Earlier this year, they gave awards to the Best Video Campaigns in 2017 and we wanted to highlight them, as well as some other amazing campaigns from 2017, so we can all get inspired for our own video marketing campaigns in the new year!
Overall Webby Winner
The “Best Video Campaign” category is awarded based on a “Video-based campaign on behalf of a brand with demonstrable engagement. Video campaigns must include 3 different components that all include a video element.”
The winner of the 2017 Webby Award went to Old Spice for their “Don’t Smell Yourself Short” campaign. This video series features Old Spice’s “Legendary Man” to demonstrate how guys can be their own versions of “legendary”. This campaign kicked off in advance of Old Spice’s involvement in the SuperBowl, as the official deoderant and body wash of the NFL.
Honorable Mentions
Dollar Shave Club – Dull Life Reel
Nike – Unlimited
Secret Deoderant – #StressTest
2017 has been the year where brands are really starting to understand that audiences are over-saturated with information and have moved into an era of “content snacking” — where they hope to glean the information they need and want from smaller, more to-the-point nuggets of information.
With that came YouTube’s roll-out of six-second ads. Also known as Bumper Ads, they are a short video ad format, designed to allow you to reach more customers and increase awareness about your brand by using a short, memorable message.
Brands got really creative with these over the last year, using them to create sequential stories, to showcase a specific product, or as teaser clips for a product or service to come. Duracell was responsible for creating one of the top bumper ads (“Slamtone”) on YouTube earlier this year:
Groupon drastically changed the way they grab consumer’s attention with their YouTube video campaign this year as well. As they traditionally used to drive traffic using email, they had to change their strategy to be more appealing to their younger (millennial and Gen-Z) audiences by becoming more mobile-focused.
As their CMO Vinayak Hegde explains,
Today, you can do so much with digital video ads when it comes to audience and context. With the sophisticated targeting data and tools available, digital video allows us to be personally and contextually relevant to customers. We’re able to adapt our marketing approaches to the behavior and interests of the customers we’re going after.
We’ve been doing this by aligning our audience targeting segments to Groupon’s deal categories based on what people are looking up on Search and Maps. We used YouTube’s new Consumer Patterns to target “people who frequently visit salons,” “live event enthusiasts,” and “department store shoppers,” for example.
This approach helped Groupon achieve a 20% lift in brand favorability and acquired 160,000 new paying customers since the campaign started.
We’ve previously posted on the benefits of advertising with Social Influencers, and brands definitely jumped on this trend in 2017. L’Oreal, for example, is 108 years old and has been named, for the third year in a row, the most valuable and powerful cosmestic brand.
Axel Adida, L’Oréal: As marketers, it’s on us to maintain relationships with consumers as their appetites change, which often means using new tools and technology, and rethinking how we tell our stories. Here’s an example: We’ve always relied on celebrity spokespeople and brand ambassadors—think Jennifer Aniston and the “Because you’re worth it” ads of the ’90s. But we also know that young people today increasingly relate to influencers who look and sound like they do.
Video marketing is all about creativity, being consumer-focused, and experimenting to find out what ad formats and targeting will be the most effective for your campaigns and strategies.
YouTube offers a very in-depth “Playbook for Creative Advertising” which can help you explore the digital advertising landscape and the YouTube platform and learn how to make great videos, reach your audience and measure your success. We can’t wait to see what you come up with in 2018!
