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2015 will be a year of reckoning for video strategies across a wide swath of brands, as a maturing marketplace increases business expectations for customer engagement, content effectiveness and clear ROI. This drive for performance will result in three specific trends to watch in 2015.
1. The Return Of Storytelling
Conventional wisdom has been telling us that customers have short attention spans and the only way to reach them is through short “snackable” content. Our industry seems to have accepted as fact that low video viewing rates are the result of this consumer trait.
Rarely have I heard anyone suggest that maybe customers don’t engage because so many videos are… well… not very good. It is easier to blame the audience than to force the kind introspection that results from an honest assessment of how a brand communicates.
Yet, here we are deep in the holiday season and the hot brand video is not a Vine. It is not micro. It is a two minute long, emotional story of a UPS driver and his 4 year-old friend (full disclosure, UPS is an Ogilvy client).
2. Understanding The Value Of Building And Maintaining An Audience
Brands are waking up to the fact that the most successful video producers are those cultivating their own audiences. The top YouTube creators have invested in building a lasting bond between storyteller and viewer, a bond cemented simply by clicking “subscribe.”
As brands become more comfortable with their new role as direct communicators, they will also take ownership of developing and maintaining a direct video-based relationship with their customers. Subscribers become ambassadors that the brand can reach simply by publishing new content. Only a handful of companies are focused on this now, but it as a customer engagement trend that I expect many brands to follow in 2015.
3. Full Funnel Video Marketing
2015 will be the year of full-funnel video marketing. We are already seeing signs of this trend, as brands that have played in the top of funnel “viral” space become more adept at using video for conversion and loyalty.
At larger brands, we will continue to see upper funnel mass market content, while those with mature video strategies will simultaneously align content production and distribution to CRM and marketing automation systems. For small and mid-market brands, I expect to a see a greater focus on lower funnel video content where metrics around conversion are more important than views, likes or shares.
Our industry is done with the race to the bottom to make the shortest or cheapest (or shortest and cheapest) videos possible. 2015 is the year of customer engagement and renewed video strategies. It will be interesting to watch these trends develop and see which brands rise to the top by this time next year.
Rob Davis is the Executive Director of Content Marketing at OgilvyOne in New York City.
