A Better Approach To Video Production
Traditionally, short form content has been viewed as less valuable than longer-form content. I disagree, and here’s why.
Video production is something that is constantly evolving. The cost of filming equipment getting cheaper means good quality video content is becoming more accessible. The standard of production quality available to everyone, and especially businesses is so much better than ever before. Although This does present a challenge, and distills the most important thing about video production – the latest cameras are all good, so it doesn’t really matter what you’re shooting on, the quality is in the content, the idea, the relatable truth. Filming good videos is difficult, but creating video content that means something to your audience, that’s the real challenge.
New platforms emerge with regularity, creating new opportunities whilst remoulding audience behaviours. At one time, magazines, newspapers, and TV were the gateways to customers, closely guarded by the gate keepers – the magazine publishers and ‘ad men’. Now TV and print publishing are in decline, but consumers are consuming more media than ever before. Entire businesses now run on social media. Never has so much access, with so much data on audiences been available before. There is a place for every niche, and a way to connect with them – through video.
Sometimes the viewers do something unexpected, which also presents new opportunities and new ways of approaching video content. YouTube started as a website, then an app on mobile devices. Now almost half of youtube viewership is done on TV screens and accounts for nearly 10% of TV viewership overall.
Trends emerge and develop quickly, but what hasn’t changed quite as fast is the way corporate content is produced.
A lot of marketing campaign content is still centred around the long-form video. Generally, a longer-form video is produced, and then short ‘clips’ are cut from it to use as touch points on social media. Sound familiar?
This is absolutely the most efficient way of producing video content – but is it the right way? If efficiency was the most important consideration, it might be the right way, but it isn’t. The most important metrics for any video content is AVD (Average Viewer Duration) and ‘shareability’.
AVD stands for Average View Duration, it means the average length of time viewers watch your video. The aim is to create video content that viewers want to watch until the end. Because of the ‘disposable’ way that viewers consume media, platforms consider anything above 50% to be a good AVD.
Shareability relates to how likely is a viewer to share a video. There’s an interesting psychology regarding sharing video content. It can be a form of displaying social value. Someone who shares a video with their peers or audience that is highly relatable, engaging, or emotionally resonant can experience a social elevation, for bringing something valuable to the group. Branded videos can benefit from this. The more relevant and valuable a video is to a target audience, the more likely it is to be shared amongst them, as a display of social value.
AVD and Sharability are important to content platforms. Their goal is to sell ads. They need engaged viewers so they they can sell their attention to the platform’s customers – the advertisers. The viewers are not the platform’s clients, they are the product, or more specifically, their attention is the product. An advertiser wants to place their ad in front of relevant potential customers. The platform also wants to attract more viewers, and for them to stick around for as long as possible, so they can show them more ads.
Why does this matter to you? If your video content has a strong AVD of over 50%, and is likely to be shared, attracting even more viewers to the platform, then the platform’s algorithms are going to promote the video to more people. Your aim should be to take advantage of the algorithm, and help the platform to achieve their goal of maintaining as much attention from their viewers as possible whilst attracting new viewers. Video streaming is a battlefield, where new features are constantly being introduced to try and leverage more attention than the competition. However, the two things that remain constant throughout this changing landscape is AVD and sharability.
This is why ‘clipping’ long videos presents a problem. Whilst cutting short clips out of a long video is an efficient way of creating clips as touch points for your social media channels, the likelihood is they won’t get much attention. Audiences have become unconsciously savvy to the story structure. Videos that follow this structure are more likely to viewed for longer (AVD). There are psychological reasons at play – using the ‘hook’ and ‘unclosed loops’ to maintain attention as the viewer waits to receive the resolution. Almost all viral videos follow a simple structure that taps into this. Once you’re able to maintain their attention, the video needs to deliver a sense of satisfaction, humour, or emotional resonance to become ‘sharable’. Clips from long videos fail at this. It is very difficult to cut a short clip that follows an effective structure. It is also difficult to include content that resonates with the audience.
All too often a brand will focus on delivering their core values and messages whilst neglecting structure and relatability. It’s important to remember short videos are not ads. If your video does not maintain engagement and be considered valuable, the message will fall flat.
This is why we have inverted our approach as a better way to creating branded videos for marketing campaigns. We start with the short-form videos, which are properly structured for engagement. We plan the content to be as relatable as possible, whilst featuring the campaign messages. The long-form video is edited to deliver all of the messages together, in a narrative that makes sense to the viewer. Since the short videos are better structured for engagement, they will get seen be more viewers, and can be used to direct people to the longer form video if they’re interested to find out more. Your goal is to get as many viewers to engage with your campaign touch points as much as possible. The Campaign Content Package is designed to help you do exactly that.
Gillan Williams
Director