In the first year of VLOG marketing, how can brands catch this express train?

Introduction: As a new trend, public opinion has begun to anticipate many futures, whether it is the platform’s self-entertainment, the next national media model, human self-recording, or performances under commercial disguise. This is the perspective of the times, while from the perspective of brands, they see traffic entrances and commercial value.

Maybe you have noticed that vlogs are starting to appear more frequently in our field of vision.

The stars, internet celebrities, and even friends you follow all hold up their phones, speak to the camera, record their lives, and express themselves. The audience, from the perspective of an observer, perceives the details of other people's lives through Vlog and forms an emotional resonance with the Vlogger. These resonances become spiritual support in real life and even play a partial companionship role, releasing information such as value output and life perceptions, forming a touchable and real interactive scene, which in turn feeds back to the Vlog content.

VLOG originated on the American YouTube website in 2012, became popular overseas in 2015, and then entered China in 2017, with the emergence of top Vloggers such as Jing Yue, FLYPIG, and Wang Xiaoguang. Now, giants such as Bilibili, Toutiao, Weibo, Tencent, and Baidu have entered the market, and celebrities such as Ouyang Nana, Lin Yun, Wu Lei, and Wang Yuan have shared their lives through Vlog. The real meaning of VLOG is actually video log, which can also be understood as Video+Blog: recording personal life through video images. Eating, working, traveling, activities, mumbling and everything in life can become the subject of his record.

According to public data from YouTube, the number of Vlog uploads has increased from 200 per day in 2013 to 2,000 per hour in 2017. One hundred million Vlog-related results can be retrieved on YouTube. According to the Baidu Index, the overall search volume for VLOG in China has shown an upward trend since 2018, with a very obvious increase. On Sina Weibo, the #VLOG# super topic has received 7.15 billion views and 7.19 million discussions.

As a new trend, public opinion has begun to anticipate many futures, whether it is the platform's self-entertainment, the next national media model, human self-recording, or performances under commercial disguise. This is the perspective of the times, while from the perspective of brands, they see traffic entrances and commercial value.

丨The marketing value of Vlog

1) Real life is the best endorsement for brand placement

Vlog is a medium for recording real life, known as a "moving log", which shows the real life of volggers. This format, which has no pre-rehearsal, no scripts, and little performance, abandons dramatic packaging, and the video content is more down-to-earth and real.

Therefore, at the level of advertising placement, brands can leverage the volgger perspective familiar to users to integrate unique storytelling with life, thereby weakening the awkwardness of brand placement, weakening advertising traces, and gaining a high sense of identity. Maintaining the originality of the advertisement and real user experience will not make people feel abrupt and false, and the audience will tend to understand it as a part of life. When a Vlogger endorses a product, it is more convincing than a commercial endorsed by a celebrity. This forms a strong relationship chain between the Vlogger and the audience.

2) Sufficient time, great room for brand development

The length of a Vlog video is relatively flexible, generally 5-15 minutes, which is longer than an advertising short film. In addition, the "time/space span that can be presented" of a Vlog video content is greater than that of an ordinary content video, so there is more room for creative expression.

Vlog is not just a way for brands to simply make their presence felt. It has sufficient space and capacity to fully demonstrate the multi-dimensional value of a brand or product. It has stronger advantages in creating an immersive viewing experience, forming user stickiness, and deeply conveying brand value.

3) It can cultivate a more sticky audience and achieve a higher conversion rate

Vloggers who show their private side through real life can more easily build an emotional connection with the audience. When the audience identifies with a Vlogger’s attitude towards life and finds their own attitude towards life influenced by Vlog, a stronger stickiness is established between the Vlogger and the audience than with other content forms.

Once this stickiness is established, it will form strong connectivity and deep fan base, high loyalty and high conversion rate. Especially for Vloggers who are lifestyle bloggers, after accumulating a large number of fans who identify with their lifestyle, they can achieve a higher monetization conversion rate.

丨Four forms of volg marketing

1) Product evaluation based on real scenarios

This method is the most common way of promoting products in VLOG. Brands need to convey the selling point of the product to the audience, and then vloggers will use this selling point to conduct unboxing and evaluation, especially beauty products, trendy shoes, digital cameras and other products. These are the products most commonly used by vloggers, and they can deeply integrate the product and creative experience in the evaluation.

Vloggers seamlessly embed product usage into their daily records of life and work, usually by exposing the product or recommending their “favorite products”. By displaying the product's features and effects from multiple angles and sharing usage experiences, the authenticity and credibility of product recommendations are improved.

With the help of celebrity effect, the dissemination of original content in the form of vlogs has also become a powerful tool for brand interactive communication. For example, Converse spokesperson Ouyang Nana unboxed the products sent by Converse in a vlog and recorded the entire process of customizing shoes at a Converse offline store. Although there is not much brand information revealed and no specific product is recommended, a search on Weibo with the keywords "Ouyang Nana, VLOG, Converse" reveals a lot of feedback from netizens, which indirectly confirms the feasibility of VLOG as a marketing form in the cooperation between brands and celebrities.

