Video has been poised to become a huge part of content marketing strategies for a long time, and it seems as if 2014 will be the year it takes off at light speed. This isn’t just because more people are watching videos on the internet, although as Brafton reported, 188.2 million Americans watched 52.4 billion videos in December 2013. The rise of video also has to do with the level of sophistication that companies are able to achieve in their video marketing strategies.
Branded sitcoms aren’t unbelievable
Producing branded video content used to come at an enormous cost – and that was just for a 30-second commercial on local TV. A half-hour infomercial might have run a company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Your average small business could barely even dream of producing advertisements on television.
That’s what makes one of this year’s newest sitcoms so fascinating. According to the New York Times, there are four episodes of “Farmed and Dangerous” available to consumers online. The series is produced by Chipotle, the nationwide burrito chain that prides itself on giving customers a healthy alternative to fast food. The premise of the sitcom is that an evil corporation is creating genetically altered monsters for the agricultural industry, in keeping with Chipotle’s commitment to organic food.
Create video marketing content to scale
It would be foolish to suggest that a small business could create its own half-hour sitcom the way Chipotle has. However, the company has shown that there isn’t yet an upper limit on the kinds of branded content you can release online. Additionally, it’s important to note that episodes of “Farmed and Dangerous” aren’t solely commercials for the chain. Instead, Daniel Rosenberg of production company Piro, which helped to create the show, told the New York Times that it “… is meant to strike large emotional chords – it’s not about selling burritos”
In the same way, video marketing content shouldn’t hit viewers over the head with calls to action. It should demonstrate thought leadership and allow companies to engage with clients directly. As Brafton reported, a lot of smaller companies are blowing larger enterprises out of the water when it comes to engagement – simply because they produce videos that customers crave. Marketers shouldn’t be furiously drafting sitcom scripts, but they should be considering interesting ways to capture people’s attention.
