The future of video as a direct response creative format (Part 1)

The latest .rising leaders post comes from Max Pepe, Head of Clickwork7, a global performance marketing company which specialise in lead generation, customer acquisition and mobile app promotion for clients such as Amazon and Wowcher.

Here, in part one of a two-part series, Max explores why video is the future creative tool to inspire direct response. Don’t  forget to get involved in the discussion by commenting below or tweeting @dotrising and keep your eyes peeled for part two next week, where Max will give you seven key elements to consider if you are to unleash the full power of video.

 

When was the last time you heard someone moan about Wi-Fi speed? Unless you’re reading this from a desolate location where your nearest off-license is a short boat ride away, chances are it’s been a while. Wi-Fi is fast, pretty damn fast, and speeds are only on the up. To boot, like a brazen on-the-go seductress, 4G is now unabashedly flirting with omnipresence. Unlimited mobile data packages are now an expected add-on to any must-have-best-seller phone contract; and it won’t be long before London Underground Execs decide to pull their fingers out of their dark dingy tunnels and provide all commuters (not just Three users) with access to a high speed complementary internet connection.

Therefore with a triumphant fist in the air and a middle finger emoji to the man, consumers are no longer restricted by the shackles of internet speed or the pain of mobile data prices, and are free to decide how they wish to consume digital content – and Video is shaping up to be the undisputed champion, hands down.

Online video usage saw a meteoric rise in 2014 [queue several mouth-watering stats to demonstrate]: YouTube attracted over 1 billion unique viewers per month, Facebook video posts grew by an average of 74% per user, 1 in 5 Twitter users discovered one new video every day from tweeted links, 33% of tablet owners watched one hour of video every day, and one in three Britons watched at least one online video every week. What’s more, based on current growth rates, video will account for over 79% of all internet consumer traffic by 2017 – yes, all!

Quite frankly, this bold yet bluntly realistic prediction comes as no surprise. We spend our lives sifting through an endless stream of blogs, pictures, tweets, articles, reviews, posts and forums – drawing upon every ounce of our digi-experience to scan for micro clues that will inform us within one-millionth of a nano-second whether or not we can glean any use (or entertainment) from the content that appears in front of us. Consequently, and in an almost evolutionary manner, banner blindness, tweet–tinnitus, auto-liking-syndrome, and key-word-speed-scanning prevent us going clinically insane, but also create a sludgy mush of nothingness that disqualifies anything from really standing out or having a genuine impact.

Among this ocean of digital drudgery, video cuts through the noise and provides us with little pockets of air. Subconsciously reassuring, video allows us to catch our breath. Video stimulates our eyes and our ears, kindly requesting (and therefore receiving) our full attention. We retain the message and remember the content.  The pace at which we consume a video is dictated for us – this alone is a welcome break. Video humanises content consumption. It provides us with real world relevance and conveys personality. We are prepared to stop, look and listen as if we were being addressed by (dare I say it), an actual person.  Is it any wonder therefore that 24% of consumers say that video is their most trusted source of brand content, according to Bright-Cove? Or that Axonn Research found that 7 in 10 people view brands in a more positive light after watching interesting video content from them?

The intention of this article however, is not to discuss the general importance of Video Marketing in 2015 (I’ll save that for my book) – but instead to focus specifically on one factor in particular; Video as a Direct Response creative format for advertisers.

It’s clear that video advertising is engaging the consumer and generating positive connections, yet its common place usage as a DR creative is far from standard. Perhaps our childhood experience of TV advertising has programmed us to believe that the sole purpose of video (for advertisers) is to act as qualitative brand marketing, and unless you’re a slam-you-in-the-face Injury Lawyers brand with an 0-800 number, there’s no room for Direct Response within video at all.

However, we have to understand and appreciate that the use (and value) of any given creative format is largely dependent on the channel through which it is being deployed.  For example, it was initially thought that the standard desktop banner would be equally effective on mobile as it was on screen; so off we set, dumping awkward little banner-poos on every mobile application and website under the sun (as if we had lost all control of our banner-bowels), cramming our message in to tiny boxes no bigger than the side of a matchbox, expecting comparable ROI to that of desktop. This assumption has wasted millions of marketing dollars –banners [usually] disrupt the user-experience on mobile, and lack of available space results in accidental clicks aplenty.

You can’t just lift a creative format from one channel, dump it in to another, and assume all rules still apply (it’s like putting a gold fish in a hamster cage and expecting it to run gleeful revolutions on the plastic spinning wheel). The difference however with video-creative on TV and video-creative online, VS, banner-creative on desktop and banner-creative on mobile, is that the power of video creative is greatly increased when lifted from TV to online, rather than decreased.

The very nature of video provokes human emotion more than any other creative, which if executed correctly, gives it the potential to be highly influential and genuinely persuasive. When online, this potential is suddenly fused with granular targeting technology, limitless digital inventory, detailed tracking analytics and the ability to instantly fulfil the consumers buying intentions, or capture their data as a super-hot lead. All of this delivered through an undisrupted consumer journey, immediately and seamlessly, from within the confines of a single native online platform (desktop, mobile, tablet). Furthermore, the enduring drop in cost of video production make it even more appealing for advertisers of all sizes.

This powerful cocktail makes video the perfect Direct Response creative online, and represents a massively exciting, relatively untapped scope of unequivocal opportunity. Once truly understood, commonly adopted and correctly executed, video has the power to change the face of every performance based digital marketing initiative of the future.

Want to know how to harness the power of video as a direct response tool? Then stay tuned for part two next week, where Max will bare all for .rising, giving you seven elements to consider before you unleash the full power of video as a highly effective direct response creative.