Short Promo Video: Is This The Next Big Thing?

We all love to watch creative ads like the one where Jean-Claude Van Damme made an epic (EPIC!) split between two moving trucks, but the same cannot be said of ads on YouTube. Seriously? A 30-second ad where you try to sell me something I don’t need? 3, 2, 1, Skip!

But there is a new trend making the rounds: short promo videos. The idea behind a short promo video is that it tells your audience why they should love your product yet it is not aggressively marketing its products to you. Best of all, they are either 6 or 15 seconds long, bite-sized in comparison with YouTube ads.

A short promotional video can convey a message faster and more conveniently. Furthermore, in this era where people are active in social media, videos can go viral quickly if its contents are catchy, creative and empowers the viewer enough to make them click the Share button.

Is Short Video the Future?

To answer this, let’s take a look at some of the numbers.

• Every 5 tweets on Twitter contains a Vine link.
• On Instagram, videos have twice the engagement of Instagram photos.
• <40% of the 1,000 most shared Instagram videos came from brands.
• Smartphones/tablet owners are 3 times more likely to watch a video than a desktop user would.
• 92% of videos are being shared by mobile viewers.

The short of it is you can’t afford to ignore the power of short video.

Fun To Watch & To Share

For now, videos shared via social media come in two forms, 6 seconds mostly on Vine, and up to 15 seconds on Instagram. Obviously, you can do more with a longer segment but when done right, 6 seconds may just be the perfect length.

As these videos below will show, there are many ways to overcome the limited time, depending on your needs, be it a quick showcase of a product’s new features, or a teaser on upcoming products. There are many ways to get around the limited timeframe, most important of which is the editing and a good storyline. But why tell you when we can show you?

Here are some examples of how some big brands are using short promo videos to send the word out and engage better with their followers and fans. Note the clever use of the Stop Motion technique to get the message across in some of these videos, and tell us your favorite and why.

Intel

Mercedez Benz

GoPro

Starbucks

Gucci

Red Bull

Audi

Playstation

Lamborghini

Samsung

Lowes

Volkswagen USA

Target

Disney Parks

Dunkin Donuts

Xbox UK

Conclusion

Short promotional videos are less likely to receive resistance from viewers, when compared to a full (and mindlessly boring) 30-second you-must-buy style commercials, which is why we left TV to opt for on-demand streaming online in the first place.

Yet, short promo videos may well be the monetization channel many brands desperately need to tap into and earn from social media. With the right amount of creativity and awesome editing skills, brands may be happy to find out that you will not only voluntarily check out these videos but also share them on your social stream.