Brands should not be afraid of making longer form content even as many digital platforms are pushing them towards shorter and shorter messages, Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia, has argued.
Vaynerchuk, who also leads agency network VaynerX, discussed this subject at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2019 Media Conference.
“Content targeting is real everywhere except Madison Avenue,” he stated. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Vaynerchuk: Brands, agencies fail miserably on content targeting.)
Building on this theme, Vaynerchuk told delegates that there is “an enormous lack of actual consumer thinking” in content creation among marketers.
“We’re all in an echo chamber. We sit in too much of an ivory tower and speak in terminology among ourselves [with] so much ideology. That is great for us, but normal humans don’t give a shit,” he asserted.
“When people think about the volume of content, there’s an immediate move to it not being quality because of quantity. That audacious point of view lacks the actual practicality of what’s happening in the trenches.
“We need to start looking at content in a very different way. Especially with first-party data, we need to look at content that scales.
“Our preference” at VaynerMedia, he continued, “is to take advantage of the digital platforms that allow a longer form of video” – an attitude that runs counter to much of the mainstream industry advice.
“We tend to go against best practices of the digital platforms on creative because, at the end of the day, we need to start making content that people actually want to watch – more so than throwing a logo in the first three seconds,” he continued.
“We have four-minute videos that are having completion rates that are unheard of. And they’re completely predicated on relevance, cultural timing, and integrating the brand.
“By targeting the media and the market … you might be able to affect the emotion of the end consumer to create intent to drive [core metrics].”
In contrast, he suggested to the Orlando audience: “Think about how many trade dollars every CPG [consumer packaged goods] brand is held hostage for after they pay the greater-than-enormous amounts they’re already being held to by retailers.
“In a world where their next competitor is building a direct-to-consumer brand, they need to follow that [trend], but the retailers are not going to allow them.”
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This article first appeared in www.warc.com
