If a picture is worth a thousand words, video can be worth millions to your company. Video allows your brand to get under potential customers' skin and put the product in front of their eyes. They will hear your message and feel the excitement of your services, while you smell the profit. Here are five examples you can apply to your own brand.
Sight: Media train your spokesperson and create an original channel for the company on YouTube. (Ours is www.YouTube.com/ReganOriginalVideo). Have your best, energetic and engaging staff member talking about the company to our audience, and doing a demo (click to watch one involving a chef) to show how they would appear if doing a media interview. Use your logo in the video and stick to key messages while keeping it short and sweet. Use a high definition camera and top-of-the-line editing. My personal tips for media training your spokesperson for the spotlight are here.
Feel: Showcase your product, service and expertise in an enticing way. If you want someone to buy your product, make them feel as if they have already experienced a little of it. An example of this is a day-in-the-life of two different couples who live in the Residences of the W Hotel. Be careful when watching, you will start packing your bags.
Smell: You are a real estate company, so how do you get potential buyers to use you to buy a beach house? Get them to virtually smell the ocean in their front yard! For example, RE/MAX of New England invested in an ongoing video series of agent testimonials about each neighborhood, called "Our Town." (Picture the Travel Channel for potential homebuyers.) RE/MAX gave the public a free tool, allowing them to see, smell and feel each neighborhood without having to take the time to travel to each one. We made this hyper-local and specific, talking directly to potential customers.
Hear: Know your audience and speak their language, be conversational, tell stories and anecdotes that illustrate your point. Referencing pop culture touchstones can help you do this. A good example of this is when Comedian Jimmy Dunn uses his Jerry Remy's Restaurant's "Season Pass" to impress a date, inspired by a certain famous scene from Goodfellas. We adopted a similar approach for the Cape Cod Museum of Art in our homage to the iconic art museum scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, starring reality TV personality (and Cape Cod resident) Chris Lambton in the Ferris role.
Taste: Take advantage of current events and pop culture to go viral (we even did a video to publicize our office move to 75 Rockefeller Plaza, by creating a spoof of 30 Rock, the TV show, and it got media attention). You can also make your own news and then spread the video on Facebook, Twitter, and embed it on the home page of your own website. For example, we helped create a time-lapse video of the Guinness World Record Largest Nachos event for 99 Restaurants. You can taste the nacho cheese from your iPad.
Combine these elements and apply it to your specific case. And finally, every video should be approached as if it were a Hollywood movie -- a clear exciting beginning, a progressive story arch, and a definitive ending.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the Internet, so it doesn't make sense to get left out when you can reach out using video!
nglor@regancomm.com