video inspiration Monday: viral videos and commercials

In last week’s video inspiration post, I showcased videos that help your target audience understand why your products are for them.  These kinds of videos are great for building trust and sales AFTER someone has already found you.  But how do you use video to get more people to find you in the first place?

You need to go viral.

While there is no secret recipe for viral videos, there are a few things to keep in mind.  As much as I think that videos of you talking about or demonstrating your products are great tools, these types of videos are unlikely to go viral.  (But just because they won’t go viral, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make them.  As I mentioned before, they can be a great tool for encouraging someone to buy your products.)

One of the most common strategies to get a video to go viral is to do something outrageous.  The classic example of this is the “will it blend?” series of videos.

However, when it comes to being outrageous, you still have to stay true to your brand.  Being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous may get you some views, but it won’t get you loyal fans.

As you’re creating your videos, think about the ideals and values that your brand represents.  What do you stand for?  What do you want people to remember you by?

I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had over the last few months about Chyrsler’s commercial featuring Eminem:

Everything about that video, from the way it’s styled to the music*, is designed to make you think, “being from Detroit is ‘bad-ass'” (to quote a friend).  Suddenly, Chrysler is not just aligning their cars with a place, but with an attitude and a culture.  And the strategy paid off.  I recently heard on NPR that Chyrsler made a profit last quarter for the first time in years.

*Note: If you’re wondering about finding Creative Commons licensed music to use in your videos, I’ll be sharing so resources for that on Thursday.

If you’re making videos to promote your creative business, then likely one way you are trying to pull people in is with aesthetics.  Oftentimes, a beautiful, commercial style video is likely to be spread through the craft and design community.  (After all, you can only look at so many pretty pictures in one day.  Beautiful video is still something unique and special.)  Last week, Dulcie shared this beautiful, clever video from potter Ayumi Hori promoting her ceramic match strikers:

Obviously, this kind of video takes more production work than just talking into a camera.  But if you live near a college or university, you might be able to find a film student who is willing to work on your project for a class or portfolio builder.  (You might even partner with a teacher to make it a class project – you could end up with MANY great videos this way!)

There are other ways to make commercials even without a crew or video camera.  I’ve always loved the stop-motion commercials for Amazon’s Kindle:

Are there ways you could create a stop-motion or picture-based video for your products?

And if models are in short supply for you, you can certainly make great video that just focuses on the products themselves, like this video from Field Notes:

Now that you’re inspired, go out and create some videos with viral potential! (And don’t forget to upload them to YouTube with the tag “craftMBA”)