If you have ever watched an advertisement that left you inspired, sad, happy, or even shocked, you aren’t alone. When marketers plan visual content they intentionally try to give audiences a reason to become emotionally invested.
Advertisers have always attempted to compel an emotional response from audiences. However, this is particularly effective in video advertising. By drawing your audience in through resonant, emotional videos, your ads can stand out and your audience can relate emotional ties back to your company.
Not every company does it right, but here are a few examples that can help your video content succeed.
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1. Dove – Real Beauty Sketches
In the Real Beauty Sketches video, Dove chose to communicate a deep connection and understanding of their target audience instead of talking about their product. They choose to change the way their audience sees itself, and by extension Dove. Since it has been published the video has garnered a total of over 63,000,000 views on YouTube. Needless to say, this creative campaign worked.
The Real Beauty Sketches campaign is probably not one that you should or can replicate, but it does highlight an important lesson to those using video content. Marketing your company isn’t always about focusing directly on your products and services. Prospects are more likely to be enticed by videos that aren’t traditional advertisements.
People are seeing thousands of ads a day, and they probably don’t even realize they saw more than a few dozen.
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2. P&G – Thank You, Mom
This is one of the biggest winners among the slew of advertising surrounding the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. While P&G spends billions marketing it’s plethora of brands, i.e. Olay, Tide, Pantene, Bounty, and Charmin, it has also spent a great deal marketing their relationship to consumers.
This video, Pick Them Back Up, garnered over 19,000,000 views on YouTube and went viral. It was one of a series of videos which did remarkably well both online and on television.
You can also learn from P&G’s marketing strategy surrounding the campaign.
Their marketing department shifted the focus to digital (although you probably did see well placed TV ads) and began using the correct channels to further the campaign’s outreach. They utilized a YouTube landing page to capture the social media conversation, and using the hashtags #ThankYouMom and #BecauseOfMom.
[testimonial author=“Marc Pritchard, P&G Chief Marketing Officer”]I really think about it as digital first. We think of search and social and video and display as the first focus. That’s where our consumers are spending their time.[/testimonial]
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3. Red Bull – Stratos Space Jump
If you surveyed a bunch of marketers on which brands they admire, you would inevitably hear Red Bull. The beverage company is not only a force to be reckoned within their industry, but also in marketing. From it’s sports franchise ownerships to recording label to the high profile stunts, Red Bull has found a powerful form of marketing and used it to become a household name.
Red Bull has learned that emotional connections don’t always have to bring tears to your eyes. Excitement, à la action movies, can easily be a great motivator. They have maximized the use of high-profile stunts and extreme sports to build excitement and start a conversation surrounding their brand. Then Red Bull maximizes this effect by using an impressive arsenal of owned media.
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4. Nokia’s – Living Moments
After Microsoft completed a takeover of Nokia, they created a advertising campaign to develop a 360 degree storytelling experience. The video was created with the help of filmmaker Paul Trillo with 50 Nokia Lumia 1020 units mounted on an arc. It showcased 50 typical New York scenes in bullet time to dizzying yet stunning effect. In just over two weeks, the video had already gone viral and gathered over 600,000 views.
In the video, you are connected with 50 every day scenes in New York, but the astounding thing is that you there is an emotional, almost nostalgic, pull. Between the music, the conversations, and the noises, you become part of these single, frozen moments in time. For just a few seconds you are part of the moments making up the video. But at the same time you are seeing exactly how well the Nokia Lumia 1020 can perform.
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5. Carrie – Telekinetic Coffee Shop Suprise
This classic horror movie update of Carrie was released in 2013, with all the gore and terror that you would expect from the merging of a Stephen King horror film and modern filmmaking. More interesting than the actual movie was it’s “prankvertising” marketing campaign. Instead of mashing together a number of clips from the upcoming movie, they setup a hidden camera prank and then crafted it into a smart and entertaining ad.
The prank featured a number of actors and some impressive stunts in an effort to scare the unwitting customers. It makes these poor customers actually think that something supernatural was happening in their everyday lives. For viewers it gives you an entertaining hook that is much different than the normal movie trailers, and it takes Carrie out of fiction and into the real world. The video went viral with a whopping 59,000,000 views since last October.
The lesson from these creative ads is the creative and emotional appeals to hook your audience.
Viral videos are a fun and creative way to move the focus of your marketing from simply selling products to building a strong brand image and culture. In the end, the main goal of these viral marketing techniques should be to bring a brief bit of enjoyment to your audience.
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