Adam Wotherspoon is the President of Third Spoon Creative, a talented team that provides media solutions for businesses. Specialties include professional videography, photography, and powerful storytelling expertise that elevates brands and deepens their connection with their audience.
As a treat, we're going to teach you the Bite, Snack, Meal Method.
Video has officially established itself as the leading form of advertising for businesses. With the internet and social media, companies have the capability of reaching more customers than ever before. Grabbing customers attention is crucial; research shows video is the best way to grab and hold your customers attention, but you have to do it right.
Gone are the days of spending boatloads of money on one long video. With today’s variety of platforms and platform-specific expectations, delivering the message quickly and effectively through a series of short and long videos is the most compelling way to maintain viewers’ attention.
The average attention span of today’s digital consumer is around six seconds. The traditional buildup-climax-payoff is a thing of the past. Now, viewers need to know right away why they should keep watching your ad. Starting out videos with an attention grabber will draw them into the rest of the short clip. Once you’ve attracted a viewer, it’s all about what they see next. That’s where the “Bite, Snack, Meal” method comes in.
Today, advertisers and video producers are utilizing the 3 course meal strategy. Here’s how it works:
First, we start them off with a little taste to peak their interest–a :06 second ad. Maybe we serve 3-4 of these :06 second formatted ads. Now you’ve begun to tell your story and peaked the viewer’s interest.
Next comes the appetizer. That’s your traditional ad length of :15-:30 second with a little more substance. The longer length allows you to tell a bit more of your story and get your key messages across so you can start to connect with the viewer even deeper.
Finally, we serve them their meal; this is your long-form content that’s not possible on TV. This can be anywhere from 60 seconds to 3 minutes, or even longer. It’s important to keep in mind that even though these videos are longer, we should still be front-loading the action to grab the audience’s attention and keep them engaged.
Rather than starting viewers off with a single two-minute video, you can tell your story with multiple, shorter videos, constantly keeping viewers engaged on their journey to becoming a customer.
Okay, so now you have tons of good video content, but where does it go?
There are 2.71 billion smartphone users worldwide, one billion of which use various social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. The 3 Course Dinner approach is perfect for social media and digital placement. While scrolling through their phones, users are constantly shown these :06 second and :15-:30 second video ads, and they are perfectly consumable for people on-the-go.
These video ads may pop up in the middle of a Facebook video, or be shown before a YouTube video. Most of the time, these videos are unskippable; that is the power of the short form video. Users are trying to reach a longer video that they have searched for, or maybe a friend sent to them. Rather than making them watch a 1 minute video, we can now serve them shorter ads that they can retain much better than a longer one. The more creative and intriguing the video is, the more likely viewers will remember your brand. Creating 3-5 of these :06 or :15 second advertisements is an innovative way to create a story for potential customers to watch.
At this point you’ve grabbed the attention of potential clients through shorter videos and hopefully they’ve reached your website or one of your social media channels. This is a perfect opportunity for the “meal” video. If they are interested enough in your product or service to visit your site, your new goal is to keep them there.
When they reach your site, the first thing they see should be a 60 second video that tells your story; this is a great way to give potential customers better insight into who you are and what you do. Instead of reading about you, your site visitors can watch a video that tells them everything they need to know in a much shorter, consumable, and enjoyable way.
A successful video strategy in today’s world is much different than it used to be. Creating a series of long and short videos allows brands to tell their story in unique and attention-grabbing ways. Video is a highly effective medium, but only if it is distributed correctly. Know your audience and where they spend most of their time, and serve them these video ads in those places. Once you have created a fan base with clever and engaging video, it should be pretty easy to turn that fan base into paying customers.