Information and guidance are relative to your client and audience. If you’re representing the local pilates studio, you’ll do X; if your client is Coca-Cola, you’ll do Y. Do your research before you get excited and start setting up Pinterest and Instagram accounts. Timing and placement are everything. (Those two can be good ideas — down the line.)

Once you’ve identified your target, look to social media.

There’s an unofficial ranking system of social media worthiness to agencies. Obviously, having your own form of a network via known blogs (with tens of thousands of unique views per day) will help. A realistic second network can be established with followers or subscribers on a brand YouTube channel (or Vimeo, or both). Soon after that comes Facebook, with Twitter followers rounding out the list.

My rankings are based on how predisposed each audience is to click on a video, watch it all the way through and then be able to share it easily. If you have all of these in place, your video will be seen by more people, with a larger potential for it to be shared many times. However, be aware that correlation between views and ROI does not necessarily prove causation (i.e., profit).

Know the Guidelines to a Successful Advertising Campaign 

To create a true cause-and-effect relationship with your web videos, think about these guidelines when creating web advertising:

1. Figure out who your client’s audience is. Are his viewers global, national or local? A web advertisement can be anything from a behind-the-scenes video shot on the client’s flip cam to a testimonial interview captured in a studio. It’s important to know what type of video to use and where to post it.

2. Keep the video short and sweet – the longer the video, the more time you’re asking from people. It’s better to leave them wanting more.

3. One video just isn’t enough anymore. Create a plan to release videos often and in a timely manner. Budget for this. If you take time to craft a video editorial calendar, you’ll see more views as well as more fans willing to share your videos. Followers love consistency.

4. Track how a view becomes a purchase. This won’t apply to all clients, but if your client sells anything online, pay attention. Find an ad buyer who focuses on buying web space and placing web ads (check out LanistaConcepts.com). This type of service does two things video advertising has never been able to do before: 1) they can target a certain demographic by age, sex, race, location and whether the viewer is on a mobile device or a computer, and 2) they can track who views the video, when they click through to your site and what they purchase. This service pretty much sells itself.

5. Find the right niche communities online to help promote your brands. Target the people who are most likely to share and appreciate your client’s work – their interactivity is your bread and butter.

The best advice I can give to agencies is to team up with an online ad placer/media buyer, and budget this service to all your clients. This is a sure-fire way to get your client’s video popping up in front of the right people in the right places.

The post Top 5 Ways Agencies Can Promote Web Videos appeared first on The Agency Post.

While others hit the snooze button, some marketers are testing the waters to great results. They’re capitalizing on what is currently online marketing’s best kept secret. Not convinced you should have your hat in the ring? Here are the marketing secrets no one wants you to know.

Conversions and SEO

Without a doubt, video boosts SEO and increases conversions. We’ve seen it time and time again with companies like Rypple and Dropbox. But why?

1. Google Loves Video: Just like plain text content, video can be optimized for search engines. In fact, search engines tend to favor video content over written content. If you have a video on your website, it’s 50 times more likely to be ranked on the first page of Google. If you’ve got great video content, Google wants the world to know.
2.  Visitors Love Video: A video increases the amount of time your visitors spend on your website. Seriously! Visitors will stick around for an average of two extra minutes. That’s two minutes to get the conversion that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Why stick around for video? Well, only 20 percent of visitors will read plain text on a website. 80 percent will watch a video with the exact same content.
3.  Video Breeds Conversions: “Video” and “conversions” are practically synonymous. A video on your website makes visitors six times more likely to convert. Take the video Rypple uses for example. Just by adding the video to their website, they increased their conversion rate by 20 percent. Soon after, they were even acquired by Salesforce.

Brain Science

What really fuels the conversions and SEO is brain science. Brain science is the psychology behind why visitors respond so well to online video.

1. Videos K.I.S.S.: Keep it simple! Working memory is limited, which means we can only retain so much before we start to force information out. If you try to explain too much information too quickly, it will be forgotten within the next few days. That’s why 60- to 90-second videos perform so well. The script is limited to about 160 words, an information cap that respects working memory. There’s only time for the most important, persuasive information. The filler is pushed out, helping visitors retain more.
2. Videos Stimulate Senses: 72 hours after you read or hear something, you will be able to recall 10 percent of it. 72 hours after you watch something, you will be able to recall 58 percent of it. By stimulating both the auditory and visual senses at the same time, video helps visitors retain 68 percent of your message. That means a video helps visitors remember 58 percent more information than plain text alone.
3. Videos Relate Back: Videos have one very powerful secret: metaphor. They allow us to explain something novel and new in terms we already understand. This, of course, is difficult to do with plain text. Videos allow companies to put visitors in an everyday situation, using that familiar situation to explain something innovative! Explaining a complicated or fresh concept is so much easier.

