Why do businesses create video? It’s not just because video is the hot marketing trend right now. It’s not even just to educate and entertain their customers. The real reason businesses create marketing videos is to keep their brand top-of-mind for consumers. That only happens, if your brand shines through every video you create. To help you achieve that, we’ve asked business owners and marketing experts to share their best advice for how to infuse brand into your videos.
Why Branding Matters
Your videos should be instantly recognizable as yours. There should be no question in the consumer’s mind about who made that video. Equally important, your brand should shine through whether the customer watches 3 seconds of your video or the whole thing. To accomplish that, you need to infuse brand into every second of your video.
Douglas Spencer, president and chief brand strategist at Spencer Brenneman, LLC, summarizes the challenge like this:
“The key to branding anything—particularly videos—is consistency and differentiation. Every element of the work, from promotion to production, should create one consistent user experience that is immediately identifiable: same color palette, same fonts, same style of graphics, and the same music! The thumbnails on the videos’ web presence must all be consistent. Plus, the language used to describe the content should match, in style and in tone, the language used throughout.”
That’s a lot of elements to think about. Brenneman says there’s even more that goes into branding your videos:
“Consistency, however, is not enough. The visual and verbal approach to videos must also be relevant and competitively differentiated from the other videos that are vying for the viewers’ attention.”
Overwhelmed yet? Don’t worry, our guest experts break it down for you piece by piece.
Logo And Tagline
The most obvious way to brand your video is by using your logo and tagline. Matt Erickson, Marketing Director at National Positions says his team starts and closes each video with their logo and tagline.
“In between, we work to keep brand colors and the voice of our content recognizable throughout each piece of media we produce,” Erickson says. “Each video isn’t just another video – it’s another one of our videos. And this needs to be clear – and recognizable – everytime someone clicks the play button.”
You don’t have to limit yourself to a splash screen though. Include your logo as a corner badge, watermark or somewhere else where it will be visible but not distracting.
Aamina Suleman, Senior Digital Marketing Executive at LogoDesignGuru.com recommends including your logo on shirts, coffee mugs or other branded item inside the shot.
“Just make sure that you don’t over-do-it. No one wants to watch a video in which brands obsess about themselves, so be smart about this,” Suleman says.
This video from Feniex Industries finds many clever ways to include the company logo without overwhelming the message.
Branding Videos With Color
“When branding videos, have a central color theme that coordinates with your company colors. This will help your audience associate your specific color patterns with your brand,” says Deborah Sweeney, CEO at MyCorporation.com.
You can find creative ways to work your brand colors into every shot. In Brand for Brands Agency videos the presenter always wears some article of clothing that reinforces the brand colors.
“The presenter’s clothing is often different, a yellow jacket,a yellow shirt or abstract yellow jewelry,” says Agency Founder Stella Gianotto. It’s more subtle than a logo, but still reinforces the brand in the eyes of viewers.
They also include a 6 second animation at the start of each video. The little boy in the animation wears yellow and all of the toys around him are that color as well.
Create A Signature Style
Crystal Towns, Vice President of Marketing, Feniex Industries, recommends creating a signature style to unite your videos.
“We translated our brand guidelines to our videos. We stick to a specific color palette, shooting style and font. Looking at our videos as a whole, those subtle decisions form our “signature style,” Towns says.
How do you go about creating a signature style? Kevin Walker of Boardwalk describes a unique way one business made a signature style for their brand:
“It’s all about setting up recognizable patterns. For instance, one client found it was impractical to have the same on-air talent from one video to the next. So they went to plan B and used multiple presenters, but shot them all against the same brick wall with a consistent lighting set up.”
Think About Distribution Channels
When Simon A. Thalmann’s team at Kellogg Community College creates videos, they keep in mind that most of their content will be distributed on Facebook and other social media channels.
“A major consideration for us in producing video is how that video will be served to audiences via those channels. Facebook and other platforms, for example, will autoplay video in user feeds without sound, and the vast majority of users stick around just long enough to scroll past a given post in their feed. This means content producers often have just seconds to get their main point across in their work, which is often being delivered to users silently.”
They add a logo to the top right corner of the screen, so even if viewers are watching silently, they still know it’s a KCC video.
“In part due to the silent autoplay issue but also because of an increasing focus on accessibility in higher education, we make sure and add captions so that people can read what’s happening with the sound off,” Kevin says.
Brand With Sound
Of course, not all videos are watched with the sound off. Some users leave videos running the background while doing other things. So your brand needs to be audible as well.
“I think a lot of video creators are very visual by nature. But here’s the reality: your business’s videos are not movies,” says Logan Allec, Owner of Money Done Right. “Viewers’ eyes will likely not be locked to the screen for their entire duration, and they may only watch a couple minutes or less…And this is the beauty of audio branding: people are exposed to it as long as your video remains open on their screen, even if their eyes are temporarily diverted.”
Music in particular, can play a vital role in branding your video says Dene Menzel, Creative Director of Branthem Creative.
“Music has a way of making the viewer feel something in a way that other media can’t,” Menzel says. “If we look to Hollywood, it is clear that movies transport audiences to another world, yet we fail to acknowledge the big part music plays in this, from the emotive orchestral scores guiding each of us through heart wrenching romance right through to gripping edge-of-your-seat action, not to mention iconic signature soundtracks, which need no visual to trigger in us immediate brand recall.”
Can You Hear The Tone?
So far, we’ve talked mostly about surface elements, color, logos, music, but to be truly effective your brand has to go deeper. Sam Surovitz of Margle Media encourages businesses to think about your brand’s voice and tone.
“Is the brand’s voice light and humorous? Is it rugged and authoritative? To ensure that the brand’s voice shines through in every video, there has to be continuity between each video so that your viewers can be attracted to come back to your business,” Surovitz says.
Digital Marketing Analyst, Jeffrey Steen, FitSmallBusiness.com says that every video should reflect the “tenor of your mission.” For example, if you’re brand is clear, calm and confident in a fast-paced world, you might create a video of a composed businessperson in a crowd of people frantically hurrying toward their offices.
“A lot of people think brand is the logo, color scheme, etc.,” Jessie Brennan, Marketing Manager at SOVRN, “but the messaging is just, if not more, important.
It’s What’s Inside That Counts
When you wonder if you’re making the right branding choices, remember the advice of Pedro Campos of Pedro Converts. “People want to buy from brands that have a face, an identity, a human touch. Branding, in a nutshell, is the way people perceive you in the long run. And I can tell you that what they buy is not your product or service. They buy consistency.”
From animation to live-action, IdeaRocket can help you create consistent brand-forward videos. Contact us to find out how.
