The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

How to make a successful video campaign: Advertisers should focus on video shares, not views

Author

By Ishbel Macleod, PR and social media consultant

May 8, 2014 | 4 min read

Shares are ‘the global currency of social video and a measure of deep engagement’, Unruly’s new Science of Sharing report states.

Unruly looks at when the best time to release a campaign is, if there should be branding, and what advertisers should do to make sure that consumers respond.

Part of the research looked into Super Bowl XLVIII ads, and noted that shares were down by 29 per cent compared to last year’s Super Bowl ads.

The report also suggested that use of celebrities was not something brands should focus on.

Unruly US president Richard Kosinski said: “Brands should save the celebrities for the half-time show. It wasn’t famous faces which had people sharing at this year’s Super Bowl, it was a cute puppy, a caring soldier and a multi-cultural ad from Coca-Cola that stole the show.”

Creating a responseUnruly noted: “The strongest ads in this study evoked intense psychological responses among viewers.“The most shared ad this year used warmth and happiness as its key triggers (and stayed away from humour). The ads in the 2014 Super Bowl in general elicited less intense psychological responses than the previous Super Bowl, which is one of the key reasons sharing was down year-over-year.”The key, data scientists at Unruly said, is to elicit an intense viewer response – be it laughter, tears, goosebumps or a gasp.
Unlike psychological responses, where there tends to be consensus around feelings, the best social videos often elicit a broad range of social motivations (or reasons people share), working indifferent ways for different consumers, with Unruly suggesting Social Good, Shared Passion, Opinion Seeking and Self Expression as examples.“The ads that were more shareable elicited multiple motivations from their audiences, at stronger levels,” Unruly suggested.
When should you launch an ad?The viral peak of a video occurs on Day two, and a video achieves 25 per cent of its total shares within the first three days of launch, Unruly has found.The company also noted that the ads which were released early benefitted from two viral peaks: one two days after launch and the second after the Super Bowl broadcast.“All of this points to the need for a strong distribution strategy. Our data has shown that the days of the week with the greatest sharing activity are Wednesday through Friday, the report stated.Kosinski added: “Savvy marketers know that strong content is not enough to drive millions of shares, having the right paid online media distribution plan in place is just as important.“For brands, it's no longer just about their TV ads being watched on Super Bowl Sunday. With more than 24 million shares tracked every 24 hours, the real opportunity for marketers is to connect their paid TV sponsorship with their paid media online, where their ads can be watched and shared before, during and way after the Big Game.”
Should you have branding in a video?Unruly has a very blunt view on this: social videos won’t be effectively promoting your product if viewers don’t know which brand is behind the content.This can be seen in Chrysler’s ad with Bob Dylan – lack of attribution meant that only seven per cent of respondents were able to correctly name the brand, compared to the 95 per cent who recalled the M&Ms ad.
Unruly concludes the report by suggesting that advertisers get cut-through and gain memorability by using an emotional trigger, and provide viewers with multiple reasons to share the content.

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +