May The Animated Video Rise Up To Meet You (And Help You Stand Out)

How important is video to your brand’s content marketing strategy?

A Cisco Systems visual networking study predicts that video will account for 82 percent of all internet traffic (both business and consumer) by 2020, up from 70 percent in 2015. You can view the study results as an infographic.

But wait: the typical YouTube user is just some single guy, right? A scruffy millennial living in his folks’ basement. Uh… no.

Google, which acquired YouTube back in 2006, reports that:

From 2015 to 2016, time spent on YouTube grew 80% faster among adults 55+ than among adults overall. YouTube reaches 95% of online adults 55+ in a month.

More than 50% of YouTube’s audience is female, and YouTube users are more likely to have a college degree compared to the general population.

So you need video in your content marketing. But you run into the same old problem: noise. There’s so much video competing for attention. How do you make your video stand out?

One option is animated video. They provide some significant advantages:

• they’re emotionally appealing
• no restrictions; you can bring any concept to life
• you’re not constrained by actors, sets, props, etc.
• they’re easy to update (no need to reshoot scenes)
• no need to buy expensive equipment
• you can reuse the images (as slideshows, stand-along graphics)
• they can convey information better than a text-heavy infographic

I’ve developed my own version of stop motion animation. I use the Kizoa platform
(an online video editor) to construct the videos.

I create the storylines, write the scripts, find the music. My videos look different, which helps them stand out.

Here’s a St. Patrick’s Day video I did for Coca-Cola.

Content marketing is the art of engaging customers and prospects without trying to sell to them. An interesting challenge because you want to feature the brand without implying, “You should buy this.”

I think the above video succeeds because of the brand’s surprise appearance at the end. All that green, and then, boom!– the famous Coca-Cola red.

More importantly, it extols the brand in a way that’s so outrageous and over the top, you have to laugh: it wasn’t gold the leprechaun was after, it was something much more valuable: ice-cold Coca-Cola!!

No one’s tried to sell you anything. You’re simply surprised, delighted, and amused, and you can’t help feeling good about the brand.

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Thoughts? I’d appreciate your feedback.