual internet, and in other words, online video marketing.  Let’s have a glance at the merits of Video Marketing.

    • According to a research a video attracts 30% more viewers!
    • Visitors stay 40% longer on your website and the conversion rate is 30% greater!

     And if these merits are not enough, here are a few more:

    • Increases traffic to the advertiser’s website by 55%
    • Increases physical visit to the place of business by 30%
    • Incidence of booking is increased by 24%

    There are a hundreds of reasons why investing in video marketing is a smart move. Let’s have a look at a few of them.

    • Videos help you in having a varied marketing strategy
    • Interesting videos help in engaging the audience
    • Videos provide a fresh way to reach your audience
    • It helps in attracting large number of visitors
    • Videos boost credibility and trust
    • 3G and 4G networks have made it easier to watch videos, which turns out to be a major reason for people turning to videos

    Online videos have changed the marketing scenario in the hospitality sector as more and more customers are showing a lot of appetite for online videos. The trend in the current generation is to watch a full-fledged video rather than web banners/ advertisements.  360 degree video tours, video blogs etc are the in things today in marketing and have proved to be enormously successful.

    But at the same time it is very essential to make an engaging video and placing it strategically on your site so that your audience says glued to the screen and the conversion rate is expedited. A professional studio with a proven track record plays the most significant role in creating videos that not only engage the audience but also increase the conversion rate which is our main objective.  Toolbox Studio with its award winning work, exceptional track record of hugely successful films and professionals who are masters in creating world-class content stand out as inarguably the first choice. Toolbox Studio works on the project right from the scripting stage where a lot of research goes into in deciding the right strategy to enable the video to reach and impress a larger number of potential customers. Highly trained and experienced professionals and the state-of-the-art facilities at Toolbox Studio make it easier to convert any idea into a finely finished product.  And a well crafted video is half the battle won when it’s about video marketing.

    Video Marketing is the right platform to showcase your hospitality business and Toolbox Studio is the right vehicle to get your dreams to the right destination!

  • Maximizing Customer Reach: Essential Strategies

    Maximizing Customer Reach: Essential Strategies

    LinkedIn recently announced that the users will now be able to upload video Ads too. Until now Linkedin displayed only images or text for advertising. But now that it has rolled out global video advertising too, let’s see how it can make a difference to the social media marketing scenario and more importantly, how it can help your business.

    Linkedin is one of the most popular business-oriented social networking services.  Launched on the 5th of May 2003, it already had 259 million acquired users spread over more than 200 countries as of June 2013. So you can expect your Ad to reach out those millions out there, but what is more important is, you can be rest assured that your video Ad reaches the right audience too.  With the video Ads, advertisers will be able to import videos or use existing YouTube videos. Ideally, using video Ads will up advertisers’ presence on YouTube since their audience will grow with the addition of Linkedin’s users.

    Linkedin boasts of millions of profiles belonging to various categories; this helps you in segmenting and focusing on a particular segment as per your business needs and effectively targeting the decision makers. Moreover, creating an Ad on Linkedin is pretty simple.

    Creating a video Ad is similar to creating a text advertisement, except you select Video from the Media Type dropdown.

    If you’re a new advertiser:

    1. Move your cursor over Business Services in the top right of your homepage and select Advertise.
    2. Click Get started.
    3. Click Create an Ad
    4. Under the Media Type dropdown, select Video. Name the campaign; add your headline, description, and YouTube.com video URL.
    5. Click Next.
    6. Select the target audience for your Ad and click Next.
    7. Set a daily budget and bid on how much you’re willing to pay for each video view.
    8. Click Save Changes in the bottom right.
    9. Enter your billing information.
    10. Submit the Ad for review.

    If you’re an existing advertiser:

    1. Move your cursor over Business Services in the top right of your homepage and select Advertise.
    2. Click Manage to go to your Campaign Manager.
    • You may be prompted to sign back into your account.
    1. Click Create new campaign in the top right of your Campaign Manager.
    2. Click Create an Ad.
    3. Under the Media Type dropdown, select Video. Name the campaign; add your headline, description, and YouTube.com video URL.
    4. Click Next.
    5. Select the target audience for your Ad and click Next.
    6. Set a daily budget and bid on how much you’re willing to pay for each video view.
    7. Click Save Changes in the bottom right.
    8. Enter your billing information if you want to update or change information.
    9. Submit the Ad for review.

    The Cost?

    When creating a video Ad the advertiser will be able to set a maximum Cost Per View (CPV) bid. This means that the advertiser will only pay when a member clicks to play the video. The minimum CPV bid for video ads is $4.00.

