Matt Fiorentino is director of marketing at Visible Measures
The new iPad Air videos Apple featured during its iPad announcement last week won’t be going viral. Don’t get me wrong – they’re beautifully shot and tell a sweeping high-level story of how people all over the world are engaging with Apple’s products. They have an ethereal quality to them, like they’re lighter than air. They’re perfect for TV and a nice complement to the product itself. And, like most Apple ads, they’ll do fine online.
But the online world is a different beast and offers massive opportunities, so doing fine isn’t enough. Tim Cook likes to talk about Apple’s 81% engagement share with mobile users, a combined stat that looks at how iOS users and Android use their devices. Branded video works much the same way.
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Engagement is the foundation of branded video. The ecosystem is based on audiences actively choosing to engage with a brand’s video, so it’s the brand’s responsibility to create a great video product and distribute it so it’s discoverable. If the video’s great and the distribution is good, audiences will watch more of it and evangelise it with their friends, family, and social connections. The video will generate earned media, driving down overall campaign costs by increasing efficiencies in reach, awareness, and consideration – a massive opportunity. If the video is mediocre, the likelihood of the brand enjoying these benefits are slim to none.
But the iPad Air videos aren’t mediocre. They’re quintessential Apple from the past few years. In the TV spot, the narrator talks about all the ways people use the iPad, from writing poems, to composing symphonies, to conducting scientific research. He references the artists, scientists, scholars, and students who use the iPad to do work. He mentions that we’ve used the iPad in classrooms, boardrooms, expeditions, even space. Then the video closes with: “And we can’t wait to see where you take it next.”
The problem with the video is that it’s too high-level to be truly interesting. It’s fine to check off lists of people and use cases for general awareness on TV, where audiences will come away with an idea that a lot of people use the iPad in a lot of ways. But for online audiences, Apple needs to show us more. They say in the ad that they can’t wait to see where we’ll take it next. Well, we want to see it.
So how does Apple do this?
The short answer is that Apple needs to start thinking in terms of content instead of advertising.
Thinking in advertising means that Apple creates a 60-second spot, with :30 and :15 second edits, to run on TV and across online channels for general awareness. The campaign could have a number of creatives focusing on different aspects of the product. The ad campaign focuses on telling consumers about the amazing new facts, features, and specs.
The core of this idea is that it’s advertiser first, consumer second. It’s what advertisers have always done.
Thinking in content means that Apple would create videos that are designed to entertain, inspire, and inform audiences in a way that goes beyond typical product benefits. Thinking in content is consumer first. It’s a new approach for advertisers.
To transform the iPad Air spot into content, we could tell the stories of the educators, scientists, scholars, and students who are using the iPad to teach, discover, study, and learn in new and exciting ways. There are any number of ways Apple could approach these stories. Toshiba and Intel have taken this content-first idea and run with it by producing what they call social films where the brands are organically integrated into the overall storytelling. The stories range from a thriller, to a romantic comedy with a twist, to an alien comedy. The campaign cycle follows Hollywood and TV models – replete with teasers and trailers to increase awareness up to the film’s debut. They’ve done massively well, over 110 million views since 2010 in just three installments.
And while Apple may want to stay away from the supernatural to stay on brand, it could certainly dig into the stories of all the people the iPad has helped. Apple executives use great stories in their examples. During the event on Tuesday, Phil Schiller talked about three artists who use the new Mac Pro and how it allows them to do better work. Craig Federighi, in his Business Week interview, talked about the iPad being so intuitive that toddlers know how to use it instantly. I want to know more about these stories. Apple should tell us.
Who knows, if Apple starts creating content in addition to ads and the earned media numbers really take off, Tim Cook could have another engagement number to quote.