2) Story customization makes the branding subtle and effective

By combining the vlogger’s own story, the spirit or concept advocated by the brand can be reflected in the vlog. This form can easily arouse the audience’s resonance and thus attract fans.

In the VLOG marketing of Huawei nova4, four well-known vloggers @房琪kiki, @仲尼Johnny, @象韵洁, and @王嘉禾er were united to use Huawei nova4 phones to shoot vlogs on themes of their own choice based on the background of the Spring Festival.

For example, @房琪kiki took the theme of "Going home is the best gift for parents" and filmed the difficulties young people faced during the Spring Festival travel rush to return home in order to reunite with their parents, showing the young people's attachment to their parents and home. This vlog not only received a good response on the Internet, but was also reported by CCTV-13 channel.

For example, @象韵洁 took the New Year's Eve dinner as the theme and filmed the sumptuous New Year's Eve dinner she prepared for her parents, in order to show her parents her growth so that even if she leaves home in the future, her parents can rest assured.

Huawei nova4 linked these vlog videos together from before the New Year to after the New Year, which not only attracted the attention of these vlogger fans, but also resonated with many young people wandering outside, inspiring them to share spontaneously, forming a secondary fission and gaining more exposure.

Although there is no introduction to Huawei nova4 in the entire video, the vlogger's casual use and the prompts at the beginning and end of the video let users know that this VLOG was shot by a Huawei nova4 phone, which has a subtle influence on users. At the same time, the VLOG has established its brand image of focusing on young groups and being warm, and has also narrowed the distance between the brand and young people, allowing the product to enter the circle of young people.

3) Create an immersive experience

Of course, not all products can naturally appear in the life of vloggers. Instead of trying hard to implant them, it is better to present the brand and product features to the audience in an immersive content experience. At present, many offline experience classes, brand launches, exhibitions and other activities have invited vloggers to participate. Information such as venue setting and new product highlights can convey the on-site experience to the audience in a concise and lifelike way.

Vlogger's first-person presentation will make the audience feel friendly and happy. The immersive feeling will also allow the atmosphere of the scene to be conveyed through the form of vlog, and the audience can also increase their favorability towards the brand in the immersive experience.

For example, OPPO R17 Pro creates an immersive night shooting experience in the form of VLOG. In today's era, young people are limited by factors such as lack of time during the day, too many people, and too strong sun. They love to go out at night. Based on this insight, OPPO R17 Pro focuses on night shooting functions and invites a group of domestic top voggers to travel through the three cities of Tokyo, New York, and Hong Kong, bringing a wonderful journey of discovering and recording the night.

Through Volgger's "eyes" who are good at discovering beauty from a unique perspective, the audience can "experience" the unprecedented seductive night scene through the "cloud". At the same time, through the use of multi-lens language, background music that blends with the temperament of the three major cities at night, and a fast and slow editing rhythm... the immersive experience is comprehensively enhanced on the basis of art, making the user's heart that wants to personally experience and record the night scene restless. The immersive experience not only fully demonstrates the product features, but also deeply awakens users' potential consumption needs.

4) Brand placement

"Nike gave me a budget of 100,000 yuan to shoot an advertisement, and I used the money to travel around the world for ten days." The above sentence is the beginning of a Nike bracelet advertisement. The entire advertisement revolves around three or two people running at a travel destination. 29 hours of material was finally condensed into a 4-minute vlog.

But such an advertisement that seems a bit nonsensical and hardly shows any product actually well interprets what Nike wants to express: "Every second counts." At the same time, it reached 27 million views on YouTube, becoming one of the most popular advertising videos in Nike's history.

In the current fierce competition in the short video industry, traditional ways of selling products have long been unable to meet the needs of consumers. If brands want to gain the favor of consumers, they must find other ways. Therefore, vlog, with its high-quality original content, in-depth experiential approach, and authentic personality attributes, fits the demands of young people to express themselves and return to reality, and has become a new means of brand cooperation. It can open up the consumer market of the younger generation in a fast and effective way.

With the advent of the 5G era and the increasing explosion of information dissemination, brand content marketing methods have become particularly important. Only interesting and fresh content can be noticed. As a new trend, Vlog has gradually attracted the attention and favor of brands. The personalization, strong user stickiness and cultural attributes of Vlog have driven more and more brands to enter the market, seize user attention, and embrace consumers in a variety of forms.

Faced with the rapid popularity of vlog and the unremitting support of giants, vlog has not only become the choice of the younger generation, but is also becoming the next traffic depression. However, at the same time, VLOG itself has problems such as immature commercialization and the incomplete formation of a closed business loop. Currently, only a small number of top vloggers have the ability to realize commercial profits. How to support this market to become popular and find new ways for vloggers to communicate with consumer groups are also what brand owners need to consider.

Author: 404 Tenant

Source: PR Home