Why is video marketing’s best kept secret? It’s hard to say, but the reasons for exploring the uncharted territory are loud and clear. Now’s the time to start unravelling the secret and using it to get ahead of the competition. If you need support along the way, this webinar will help introduce you to the secret world of online video marketing.

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How have you incorporated animation into your motion media projects?

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It is currently nominated for “Best Use Of Video In Social Media” by PRNewswire. The winner is decided by public vote, and voting ends February 14th.

The relationship between content and context is key: They are not mutually exclusive.  Creative content grabs attention, but what sustains a campaign is how relatable the message is.

Celebrity endorsement is great for grabbing initial attention. Recognizable faces draw a crowd.  Yet, so often celebrity driven campaigns fall short. Why? If the appeal is not relatable, the audience will not engage. Whether we know it or not, we are all trying to be Nike. We are all trying to be Spike Lee and Michael Jordan – that perfect relationship of messaging and creative that taps into an emotion and creates a market.

Tapping into an emotion can build a campaign. Whether that emotion is humor, joy or  awareness is not important. More so, it’s making that emotion universal. The Grand Rapids LipDub wasn’t just about the city of Grand Rapids. It was about every city. Every city could relate to being down at the time and wanting to create an identity. It was a rallying cry.

CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE

Newsweek listed Grand Rapids, MI, as a dying city. The intent of this video was to refute that claim and show why someone would want to visit Grand Rapids.

STRATEGY
We made a universal and relatable narrative. Every city could relate to the feeling of being overlooked or underappreciated. We created an underdog that everyone could cheer for. Tactically, we contacted influencers globally and set up a concentrated network of posts and shares when the video was launched. From there, we used Newsweek as a catalyst for conventional media attention. Giving each conventional media source a piece of the puzzle, we were able to stagger and maximize news coverage over a three-week span. Utilizing influencers and conventional media for credibility, we were then able to drive sharing through social media globally.

RESULTS

• 4.5 million YouTube views, beating videos from Google, Lady Gaga and Saturday Night Live in June 2011.
• $5.6 million in public relations and tourism generated for Grand Rapids. Roger Ebert called it “The Greatest Music Video Ever Made.”
• Grand Rapids was named ABC World News Tonight’s Person Of The Week.
• The video received coverage and interviews on all major news networks worldwide including Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel and London Times.
• International Downtown Association President’s Award (Highest Honor).

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What this new landscape is showing is that the model is changing. Super Bowl success is not won or lost on Sunday. It is achieved in the week preceding and the week following the game.

Before the Super Bowl:

More and more attention is being placed on how to engage an audience with social media.  Engagement is the first step. A lot of companies, like Go Daddy, Coca-Cola, CareerBuilder.com and E*Trade, are using recognizable franchise images this year. Other advertisers are using recognizable pop culture references like Ferris Bueller (Honda) and vampires (Audi). Either way, these companies know that with recognition comes response.

The soft launch of the commercial has become just as important as when it actually airs on Super Bowl Sunday. It is this initial attention that creates engagement. Engagement leads to discussion. Discussion leads to conventional media coverage. Conventional media coverage leads to more views, impressions and distribution of the campaign. The soft launch circumvents a media buy. If done correctly, it will lead to the equivalent of millions of dollars of exposure.

Think of the Super Bowl spot as an entrance fee to the club. From there, the week preceding becomes an opportunity to generate free attention and double, or even triple your exposure.

During the Super Bowl:

Use a hashtag. People like to tweet during large events, especially when it comes to sports. I would not be hesitant to post the hashtag in the bottom left corner during the duration of the commercial. Granted, it depends on the mood of the piece. Generally speaking, this longer duration will lead to more tweets, more engagement and more discussion about the commercial after the Super Bowl.

Note: Do NOT use a QR code. No one is pausing their screen to scan it with their phone. It’s a live event with a large group. The same goes for Shazam. In this case, people will be too busy to take that extra step.

After the Super Bowl:

This is where the news, critics and the public decide which commercials they liked the best.  This is partly contingent on the content, but equally contingent on what was discussed the most and what created the greatest buzz in social media. If you have the crowd, you have the media. It is possible to create just as much value, from a media buy perspective, after the Super Bowl as it is during the event.

To be a successful Super Bowl advertiser, it takes planning. It takes social media engagement that yields conventional media coverage. It takes generating an action during the game. It’s not complicated, but there is more to consider than ever before.

Advertising moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Screenshot: Honda 2012 Superbowl Commercial

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Take those down hours when you don’t have a impending deadline or an account executive breathing down your neck to let your imagination run wild. You’ll feel the passion to do it because its what you want to do and you’ll also bring a new skill set to the table to impress clients and, hopefully, your higher ups.

Creating water, smoke and fire in 3D is a pretty complex task. To acquire production ready skills with fluid simulations, it will take a lot practice and this most certainly includes working after hours to perfect them. Recently, I had a project at work where a client wanted a specific animation. It just so happened the only way to create this animation was with a fluid simulation. Luckily, I had spent the past year refining my skills in this area and it allowed me to create an animation with which the client was really happy.

