How to Use Photo & Video for Marketing Your Brand in 2020

A Brand With a Story

When a customer is surfing the internet or interacting with social media, they are consuming an astonishing amount of photo and video ads. In fact, the average person is estimated to encounter around 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. 

Photographs and videos are the most useful assets for controlling how your brand is perceived by prospects, and it significantly increases the chances of potential customers becoming real, loyal customers. Today, people are accustomed to visual communication as still images and videos take over the internet with platforms like social media. 

Increasingly, people are receiving their information through pictures and moving pictures more than text. With the flood of advertisements that people consume daily, you only have a second to capture their attention, and photos and videos that tell a good story and have emotional content have a better chance of getting your audience’s attention.

It’s not enough just to produce media. Without a good story, a strategy to back it up, and the right audience seeing it, all of your hard work is futile. 

At Deksia, we are lucky to be an integrated creative team of copywriters, designers, and photo/videographers that all work together to create powerful stories. Because of this advantage, we have gained key insights into how photos and videos can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. 

Here is how we strategize photo and video marketing for your company. 

It’s common for photo and video personnel to just show up and ask generic questions that don’t really get to the root of what they need to be saying. Great photo and video all have one thing in common: they…

Tell a Story.

Photographs and videos make us feel things. And those emotions shape how we respond to everything else you say. When people see expressions, it connects with us at a primal level, below conscious rationality. Photographs and videos create emotion, and emotion sells. 

For example, we’re all familiar with the Nike commercials depicting passionate fitness journeys of people motivated to be their best selves. Wearing Nike inherently motivates your passion and drive to achieve your fitness goals. Producing a strong narrative is important, just make sure that it aligns with your messaging and your brand. 

Photographs and videos should be the end-product, not where you start. Photo and Video are nothing without a great strategy. Before you can begin strategizing, you have to begin with…

Discovery.

Developing an effective strategy begins with understanding your objectives and situation. You want to discover how your brand is unique from others, what you want to accomplish, and who your customers are. With this information learned, you can create a photo and video strategy that persuades customers of beliefs and emotions they need to hold in order to get off the fence and buy. 

With a strategy in place, you can begin to…

Create.

During the creation process, remember that photo and video provide an outlet for brands and the people that work with brands to be heard. It’s an extremely effective tool for controlling how your brand is perceived in the public eye, so you want to be sure you have a strategy that maximizes your media assets.

Deksia follows a three-step process for creating media assets:

• Pre-Production Planning: With a clear understanding of the goals and vibe you’re going for, you can create storyboards and shot lists. You want to define a story arc and brainstorm relevant questions prior to interviewing the employees or customers who best can tell your story.
• Production: Authenticity is key. We recommend capturing footage of subjects in action, whether live-action or in staged scenarios (building products, interacting with customers, products in action, etc.). Action shots inject story and illustrate concepts that are being discussed in ways that stick with viewers long after a video is done. Try utilizing techniques like rough cuts, and professional, natural lighting to create raw and authentic content.
• Post-Production: Because of all of the work put into pre-production, cutting and polishing your content happens faster and looks better. After you cut down the usable footage, you should add color, audio, and motion graphics to highlight key points of your message and emphasize emotion. Don’t forget to acquire music rights for any borrowed audio!

Following a process provides consistency and adds structure so that you can be more successful, more often. You can use the content that you create to make your brand come alive on your website, in your ads, and in your brochures and other print collateral. It allows you to create a strong brand image and marketing campaign that stretches across all marketing efforts.

P.S… If you haven’t already invested in video, your competitors surely have.

We all know the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. A still photo can be interpreted in a number of ways, but video allows you to have more control and power over how your marketing is perceived. 

Video allows you to share testimonials, company values, and how to use your services. Testimonials are the easiest way to sell people on your product or service; it’s less biased, and it comes from someone that consumes the product/service. 

Videos are powerful tools for telling specific and complex stories sympathetic to the target audience. And you can produce photos that align with your videos to further push your marketing agenda. However, photography is more versatile and lends itself to a variety of different projects and campaigns (we strongly recommend custom photography instead of stock photography). 

At Deksia, we believe that photography and video are essential media for marketing success today. And not just because today’s digital media needs photography and video assets, but also because photo and video talent have insights that strengthen the rest of your marketing too.

That’s why we’ve committed significant resources to recruit and retain top-quality video and photography talent. Join the photo/video revolution today and give us a call!