Over the years, the only issue I’ve learned is that content material advertising is the exact opposite of advertising. When we’re brainstorming thoughts for a video, I’m constantly cautious now not to make it appear like an ad. I’ve realized that the primary concept that comes to my mind is normally the incorrect idea. Wrong, because it comes from a place that has grown up looking at films and ads on TV. After I cross past the first idea and dive deep, making exhaustive lists from regular brainstorming, newer, extra-relevant designs emerge.
Content to me starts with an obsessive consciousness of the customers. In my fights with emblem managers throughout agencies, I’ve realized that at the same time as brand managers are the custodians of the emblem and represent its interests, on the subject of content material, we (the content material creators) constitute the target market, the customers. The content must be within the hobby of the customers first, and the logo subsequent. The consumer revel in, right from the first second of the video until the stop, will decide how they engage and interact with our content.
When we clearly take the side of our audience and create for them, inspire them, solve their ache factors, rejoice their lifestyles, help them express who they’re, or give them a car to make the sector a higher place, that’s whilst we see authentic engagement. They then make the video their own and take it ahead via sharing the content with their friends. You recognize your video has truly gone viral whilst you see others importing your video as their personal on YouTube and Facebook. It’s the content material version of ways pirated copies of bestselling books are sold at site visitors’ lights in India.
They don’t surely care about us.
Ads, employing nature, have been positioned in the BS class in our minds. Whenever we see an advert, we transfer channels; we forget about billboards and appearance away; we transfer windows while we see an advert and scroll past their posts. As an audience, we’ve come to be ad blind. Our brains have evolved to ignore them. Ad publishers get nightmares just considering how advert blockers are on the rise on phones and browsers. Every 12 months, the wide variety is going up.
People in the commercial enterprise of creating advertisements normally get unsettled after crossing on the offensive like this. But the truth is that in case you ask everyone about the videos they bear in mind sharing with their pals within the final week, nine out of 10 times, it’d be a content video and no longer an ad. When we create content material that tries to make an impact on their lives and provide price or help them specifically who they are, then we don’t just get lovers, we get brand ambassadors, evangelists, tiny influencers, who will gather around water coolers and communicate about our content material, and our emblem turns into a conduit in making that take place. That’s the sport we need to win at—growing above the BS and providing cost first.
So, how do you combine your brand inside the content material?
I emphasized that the proper brainstorming degree of choosing proportion-worth subjects is that the logo DNA has to flow via the thoughts. Not the emblem, but its DNA. Figure out what’s that one aspect your emblem stands for, celebrates, or is aligned with. It’s larger than what you do; it’s extra approximately why you do it, what’s the underlying cause, and logo identity. When all of your ideas have the logo DNA in them, and you’ve created the content material, the next step is the diffused art of emblem integration. My rule of thumb is that the brand has to be a part of the video, no longer as an interruption or plug, however as part of the narrative. It is to be included in this way that it’s far required for the story and the video to transport forward.
Sure, you may have it as a watermark logo on the pinnacle of the video, display it within the starting with the name, and quit with it inside the conclusion; however, while we integrate the brand as a part of the narrative itself, it works better. Also, ultimately, make sure to add your emblem with its CTA (call to motion: “download now,”
“signup,” “purchase now,” “be a part of us,” and so forth). For instance, whilst we created the travel hacks films, it contained the logo DNA of the journey and became to start with the handiest approximately how to % your luggage, and many others. But after a few hacks, ixigo’s features were shown as a travel hack itself. Or when we created the language video series (“How to Speak Bengali,” and so on), one of the terms turned into traveling, and ixigo turned into shown as the solution. Or while we created a rap track, the brand call becomes used as the rapper’s signature within the tune. In all the cases, the presence of the emblem became diffused and took the narrative forward. It did not exist as a blatant plug.
