Nick Francis, Barnaby Cook and Kayleigh McGroarty of production company Casual Films talk to Figaro about the past, present and future of online video marketing
Throughout the history of advertising, film – whether on the big screen at the movies or the small screen in your living room – has been one of the most effective tools available to the marketer. Now that brands have access to the even smaller screen in your pocket, video's potential is unparalleled. It's immediate, endlessly sharable, can convey sophisticated brand values in seconds and the move towards interactivity means users can purchase stuff they like the look of right away.
Lights
Casual Films, based in North London, are among the production companies exploring the creative and commercial opportunities associated with video. Founded by university friends Nick Francis and Barnaby Cook in 2006, the company was born out of the pair's driving ambition to participate in the Mongol Rally.
Unable to interest conventional broadcasters in their proposed footage of a 10,000 mile drive down to Ulan Bator, the pair sought corporate backing. Online travel specialists Expedia came up with the goods and Francis and Cook shot a series of sponsored video diaries. Five years ago, says Francis, the idea of a commercial site with engaging, regularly updated video content – providing users with a reason to return regardless of whether they were in the market for a holiday – was still pretty novel. "It was a period of natural evolution in the production industry," says Francis of the mid-2000s. "Suddenly, with modern technology and equipment, plus a bit of creativity and nous, you could produce very decent quality stuff. We came back to the UK having made these films with a camcorder and a laptop and thought, if we can do it for Expedia, we can do it for anyone."
Half a decade on and the growth of online video marketing continues exponentially: online video sharing doubled in the nine months between May 2010 and February 2011, and that figure will continue to swell as the decade progresses. By 2014 it's estimated that video content will form 66 per cent of all mobile data traffic. Casual Films' own roster of clients – which includes organisations as diverse as Macmillan Cancer Support, Agent Provocateur, Samsung and JP Morgan – indicates how seriously brands are taking the format. So how do the team at Casual describe the changes that have swept through this sector in the last five years?
Camera
"I think video has become less of a dark art," says Francis. "It's more a part of the culture. A lot of the companies we work for now have in-house video guys or an editing capability, which you wouldn't even have thought of five years ago."
"The DSLR camera has massively broken down the barrier to entry," says Cook. "When we first started, what we were doing was fairly new, but now it's becoming the dominant way of producing video." Francis agrees. "Anyone with £1,000 to spend on a camera can shoot decent footage now," he says, "which just two or three years ago you'd have spent several thousand pounds on."
Ease of creation, of course, is no guarantee of quality. Top of many brands' wish-lists is that their video campaigns should morph into mega-memes, endlessly replicating across the net. But like many of those who actually work in this field, Francis and Cook are cautious about the notion of viral video.
"There needs to be a certain spontaneity and authenticity to video if it's really going to ‘go viral’," says Francis. "It does happen," agrees Cook, who cites Dove's recent 'Real Beauty' campaign as a strong example of branded video content. "It's just rare. For every time a brand does it successfully, there are hundreds that don't."
"There's definitely a white paper to be written round the subject of whether big brands can produce truly viral content," says Francis. "In those cases you've got very in-depth brand teams and brand guidelines. Big corporations may well put a lot of money into video, but content has to be incredibly special to get not just ten thousand views, or a hundred thousand views, but to move into the multiple millions, which is the goal many large brands aspire to."
Call to action
For many of us, maintaining our social media profiles has become a sophisticated form of public image management – a crafty repositioning of Brand Me within our social networks. More than any other format, video enables us not just to connect with a brand, but to communicate something about ourselves. That sense of engagement also means that video is uniquely well-placed to refine and adjust public perception of a brand. Great news if you work in a sexy sector like clothing or entertainment. Less helpful if you're marketing an unfashionable aftershave or office stationary. Or is it?
For Francis and Cook, quality creative is the key to unlocking a brand's potential and they point to Old Spice Guy – the Citizen Kane of viral ads – as evidence of the power and scope of imaginative branded content.
"Although of course," notes Cook, "it depends what you're trying to achieve. I remember Dara Nasr of YouTube talking about the Tipp-Ex campaign [A Hunter Shoots A Bear] and someone asked, 'Has this actually increased Tipp-Ex's market share or sales?' And the response was, 'Well, I think Tipp-Ex pretty much have the correction fluid market covered.' Which is of course completely true, but the campaign wasn't just about that."
"For me," says Kayleigh McGroarty, Head of Marketing & PR at Casual Films, "video offers you a much better chance to get across a brand personality – in the age of consumer choice we pick things very much on the basis that we're buying into a personality or lifestyle. Video gives you the opportunity to really engage and understand a brand in a much more three-dimensional way than an advert or the written word. I think that's why brands are choosing video, because you can convey a lot more than just a single message, simply by the look and feel of the format and the fact that it really engages the senses. It's a whole experience with a brand rather than just seeing an image. As consumers we want to choose whether we interact with something or not, and online video has that opt-in built in to it. It's not just something you might see as you walk down the street. You have to click to play, which means users feel they've made a choice to watch. So, you're almost getting your audience to self-select itself."
"It's an incredibly emotive tool," agrees Francis. "The associations you can build with video are so strong and wide-ranging. That's the real value – it can promote feelings."
Fast forward to the future
After concentrating on the nuts and bolts of film production, Casual Films are now looking to take on a more strategic role, advising brands on video campaigns and taking on some of the broader functions associated with traditional agencies. So what sorts of issues do they think brands need to consider, and how do the team view the future?
"Be clear about the purpose of your video and what you want to achieve," says McGroarty. Francis agrees. "There is a feeling that film can be all things to all men, and it can't. Brands should aim to be as authentic as possible. Keep control of what you're doing, sure, but don't try to micromanage it. The other thing, I hope, is that brands will be more brave. So far it's the brands that have taken risks that have reaped the rewards. I hope brands will realise that, actually, it's okay if we allow people to do something slightly random, because the potential uplift is such that it's worth it. The audience you're trying to engage with now is much more savvy, so you need to reach them on a different level. They're almost more like partners than an audience in the selling process."
For Cook, interactive campaigns like Doritos Late Night 3D, which mixed up video, music and social media, herald the future, and the lessons campaigns like this teach can be applied in unexpected ways.
"The last decade was all about social," he says. "This decade is going to be about gameification. Groupon is an example of something that takes elements of gaming, in that you've got a certain amount of time to get those deals, and you're participating alongside other people." Something similar, he says, is happening in video, as personalisation becomes more accurate and the interface with other channels grows deeper. "You can start having a lot of fun with video online," he says. "Creating games that trigger text messages to people in the real world and generating greater interaction."
"It's like Facebook three or fours years ago," says McGroarty, "when brands started becoming aware that they should have a presence there, but without always quite knowing why. Great video means understanding your audience and thinking about purpose, outcome and objectives."
Watch Barnaby Cook's presentation from Figaro's 2010 Video Seminar
Article by Jon Fortgang