Make people love ads- power of promoted videos

Written By: Jiang She

With increasingly number of media developed and become popular, marketers pay more attention on how to utilize the media as advertising channels most effectively and efficiently. In the past years, YouTube, as a great video tool, have provided millions of people with a amazing platform for them uploading and sharing videos. Meanwhile, the upsurge of video rised by YouTube and a lot of other video sites. And in recent years, online video not only provide entertainment for numerous audiences but also continues to be a tool with rapid growth and expansion for businesses. When entering some video sites like YouTube,we can easily see lots of promoted videos for brands and products. Yes, they are advertising, but an interesting fact is that people do not hate those videos once they found they are interesting and informational. Of course, it is definitely hard to create a really attractive promoted video and do a really effective video campaign, but it is indisputable that under the highly development of promotional videos, video is absolutely a great way for marketers to connect with customers and to attract them with great creative or interesting stories which words or static images often cannot.

A New and Creative Way of Doing Art
After researching Val's art diary, I learnt a lot.I was really impressed deeply by her videos. Honestly speaking, this is the first time for me watching this kind of videos which make me feel interesting and curious. Valentina really told me a new way to sell art works in today's modern world. Val is a painter and a personality who is building an impressive online following by engaging her audience and involving them in her creative process. Val documents her painting on video and edits a punchy artist’s statement that she releases onto the inter-webs. She then sells the featured paintings on eBay. Obviously, she has built a brilliant viral marketing platform.

What I have learnt from Val
From my perspective, to large extent, the success of Val can be attributed to her videos. According to this new way of doing art, I learnt several ideas about online video strategy from Val which are very helpful for companies as well as personal.

First,find new way to innovate old fashion industries via social networking and interactive media such as YouTube. On this point, I really admire Val who is very smart to connect her art working with modern networking. This move needs courage and knowledge, and she did successfully due to her spirit of innovation.

Second, create attractive and updated video content. Only great content can attract audiences for long time. For example, since the popularity of iPhone, she made the video about iPhone.

Video from www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sMDcXZvffo&feature=player_embedded

Third, show passion and infect audiences with personality.I really love the Val's sweet smile and voice which make me feel comfortable. From customers's angle, the passion from the video shows a kind of confidence and the shining personality can make the video differentiate from the TV advertisements which target mass audiences. Showing passion and personality is an effective and efficient way to target niche audiences and markets.

Last, repay customers. People always love surprises and therefore sometimes giving audiences some coupons,gifts, and something like that will make them very happy and enhance the brand preference. Val's “d’Art Lottery”? is a great example.

Image from www.valsartdiary.com/valsartdiary/welcome_.html

Other products using similar approach

All the tips I learnt from Val's art diary can be use in many other products and services. I will simply take two examples.
The Missha BB cream which is kind of cosmetic. The video uses social networking promoting its products, and especially uses video to show the advantages and usage of the cream. The girl in the video has passion and her personality engages many female audiences to see the video and eventually interested in the products.

Video from www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFNIYtFrk5k

The HP creative promoted video. This series of video ads are not focusing on showing brand but make audiences impressed by its interesting creative. As I mentioned previously, content is extremely critical because promoted video with great content can leave positive impression to audiences although they do know the videos are virtually advertisements.

Video from www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOD5dfAOdgU&NR=1

Other videos sites

Thanks to advances in technology, buying equipment and producing video is easier and less expensive than ever before. Besides YouTube there are lot of online video sites and here I list some.

Metacafe is the largest independent video sharing web site. It is specializing in short-form original entertainment, where users upload, view and share video clips. The difference with other site is duplication elimination, adult content filtering, an 80,000 community member reviewer panel, VideoRank, and Producer Rewards.

Dailymotion is a video hosting service website, based in Paris, France. It is the new way to see, share and engage our world through the power of online video. We can find or upload videos about our interests and hobbies, eyewitness accounts of recent news and distant places, and everything else from the strange to the spectacular.
 

Yahoo Video is the best place to view and upload video on the Web. In this site, we can upload, share, rate and watch videos, including vlogs, popular videos, autos, animation, food, news, sports, people, and funny videos. If we have a Yahoo ID, we can easily share and save our favorite videos.

Sources from http://www.daniusoft.com/tutorial/top-ten-videos-sites.html

Some tactics and ideas

In my observation, the videos sites are similar to some extent and I prefer YouTube. I am a green hand of online video strategy and so I spent a lot of hours on reading and researching online. The article Creating an Online Video Strategy provides me several useful tactics which I really agree with.

1. Showcase your brand in the video. 
2. Use descriptive filenames. 
3. Add a call to action at the end of the video.  
4. Make your audio clear
5. Think about the duration of your content. 
6. Add text titles, textual graphics, and other text in your videos. 
7. Create interesting content.