If the marketing landscape has been defined by social media in recent years, this year will be marked by video content; at least that’s what the number-crunching, data-driven folks at marketing research firms all across the U.S. are saying about what 2014 has in store for us. According to the most recent report by emarketer, incorporating video into campaigns "is now near-ubiquitous among US senior marketing professionals," resulting from better production technology and ease at distribution throughout the internet without the financial load of media buying that marketing specialists have faced in the past. Sure, that’s a bold statement, but the numbers don’t lie. The report found that “93% of marketers had used video for online marketing, sales or communications purposes at some point during 2013, up from 81% in 2012.” For the first time in the history of the internet, marketing specialists have the opportunity to disseminate video content over a wide range of platforms; ranging from social media to blogs to email marketing.
*What kinds of video are we talking about? *
This is an incredibly exciting time for us and the rest of the production community. Brands both big and small are producing everything from short films (like Intel’s film, The Inner Beauty) to Vine videos (Fedex produced a clever stop-motion vine to introduce everything that you might need for their “One Rate” shipping feature) for their video content. In Intel’s case, their “Inner Beauty” 6-part video series utilized fan-submitted videos to embed in their storyline, and racked up 70 million views and were decorated with awards at the Cannes Festival. Another example of branded content that tugged at our heart strings this past year was the story of a 4 year old Kenyan boy who gets the opportunity to accomplish his bucket list in a week, produced by the non-profit WaterIsLife (spoiler alert: you will cry).
