Could your brand’s media strategy help it become the Logan Paul of its sector?

Strategists advise companies to imagine the extreme version of any new approach they are considering, gain insight from that point of view and then go back and find firm, suitable ground on which they can build and plan.

A YouTuber redefines branded content

If you missed the headlines in June, a YouTuber named Logan Paul stepped into the ring with Floyd Mayweather, one of boxing’s all-time greats, and got paid a lot of money for it. There was a dramatic reaction to Paul’s challenge for Mayweather, both positive and negative; but Paul is an extreme, an extreme we can learn from. His mastery of YouTube (23.2 million subscribers), podcasting (3 million listeners) and social media turned his personal brand into a juggernaut. Like him or hate him, he is a living, breathing, fist pumping brand, and his life is 100 percent consumed with branded content production.

Let’s face it, your brand probably doesn’t need to go out on such an edgy, Logan Paul limb. Your goal in branded content production is to establish a voice, and a rapport, with potential customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders.

How should brands create multimedia content that reflects and nurtures these relationships?

Grabbing the (Red) Bull by the horns

Let’s pull back from the edge and look at Red Bull. Red Bull’s marketing strategy started in typical fashion — free samples of its energy drink at events where 18-35 year olds gathered. They expanded their visibility directly linking their name and imagery to such events like Formula One, air racing, and the record-breaking Stratos base jumping mission with Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner. Red Bull’s branded content production strategy grew out of the desire to stay in touch with its audience outside of sponsored events, and adrenaline-fueled projects like these made headlines and gave them credibility as a producer of entertaining multimedia content.

Now, Red Bull is a media powerhouse, and the brand is more top-of-mind for extreme sports than for energy drinks. Red Bull Media House produces hours of branded video content per month, plus a magazine and an ocean of social media. All of it is honed to appeal to its original demographic and solidify its relationship with extreme sports fans.

Why did Red Bull go so big on branded multimedia content? Because its customers are massive consumers of extreme sports programming. They drink it up, and the brand gives them an endless supply for free, further fueling demand. Red Bull has embraced the “brands should act like media companies” mantra. You could argue that the company invented the concept.

Your content should reflect your brand’s personality

All companies should craft a branded content production strategy that fits their brand voice, that creates the right rapport with stakeholders and consistently tells stories that reinforce their key messages. This has become clearer during the pandemic, as video consumption has shot up across the board, with brands moving aggressively to cash in on the trend. According to the Ericsson Mobility report (June 2020), video accounts for 63% of traffic in mobile networks, and is forecast to grow by around 30% annually up to 2025.

The American outdoor equipment retailer REI sets a good example. The brand’s video catalog ranges from instructional guides to their products to short films about environmental issues. This approach to branded content production reflects the interests of REI’s target audience and reinforces the brand’s personality.

Alia Samhat, Vice-president for strategy and planning at Leff Communications, emphasizes that “brands . . . have to think strategically about what else their audience is seeing. How does video actually enhance what we’re doing, rather than just becoming a check-the-box exercise?”

Adding to this sentiment, Simon Cohen, co-founder of the video-creation platform Pomelo, summarizes the impact of multimedia content. “It’s a shot of emotion, of adrenaline. You watch it and then you have a different idea from what you thought 30 seconds ago — and that’s huge.”

Technical variables to fine-tune your production strategy

There are lots of variables to consider from a technical point of view as companies create their multimedia content production strategies:

• Where are your audiences for multimedia content? How well does your content reflect your understanding of your target audience and demographic?
• How do you find out what your target audiences are saying about you and adjust your narrative accordingly?
• What are the most flexible tools that will allow you to create, keep track of and repurpose different kinds of multimedia content?
• Which content formats are the best when it comes to helping you establish connections, and how do you test this?
• How can you streamline processes so that your multimedia content production teams can focus on being creative?
• Dalet Flex can help you every step of the way as you define, refine, and scale your multimedia content production strategy, integrating with your existing technology ecosystem to help you create, manage, and distribute compelling content that engages your audience.

When you need to manage assets, whether in-house, cloud, or hybrid storage, Dalet Flex allows for quick access; and our metadata modelling capabilities help you categorize and find it all, so multimedia content production moves at a pace that keeps up with your audience’s demands.