One million minutes a second. That’s how much video traffic will be whizzing across the internet by 2020. So how do you make your brand’s video content stand out when you only have five seconds before the ‘skip ad’ link becomes live in the bottom right-hand corner? As Maddy Cooper, CEO of Brilliant Noise, has said: “The content has to be much more than an advert – it has to truly engage and connect with the audience.”
So, in light of this dilemma, we’ve identified five examples of videos from the tech sector that prove you don’t need to have Microsoft’s budget to create engaging, useful and memorable content.
Hootsuite – Mean Tweets: A Hootsuite Dashboard Update
Celebrities read mean tweets proved to be a hit segment for US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel (22 million views for this video, for example). Social media management software developer Hootsuite created its own version with added purpose. It shows staff reading out mean tweets ahead of a software update announcement to address these issues. It combines humour with a sense of authenticity, and proves the company is willing to engage with its audience and is responsive to customer feedback.
Elemica – How Do You Say Elemica?
Among the challenges tech firms face is the fact their services and products are often both niche and complex. In addition, many companies have bizarre names – the kind of names that probably sounded great in the Silicon Valley coffee shops where they were dreamt up, but less so when you’re trying to raise your brand profile.
Elemica, an automated supply chain operating network, tackled this issue head on with this short clip – poking fun at themselves while providing some pretty useful information for customers and prospects. It gives them a little of that much sought-after commodity – authenticity. After all, what’s the point of promoting your brand if no-one knows how to pronounce it?
Lenovo – Chad
PC manufacturer Lenovo’s campaign is a great reminder of the maxim that videos should be produced for your audience and not for your company. Its use of humour and empathy will strike a chord with long-suffering IT managers – and the proof’s in the pudding: it won ‘Video marketing campaign of the year’ at last year’s Video Marketing Awards.
Harvest – A Slice of Time
As a global firm, how can you create a video that’s as effective at engaging prospects in Melbourne as Miami? Online time-tracking software developer Harvest has done so by producing this – it boasts a great narrative without any voiceover. A fine ‘explainer’ that will be understood by anyone around the world.
CSC – Make your Migration AWSome
If you’re struggling to work out how you might translate your complex and intangible services into video content, take a leaf out of CSC’s book. Using a literal approach to promote its migration management services, this affectionate parody of David Attenborough-narrated nature documentaries gets the message across in a light-hearted and memorable way.
- Have you seen any other great examples of B2B marketing videos by tech companies? Let us know in the comments below.
