Why turning around video quickly helps brands stay relevant

The minute we hear of a natural disaster, we look to social media and news channels for live updates. An update every hour? That’s too long for us. We want updates as they happen!

Amidst this digital transformation is the growing culture of instantaneous expectations. Brands have a responsibility to cater to consumers’ hunger.

In the fast-paced world of Facebook Live and Instagram Live, how can brands punch above their weight and stay ahead?

Brands can and should commodify immediacy

Fast turnaround of video allows a brand to stand out from the crowd. It doesn’t have to be limited to somber news, light-hearted ideas are a perfectly good reason to allocate resources to creating video fast.

A personal favourite example of mine is Qantas’ same day response to a dance-off challenge by Air New Zealand. After being challenged by Air New Zealand, Qantas ambitiously stepped up and sportingly responded with a video of a flawlessly-executed dance by their pilot and cabin crew on a runway, all within the same day.

That is why I believe brands need to commodify immediacy. Creating fast video allows brands to gain a reliable reputation for their fast responses, a vibe of accessibility, top-of-mind recall among target audiences, and of course bragging rights.

People constantly want to be stimulated by video

Our newsfeeds nowadays consist mostly of video. When people open their newsfeeds to browse, they are not just used to it, they have come to expect it.

As a result of the constant stream of content, people are less engaged as they browse. One can almost imagine them lazily scrolling through, barely engaging with one post before thumbing over to the next one.

As one would expect, people consume the most video in the morning before work, during lunch, and in the evening after work. However, mobile video consumption does not dip much during the day, unlike traditional media channels such as TV, which obviously have lower consumption rates in the day.

People still browse videos on their mobile during work hours because videos are becoming shorter, and more ‘digestible’. To meet people’s expectations and be able to engage with them, brands need to be able to create videos fast to be able to produce them often.

People have diminishing attention spans

Brands should invest in regular ‘hub’ and ‘hygiene’ content to address diminishing attention spans of core audiences and keep them constantly tuned in.

‘Hero’ content refers to the flagship content that defines a brand, and is related to the most important milestones. It is content that the most time and effort is invested in, such as Apple’s highly-anticipated product launch videos.

‘Hub’ and ‘hygiene’ content are of a lower budget than ‘hero’ films, but remind target audiences of what a brand stands for. (Think: Gary Vaynerchuk’s frequent short clips on LinkedIn.) These ensure that brands don’t fall prey to the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ syndrome.

How often should a brand create ‘hub’ and ‘hygiene’ content? Especially with newsfeed algorithm changes, the window of opportunity to capture audiences’ attention is very small and if consumers miss these videos now, they probably won’t see it again. Brands should create videos fast to be able to keep up with the diminishing attention spans of core audiences.

The video production process needs to be much quicker to be able to output videos fast

It is high time to do away with long phases of the production process. Creating a video should require minimal effort. It’s almost a necessity in today’s digital age that videos be created at the same pace an email can be crafted.

The traditional model has no ability to support these instantaneous expectations. From the time the idea of a video is conceptualised, it takes a long time to secure a production team, work around everyone’s schedules, and so on.

The new model of filming content should do away with clunky processes. A brand should be able to shoot a video as soon as they think about shooting a video. Many a time, we hear our chief executive officer has a sudden half hour to spare, and ideally people should be empowered to begin filming right away.

The second part of the process is post production. Once the film footage has been shot, it typically takes a few days to a week for a production house to edit it.

Being immersed in video production for some time, I believe that the ideal time from filming raw footage to a fully finished piece, without compromising on quality, takes no more than 24 hours.

What does fast video turnaround translate into for a brand?

A constant stream of video content will get people excited about a brand. It sustains consumer interest in the brand story, generates excitement with every new update, and puts brands at the top of their minds.

Fast video gives brands a currency and increases the chance of content being seen and shared in newsfeeds, putting them at the top of the mind with consumers.

Antoine Bouchacourt is the vice president of Asia at Shootsta