IF YOU WANT YOUR VISUAL CONTENT TO STAND OUT, BE BOLD!

Visual Content (Video and Animation) is not doing its job unless it is driving engagement.

There is no sense or value in simply creating content just for contents sake.

In the vast and ever growing sea of Visual Content out there, if a video is not driving an audience to engage and ultimately take some form of measurable or identifiable action then frankly all it is doing is polluting that sea with white noise.

White noise content gets turned off as quickly as one deletes a spam email or hangs up the phone on a telemarketer calling them about something they have little to no interest in.

Brands, Business, Organisations and even Individuals (who are in increasingly their own personal brand thanks to sites like LinkedIn/Instagram etc) need to stop focusing so much on the volume game of Visual Content and start focusing a little more on the quality and craft game of Visual Content.

Quality and craft do not by the way necessitate an exponential increase in the cost of making visual content - just a change in the way you think about producing it and the level of understanding and ability that the people you engage to strategise, create, execute and distribute that content have in their tool kit.

Authenticity is a currency you just can't buy enough of in this marketplace (and if you think it can't be bought you are sadly wrong. There is a price for everything in this space including authenticity - unfortunately for many its a cost they find hard to bare or justify as having authenticity associated with you by extension means you yourself need to be authentic).

Creating authentic stories that are relevant to your audience that speak to and respect their experience, that challenge and move their thinking and enable them to genuinely converse and engage with you are priceless.

Not only do they get your audience speaking about your brand but they get everyone else talking too.

The publicity value of a well strategised, executed and released campaign that is bold, thought provoking, perhaps controversial or maybe perhaps just challenging for your traditional target content audience or the mainstream secondary audience who are peripheral to your traditional target content audience is one of the best social amplification methods available.

When done correctly, social amplificaiton can build your brand’s authority in your industry.

It also as you are well aware increases social signals and improves search engine optimisation and of course, overall brand awareness.

So you are reading this and thinking - great Thomas I get it lets be bold!

But like anything in life its not that simple...

Being bold means taking calculated risks, challenging the expectations of your audiences (not least of all the internal audience of your team who will have to get on board with the campaign), doing something unexpected and perhaps even unusual... And in the increasingly risk adverse cultural climate that we now live in even taking calculated risks can be challenging for a lot of marketing teams to negotiate.

This is where the underlying strategy behind your content needs to be solid, well thought out, well planned and executed by a team of experienced experts who understand both the audience and the business objective - in other words a thoroughly calculated risk as opposed to just risk.

Audiences are smart.

They like to be engaged with good content.

You need to trust your audience and deliver them what engages them most.

A great example of brand challenging their audience and redefining the conversation about what it means to love and live by their brands values was Nike's 2018 "JUST DO IT" campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick.

The campaign was particularly polarising in the US where it seemingly lead to social media posts of angry customers burning their shoes, ripping their Nike logos off their socks, talks of boycotts and a substantial temporary dip in the share price of the brand.

Kaepernick for those who aren't US based and don't follow NFL is a polarising figure due to his stance on kneeling during the national anthem in protest against police brutality and as sign of solidarity.

He has certainly had his critics (including current US President Donald Trump).

Ultimately though the campaign can be measured as a substantial success for Nike who have seen a 5 percent increase in revenue since Labor Day (when the campaign was launched).

But its not just purely about the sales (though they certainly help) its also about how the brand has redefined and re-invigorated its audience.

Nike has successfully managed to leverage the increased politicisation of sports in America and the conversation that surrounds it to target and create deeper engagement with their audience while also taping into and building a new audience of upcoming athletes and sports fans who are just as disenfranchised with the status quo as many of their heroes (Kaepernick among them).

The campaign has tapped into something deeper and as such has become a much larger talking point than the traditional athlete endorsed "Just Do It" style campaign.

Nike would have been fully cognisant that there was a calculated risk involved in doing such a campaign but also understood implicitly the value that would be created, the opportunity it posed to challenge, re-define and re-engage with their audience and the massive social amplification and interaction that would be gained as well.

A different but equally fascinating and successful approach to being bold was Optus's Anti-Ad campaign with comedian and actor Ricky Gervais that was used to promote the launch of Netflix in Australia.

Emotive (a Sydney based agency) were approached by Optus to create the content campaign.

Emotive wanted to position Optus & Netflix as the premium opportunity in market – a true entertainment provider.

The idea was to launch the service aggressively using social media wrapped around a simple idea: to deliver content that was as entertaining as Netflix itself.

With the idea, platform and audience in mind, Emotive then secured Ricky Gervais as the lead talent for this campaign.

The strategy was to allow Ricky Gervais to create his own piece of content, with minimum script parameters – counter to the way most advertising is created. The shoot with Ricky resulted in three short form teaser content pieces, a scripted comic product read and a piece of pure entertainment, delivered by a world-class entertainer.

An anti-advert.

The success of this campaign can be largely attributed to the fact that, although Gervais is not directly promoting Optus, he’s associating with it and he is being authentically Ricky Gervais.

He delivers exactly what his audiences expect – a funny, authentic and entertaining performance – which also happens to be what Netflix offers via its content.

So in essence the story and message is conveyed but it doesn't feel like an ad and it challenges the audiences expectations of the content.

They in turn project those feelings onto the brand and the engagement skyrockets:

• The video broke the record for the fastest branded video to hit 4 Million (Australian) views in Australian Facebook history (from a population of 23 Million)
• The video became the most successful piece of branded content Google have ever seen in Australia
• Interest level in the video was 6x higher than any TV campaign Optus had previously run, it resulted in 165% lift in searches for Optus
• Over 5.7M unique views on YouTube
• Viewed in over 143 different countries on YouTube
• A full playout & discussion on The Ellen Show globally
• 52 pieces of PR were generated in Australia – reaching over 4.6M people
• The anti-ad featuring in the top 5 global ads on Adweek and Faster CoCreate
• WINNER – 2015 Cannes Lions – Cyber – Bronze

You can find out a little bit more about this project by viewing the case study below:

So as you can see there is a vast spectrum in terms of bold opportunities for brands, businesses and organisations to create bold content that separates them from their competitors and creates and solidifies their unique positioning in the visual content marketplace by having and owning their own approach to "Story" and how that story is used to communicate to their audience.

In order to seize upon these opportunities they need to think about their long term strategic approach to visual content and engage with agencies and creators who are aligned to those strategic needs.

As always if you'd like to know more or book a Skype session or learning lunch please feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn.

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