Whether you are a freelance artist or you work for a larger company, it’s important to market yourself. Being an artist, you must have your own brand and style that people need to notice and know about. The more people that know about your art and can see a connection between you and a specific style, the more successful you will be in building your personal brand and the brand of your organization.  Having a personal website, Vimeo page and/or social network presence is a must, and this too must reflect your personality and style. The late Steve Jobs said this: “The important thing is not the idea. The important thing is the people.” The only way people will know that you are important is if you show them.

Constantly improving your skills will benefit the company you work at, but it will also ensure you are the best artist you can be. Spending some of your free time on improving your skills should be a given. If your job isn’t a passionate hobby of yours, then what are you doing?

Continue the Discussion

Do you “practice your craft” outside the office? Why or why not?

Evaluate yourself. What can you be doing to improve?

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When the intermediate film print was created, film labs could “push” or “pull” an image to increase or decrease the exposure (luminance) and adjust the strength of the red, green and blue printer lights to change the color balance and enhance or correct the footage that was originally captured on set.

The process of scanning film to create a Digital Intermediate (DI) started popping up in the early 1990s to allow computer generated visual effects (VFX) to be incorporated into film footage. The final images were then printed back to film and cut into the final edit. The high cost to create and store these large digital files limited the DI process to effects shots.

As technology advanced and the cost of computing fell dramatically, so did the cost of the DI process. In 2000, O Brother, Where Art Thou? utilized a digital intermediate for the entire film despite having relatively few VFX shots. Along with advances in computer generated imagery came advances in digital color manipulation. Unlike the film printing process that changed the color of the entire image in broad strokes, digital color correction allowed colorists to only affect the parts of the image they chose, giving them a level of color creativity that was not possible before. With the emergence of digital editing platforms, increased visual effects usage and digital color correction, the DI process became the normal way of doing post by the late 2000s.

With today’s digital video cameras, the color balance (commonly know as white balance) will be set electronically in a camera to match the scene’s lighting prior to rolling. Most commercial and corporate motion media projects are captured digitally, and on set you’ll generally have a client monitor that allows you to get a good idea of what the final image will look like. If you don’t, request one. It’s a great way for the creative team to get on the same page when developing a look for the final piece.

Depending on your capture format, your ability to manipulate the image in post may vary. Most digitally recorded image settings are “baked in” during capture, which can limit your options for dramatic changes in the color suite. This is of little concern if your image is exposed and color balanced properly on set and your creative director isn’t planning to completely change the established look during post.

Some digital cinema cameras now record in a RAW format, which allows for greater flexibility in image manipulation and white balance adjustments during post production (the Arri Alexa and RED Digital Cameras are two examples of RAW cameras). While some cameras may produce great looking imagery right out of the box, shooting RAW means incorporating a color session into your post pipeline is critical.

Bottom line: If you’re looking to create stunning imagery that wows your audience, no matter how your image is captured, a color grading session is a the best way to get the most out of your images.

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Here’s the short description for the two:

Motion Graphics equals animated graphic design. Common uses include title sequences, lower third graphics for interviews and informational art cards.

Some examples of Motion Graphics work includes:

• Gates Foundation – G20 Summit
• Is That A Fish In Your Ear? – David Bellos

Visual Effects combines existing footage with computer generated imagery to create realistic scenes. Common uses include sky replacements, logo removal and including environmental effects, such as snow, fire, smoke and lightning.

Some examples of this type of work include:

• VOLKSWAGEN Hedgehog
• Justin van der Lek – VFX Showreel

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Recently, Nielsen reported than online video viewership has increased more than 26 percent over the past three years. This was reported with additional important data points revealing that the time spent viewing video in this same time period has increased twofold.

The comScore Video Matrix October report showed Facebook as the second most popular site on which to view video content, with viewers spending an average of 18.4 minutes consuming video content on the site.

With this change in the way and where people consume video, it’s time to rethink defaulting to broadcast television commercials as the strategic option. Branded video pieces that don’t put products at the forefront, but use lifestyle, comedy or education to influence and engage potential consumers and brand advocates should be a serious option for anyone looking to create consumer messages in a visual format.

Things to consider when creating motion media projects:

• It’s important to understand the way your target audience is consuming motion media. Are they spending hours a day in front of the computer watching online videos or are they only watching a few hours of TV in the evenings? Knowing this will help you decide the best platform for your content.
• Don’t bunch your potential consumers into one all encompassing group or you risk watering down your message and reducing its impact. See if their are ways to identify smaller niche groups where you can create personal, targeted content specifically for them.
• Consider taking your project in a unique direction. Is there any opportunity to make your audience laugh or cry? Can you tell their story in a way that emotional engages and promotes your clients?

Chart courtesy of Nielsen

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