Substance and Style

1. Go for the gut with your first impression. You’ll appeal to hearts and minds with your content; use impactful design to grab immediate attention. You can do this with high contrast colors, catchy music, symbols, animation, and imagery. Use colors and thematic elements that are associated with your brand or with things you’d like to associate with your brand, like fun, sophistication, or compassion. Just remember that color and symbol associations are culture-dependent, and make sure you choose design that is consistent with your brand.
   
2. Make sure your audience gets your references. In all marketing, but especially in short videos, your audience needs to be on your level or you need to get them there quickly. You have to consider their education level, financial situation, needs, pressing concerns, and content consumption habits at a bare minimum. Take the American television show “Big Bang Theory,” for example. To the audience that was living long and prospering, the jokes were funny because they got them. As the show grew in popularity, its target audience was only a small part of its overall audience. To many of the new viewers, the actual jokes didn’t land, and the only joke was that the characters were nerds. The show was still wildly successful, but a lot of people thought it was mean-spirited. In reality, the only reason so many of them know about it all is that it initially appealed very successfully to a niche market and made references to a lifestyle they were living. You will always find more success addressing the needs of your target audience than trying to appeal to everyone.
   
3. Single out the feature of your service or product that is most valuable to your audience. If you’re selling cars to mechanics, talk about the engine. If you’re selling cars to someone in a mid-life crisis, talk about the style. If you’re selling cars to parents, talk about the safety ratings. The same car can mean many different things to many different people. No matter what you’re selling or creating or doing, think about why your audience needs it more than why you’re selling it.
   
4. Subvert expectations….if you can pull it off well. Shocking people always makes an impression, but I’m no fan of shock for shock’s sake. Your message still needs to resonate and, like everything else, your video must be consistent with your brand. Playfully making fun of yourself, being refreshingly honest (without being a jerk), and challenging biases by playing against gender roles or expectations for age, etc. are good ways to do this without damaging your brand.
   
5. Make it all about them. No matter who your audience is (customers, clients, donors, politicians, instagram followers), they almost all have one thing in common: they pay the most attention to what pays attention to them. Using your marketing videos to thank them, answers their questions, address their concerns, congratulate them, give them presents, or acknowledging their role in your endeavors is bound to be a marketing win.

Final thoughts: Keep it short and keep it simple. Limit every video to one specific message for one specific audience.