Webflicks’ Lou Harness explains the latest video marketing trends for 2023 and beyond.
You don’t need to be told, again, about the inexorable rise and rise of video. You want the nuance. The Webflicks team spent much of a very damp January talking, listening, reading and digesting to bring you all the intel on video marketing trends for 2023.
Here are our key findings:
Video marketing has stopped being optional and is now indisputably the ROI differentiator.
There’s always change, there are always shifts and trends – such as the proliferation of short form video, AI-created content, ChatGPT, and the metaverse. Brands and businesses must move with it, explore and grow. Hold on to your core values, know what you’re trying to advance and be willing to learn and iterate. And develop supple strategy.
Two main concepts to grasp for 2023 are short form video and vertical.
All the statistics say the same thing – the demand for short form video is only increasing. YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Reels on Facebook. Short form video on these platforms is consumed by millennials, Gen X, Y, Z, Alpha, and the boomers. We simply can’t get enough.
Vertical explained, simply.
Because of how much time we now spend watching video on mobile devices it means that production companies shoot and frame for a vertical view (portrait) as opposed to TV/cinema (landscape). This means that videos produced for social platforms look and perform better with no padding either side of the video and no loss of framed image when the video is auto-cropped to scale when posted.
Short form video is just that – it’s a quick bite (generally 15 seconds but can be longer). Short form videos can be anything – casual, candid, or authentic ‘human’ or fun moments. A flourish, a climax, a denouement.
They’re a distillation of a broader brand story and get away without being too “produced”. They offer the opportunity to create ‘mind-share’ or ‘presence-of-mind’.
Short form can be an edited moment (or cut down) from longer form videos which is a clever way of repurposing reach, or they can be produced specifically to create a different energy.
More on this in our blog “Connection in a New Landscape”.
Critically, short form video works in tandem with long form video – the kind you might find on a website landing page or in blog/resources areas of a site.
Long form can be any length – in film and TV the term ‘long form’ traditionally refers to anything feature length, but in terms of business video long form generally means anything longer than a minute.
Long form video is brilliant for explaining what a brand means and deepening understanding and connection. It can accelerate relationships by showcasing brand in a way that sets a defined tone, is easy to understand and builds rapport quickly and easily.
Quality brand and long form video is, and will always be, fundamental.
Marketeers and video producers have all kinds of terms for all kinds of video. Brand, evergreen, explainer, testimonial, teaser… the list goes on.
The more important consideration when deciding what kind of video to be making in 2023 is “what do we want to achieve? Who do we want to speak to? What do we want to say?”
Short form vertical is simply a chance to build on your comms repertoire and authentically engage in a different way for a new pattern of viewership.
Step out, be real and unapologetically authentic, and provide value while telling your brand story – short or tall.
Lou Harness is the founder of Webflicks Ltd – ‘Business Video with Heart+Craft’. You can link to her blog here: https://www.webflicks.co.nz/video-production/video-production-trends-2023-and-beyond/
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