I’d say I was a long-suffering Washington D.C. sports fan, but things have actually been pretty swell over the last decade or so. Maybe the midwestern optimism is rubbing off on me. Hey, my toddler doesn't know a world where my Washington Commanders aren’t a promising team with an exciting young QB.
Watching sports is great, but let’s be honest. Whether it’s football season, March Madness, you name it—there’s always that one commercial that quickly becomes the “get up and grab a salsa refill” spot of the season. It was a significant, single video investment that along with its cut-downs, quickly wore out its welcome. And now it’s going to be beamed countless times into groaning bars and living rooms from now until the season is over.
This can be the downside of a single video engagement, no matter what platform it’s shown on. Maybe the visual style or scripting approach fell out of fashion quickly. Or its strategy didn’t really resonate with an emerging audience for your brand. You can hear the “Skip Ad” button being clicked on the 30-second pre-roll version as we speak.
Something we’ve seen recently is clients circumventing these issues by wanting multiple videos, each produced in different styles (live action vs. animation, for example) and accompanying cut-downs—all within a single project engagement with us. We’ll always love a big-budget single explainer video, but this multiple “medium-cost, medium-quality” video approach can be enticing for brands looking to hedge their bets a little bit when launching their brand or product.
This is especially true for emerging organizations, new service lines or established companies releasing a new product. They might not have the marketing data or experience to know what style is going to be the most engaging and effective for their mission. Not only does this create a trepidation to bet all your budget on one style, it also increases the appetite to experiment. Having multiple videos to help with A/B testing, market research, data analyses and tracking social engagement can help you gain actionable insights on video marketing efforts moving forward.
Let’s just call it the “Mighty Many” approach. Here’s some reasons why it can be so helpful—and of course, some considerations too.
To give you a tangible example of what this approach looks like, here's an example of a two style approach we took with Rippling to create two short commercial productions a few months apart.
Rippling - Live Action Ad
Rippling - Animated Ad
The Benefits of a Multi-Style Production Approach
Broader Appeal - Multiple videos in different styles allow you to cater to various audience segments. For instance, a humorous video might appeal to a younger audience, while a more serious tone might resonate with professionals. Or, you can craft a short live action production featuring your friendly staff to help with recruiting, and also an animated video that helps promote the cool products that your growing team is making. This diversity of content can help you reach a wider audience, while increasing meaningful engagement with your specific target demographics. Trying to reach multiple audiences—all within a single video—can often water down your message and create a slightly unfocused piece of content.
Boost that Content Calendar - Creating several videos in different styles also helps you maintain a steady flow of new content. Now you have multiple unique core videos, and ideally some cutdown variations on them too. This can help your content marketing team out, giving them a steady flow of content to share across channels to keep you top-of-mind amongst your audiences. Also, if your target audiences see you continuously experimenting with different types of video content, they’re likely to imagine that your product teams are also cooking up cool stuff for customers too.
Budget Flexibility - Producing multiple medium-quality videos often requires a lower budget per video compared to a high-quality production. So let’s be clear—when I say “medium-quality,” it’s more in comparison to the high-end needs for a high-quality, high-budget production. High-end equipment, professional talent, post-production, etc. The “Mighty Many” approach will still get you the utmost of quality when it comes to the care and creativity of the Demo Duck team. With that said, the “Mighty Many” often use some nice cost-saving production solves based on what usually are specific tasks. Having staff on camera! Creating helpful software platform walkthroughs via screencast! This can be particularly advantageous for brands with limited marketing resources, allowing them to create diverse content that is still within their budget.
Creative Experimentation - With different video styles, you can experiment with various creative approaches to see what resonates best with your audience. This flexibility can lead to valuable insights to leverage for more effective future campaigns. If someone on social media sees two video thumbnails from your company that look different from one another, they might be more likely to watch them both. Also, some newer brands might not have full brand guidelines or an established visual or storytelling identity yet. A video engagement is a perfect way to help find your brand voice, and experimenting with what works is a great way to do that.
Potential Drawbacks of a Multi-Style Production Approach
Brand Cohesion Challenges - The flipside of the joy of experimentation is the risk of lacking cohesion. Using multiple styles and formats can lead to a fragmented message and a diluted brand identity. You don’t want one internal team feeling like the video for their product didn’t turn out as well as another team’s product video. Or perhaps worse, having a mixed “first impression” with your customers. This is something our team works to keep in mind at the start of a project—figuring out ways to extend consistent visual branding across different videos of different styles—to help them still feel uniform even when playing with different production styles.
Increased Production Effort - While each individual video might be less costly, producing multiple pieces of content still requires a substantial amount of time and resources—especially for the clients. Say you’re super busy and preparing for a huge product launch. Focusing on a single video might keep things streamlined internally and allow you to wrangle feedback easier, as opposed to reviewing multiple videos on multiple timelines.
Measurement Complexity - Analyzing the performance of multiple videos can be more challenging than evaluating a single high-quality piece. With different styles and formats, it might be harder to determine which approach is most effective, complicating ROI assessments. However for larger clients, who are working off a specific corporate video production roadmap and have a larger team infrastructure, it may be easier to track all of these analytics at once.
The Mighty Many vs. The Super Single
The decision between a high-quality, single-video campaign and a multi-style, medium-quality strategy depends largely on your brand's objectives, budget and target audience. Here's a few thoughts to help guide your choice:
- Financial Investment: If you have the budget for a high-quality production, it can be a worthwhile investment for creating a lasting impression. However, if resources are limited, a series of medium-quality videos might provide more value for your money.
- Time Investment: If you are looking to focus on other marketing efforts outside of video—and need the time to do so—maybe the higher fidelity, one-off approach is a better fit. If you're willing to invest the time to create a suite of videos in different styles, maybe give the "Mighty Many" a shot.
- Message Confidence: If you've thought about a video for a while now, and have always generally known what type you want—feel free to leap off the deep end into the "Super Single" pool. If you're waffling a bit, maybe go the "Mighty Many" route and use the data you get back to inform a high-budget production further down the road.
- Brand Identity: Consider how important a polished, professional image is to your band. If maintaining a high-level of quality is crucial, a high-quality video might be the better choice. On the other hand, if your brand is say, more casual and relatable, perhaps a varied approach could be more effective.
- Audience Preferences: Think about your audience's tastes and behaviors. If they engage well with a variety of content, the "Mighty Many" might be a hit. Conversely, if they've reacted positively to videos with high-production values and a cohesive message, perhaps investing in a high-quality single style video could be beneficial.
Mighty Marketing
Honestly, both approaches have their merits and can be highly effective depending on your specific needs and goals. By carefully considering your investments, messaging confidence, brand identity and audience preferences, you can choose the video marketing campaign approach that best aligns with your objectives and maximizes your impact.
But you don't have to make that decision all by yourself. Get in touch with us! We're always happy to share our expertise over a quick call and provide our recommendations about a production style approach. Together, we can figure out a winner.