    So it can be said that video advertising on Linkedin is quite cost effective as it offers you a vast yet focused reach.   So when the next time you think of using the social media for advertising your brand, make sure that your brand is linked in effectively with your potential customers. 

  • Three Video Advertising opportunities that Brands in India need to consider

    Ever since the implementation of 12-minute advertising limit on television channels, as mandated by the Telecom Regulation Authority of India (TRAI), the entire television advertising scene has gone topsy-turvy. The sour repercussions of which have heavily impacted both on an equal platform – broadcasters as well as the advertisers. Carriage costs haven’t slipped down an inch, so has the TV advertising tariff – given the massive digitization roll-out, and now the minimal ad content display on TV channels. All put together don’t quite translate into something very profitable for either side.

    In the light of which, we dig this situation deeper to find out plausible solutions that brands here in India can look up to, and, as such, effectively utilise the available alternate resources (read: internet) to maintain grabbing eyeballs and keeping the reach as widespread in tandem with the earlier situation. We are obviously talking of a win-win situation for all.

    On the whole, even if the Television industry maybe in a soup because of the recent TRAI move, the internet advertising industry seems to take the same move welcomingly. A few years ago, digital media experts wouldn’t have predicted the significance that digital media has today. More so, about the digital advertising! Though, it did have its fair share of mention then, but mostly constituted as a secondary or an add-on to print or television advertising. But now times have taken a different stride. Brands now increasingly prefer the digital media for showcasing their value addition to the masses. And why wouldn’t they? Statistics specify a majority of customer base hooked online for most of their times in a day.

    Technology is seamlessly converging with human life today, opening many avenues of exposure right from the palm of one’s hand. Mobile devices are making it extremely feasible for advertisers and promoters to target niche set of relevant audiences without the baggage of huge expenses being loaded onto them. Changing oneself with the changing times has always been a profitable proposition, be it personally, collectively or even technologically. These changing guidelines, regulations and converging technologies call for newer ways of advertising.

    1. Advertise With Online Video – The first and foremost alternative that stands tall effectively is online video. Video uploading and sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo and similar video mobile applications used on smart phones and tablets make it immensely easy to reach the right target audience. Without a doubt, video format is the most interactive and “connecting” medium of advertising. Banner ads are soon being replaced by mini-sized ad videos.

    YouTube is known to dominate this online video scene the most. The pre-roll advertisements played on YouTube have statistically proven to have had a positive impact on sales or even brand awareness. When compared with TV, YouTube boasts of 90% reach amongst the metro youth when compared to a leading Indian entertainment channel. Given the fact that YouTube comes with a much lower cost-per-rating-point than any of the news, infotainment channels, it might not startle you to know that YouTube also only monetises 3% of the entire viewing time. Television does 20% monetisation.

    2. Monetise Your Video Content – In fact, an extension to the above point would mean monetising your online video content itself. There are many ways of monetising your video on the internet. It’s similar to article marketing. Just that here your content is in the form of video. So you’d very well call it video content marketing. This could essentially prove worthwhile for broadcasters and content producers, who frequently generate information in the video format. Like article archive sites, these video archiving sites allow people to revisit and review events/ programmes time and again. Here, if the video content being displayed is live, the monetisation rates are high otherwise they are lesser. But, nevertheless, not insignificant!

    Sites like Hungama.com or BigFlix.com or even BoxTV.com for that matter have a steady viewership as the statistics. Movie and video producers are particularly in a good position here to rake in the money from such sites that allow web users to view any movie or video on demand.

    3. The Niche Called Mobile TV – The recent Idea ad campaign of “mobile internet for everyone” is enough proof of the extensive reach mobile internet today has in India. Mobile TV is the new go-to for the younger masses of the nation. Cause from the comfort of a click and your palm, anyone, anywhere can watch a video on demand. Statistics suggest the enormous leverage that mobile TV has and will eventually contribute to the advertisers.

    Mobile TV platforms like Zenga TV and nexGTv speak of roughly 18 million monthly users with a staggering number of 225 million video views per month. These multi-platform players have a broad coverage of entertainment, news, music, movies, sports, spiritual, and cartoon, etc. channels, catering to widespread audience. These platforms support pre-roll video adverts and in-between banner ads formats, just like any normal online platform. To sum the pros of this sort of advertising, mobile TV promotions cost a minuscule fraction of what is charged on TV.

    If anything, digital advertising only seems to be growing in leaps and bounds from here on. Like they say, early bird catches the worm. Make hay while it’s still less competitive and congested.