Paid marketing opportunities on microvideo platforms will become mainstream. Duncan Southgate, global brand director at Millward Brown explains how brands can take advantage.
Brands spent much of 2014 trying to establish a presence on social micro-video platforms such as Vine and Instagram. Among the most successful were Burberry, Waitrose and Rimmel, whose creativity has been rewarded with earned media (likes, shares and engagement). This is nicely typified by this recent Waitrose #goodegg video, which promotes the retailer’s Easter charitable-giving campaign.
Now this channel is gradually opening its doors to a new opportunity: paid placements. It’s a move that opens up the potential for a much larger reach among the current user base of 300M on Instagram and more than 40M on Vine. This will allow brands and their media planners to target the wider audience of consumers with whom the brand may resonate not just the fans who have already decided to follow them.
Instagram began to test the effectiveness of paid ads with a limited number of brands, including Taco Bell and Hollister. Results have been positive but the creative must be immediately captivating and entertaining, and consumers on these sites have high expectations of creativity.
Paid placements are not yet possible on Vine, although brands can, of course, choose to generate exposure for Vine videos via promoted tweets. Many other brands are investing significantly in branded content promotions via “Vinelebrities”.
The appeal for brands is that micro-video is already breaking out of its niche and even starting to influence TV advertising. Virgin Mobile aired a 30-second commercial in the US that was made up of content submitted via their Vine competition.
Many more brands are now tagging television ads with their Twitter or Instagram handle. In 2015, we will see more brands blurring these lines, and perhaps airing simple, 5-10 second TV creatives that mimic a Vine or Instagram style. Our recent study, “From Six Seconds to Six Minutes”, found that effective Vine videos need to be simple, authentic, and aim for high viral potential.
They should fit with other content on the platform while being eye-catching and reinforcing implicit associations with the brand. For Instagram creative, the 15-second ad limit is less of a challenge – brands have been testing and using short-form videos for years. It’s the medium that needs to be considered. The video should be entertaining and emotional, while the slightly longer form gives potential for additional branding cues throughout. While brands could use a cut-down TV ad, a more effective use is likely to be a new creative that reinforces an existing campaign concept.
For brands that want to maximize the benefits of paid opportunities in micro-video, three things will be critical:
- Firstly, both Vine and Instagram have distinct personalities and aesthetics. Brands will need to adapt their messages so that they are in tune with both the brand’s personality and the style of the platform on which it is posting or advertising.
- Secondly, both platforms have distinct audiences – brands will need to test and learn to understand the relevance of each platform in driving both performance of the campaign and whether it will have a meaningful impact on brand.
- Finally, they need to be aware that very short videos such as Vines are unlikely to work for a brand in isolation.
Videos that add up to a larger campaign idea are more likely to have greater impact – a nice example of this is Oreo’s series of Vine “Snack Hacks”.
Brands will ideally want to evaluate and optimise this campaign concept before launch to ensure investment will deliver pay back for the brand.
Those that embrace paid micro-video should be aware that these shorter ads might actually require more effort to be effective. Poor creative could have a negative impact, as consumers may become annoyed by marketing clutter invading their personal territory.
To optimize engagement, creative agencies will need to develop stories that work well across multiple micro-videos, and media agencies will need to learn how to optimize the new paid targeting options and the role of micro-video within a broader media campaign.
Brands also need to focus on a single message. Multiple messages can undermine the effectiveness of 30-second ads, never mind six second ones.
A Vine for the Nissan GT-R asked: who needs 6 seconds when the GT-R goes from 0-60 in 2.7 seconds.
This is precisely the kind of focus required to deliver a strong, single-minded impression (and also a nice nod to the unique nature of the platform).
To succeed in micro-video as a paid channel, it will be more important than ever for marketers and their creative agencies to ensure a brand’s communication is engaging and makes every second count for consumers.
That way they’ll avoid any potential backlash that some viewers may feel as they see more marketing messages on platforms that were previously ad free.
By Duncan Southgate
Global brand director
Millward Brown