Video Revolution
How the merger of TV and the computer is playing out online
October 2007 By Timothy R. Hawthorne
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Marketing pundits proclaim uniformly that the Web is the future of advertising. Commercials on TV? Stick a fork in them; they’re done. Discard them, and cart them away. It’s curious advice. The TV commercials that build brands, generate leads and produce direct sales remain powerful. The analysts’ predictions aside, advertisers act with conviction. According to Nielsen, TV’s slice of the ad revenue pie is a sweet 65.5 percent. Internet ads account for a mere sliver: 6.6 percent. And consumers themselves still respect their old friend. Kantar Media Research found that 43 percent find TV “excellent” or “good” for building brand awareness. Twenty-six percent proclaimed TV ads tops for developing trust—the best score in the survey. Online video registered less than 5 percent in both of these categories. And it’s estimated that a whopping 25 percent-plus of all TV commercials now incorporate some response mechanism.
A Multichannel Perspective
Dismissing TV advertising, whether brand- or direct response-oriented, to singularly embrace the Web is the height of futuristic folly. Even so, the Internet’s online ad share is a number that continues to grow, and it would be just as foolish to ignore that opportunity. Few successful brands can afford to limit their marketing to only one medium. If consumer attention is as stretched and fragmented as reported, a multichannel approach is the only viable way to ensure the broadest reach possible. Three-quarters of American Internet users watched online video this past July, comScore reported. So while DRTV clients and agencies should remain true to core values, they also should follow the wandering eyeballs. Investment in online video is a must—but it is as much an expansion of creative vision and strategic thinking as it is of domain names and dollars.
Unfortunately, the initial wave of DRTV-online executions simply plastered TV tactics on top of a Web site. While these did add a lucrative purchasing channel, they offered nothing viewers hadn’t seen before. Search Google for random direct response products, and you’ll quickly discover a de facto template that makes too little use of a site’s video potential. Many resemble haphazardly constructed call-to-action tags, complete with an offer and order form. The effect is to ask for the order before making the pitch. That’s backward. More puzzling is shunting the video—the very element that drove these products’ popularity in the first place—into very small video players crammed into a corner of a Web page. Too small to do their products full justice, the videos degrade into audio assaults, as interruptive as old-school “yell-and-sell” commercials that intrude on favorite TV shows. That sort of video is not engaging or immersing. It’s just a cheap imitation of TV. Why bother?
Video for the Web Sale
Although the Web began as a text medium, technology improved quickly and rich media arrived shortly after. The public’s appetite for such content was voracious, and the text-based Web didn’t last even a generation. That’s hardly surprising. Reading is coolly analytical, while video can be emotionally immersing. Whereas viewing is instinctively reactive, reading is intellectually demanding. With online video, viewers make the crucial demand: Entertain me.
Creating new ad models requires innovation and experimentation. The emerging new world of advertising is converging around the medium of interactive video communications. At Hawthorne Direct, we coined the term “videoactive™ advertising” to describe it. And it’s all about the immense persuasive power of multi-platform video, as well as the revolution in deploying it effectively in our rapidly evolving world of integrated TV and Internet advertising.
So when creating video for the Net, should you do just what the veteran Netizens do? Not exactly. Direct response principles transform the video equation. Similar to the tactics employed in long-form DRTV spots, emotional roller coasters and a few laughs remain in videoactive advertising—but information predominates. Sales-purposed videos matter-of-factly demonstrate tangible benefits. “You want to really entertain me?” consumers challenge. “Show me how, in two easy payments, you will make my life better.”
Today, more and more consumers prefer to go online to further explore any considered purchase. And research in this area makes it abundantly clear that what consumers see online is what ultimately may make the difference between being just a browser or a customer. A well-designed video-active Web site should provide multiple “Internet infomercials” through which the prospect/viewer can take a visually immersing trip toward making a considered purchase. The video-active Web site is intended to draw in the inquisitive TV-viewer-turned-Web-purchaser for deeper video-based information, education and completion of sale.
Exploit the Web’s Benefits
When pundits pontificate about how the mass media cedes control to consumers, they might mention time-shifting, but they seldom discuss time itself. Yet time is what offers online creatives their greatest advantage. Time is the father of the modern infomercial: The more you tell, the more you sell. But even long-form programs must get the job done in 28:30 (TV lingo for 28 minutes, 30 seconds). Online, you enjoy the freedom to craft video as long as the proverbial string: whatever the ideal length for the task. In reality, consumers’ jumpy browsing habits dictate dividing presentations into brief chapters or employing a telescope platform. This lets your viewers manage their own time directly. Linear infomercials require you to wait for a killer demonstration or a gripping testimonial; a well-designed videoactive Web site will help you find either in seconds.
Long-form DRTV respects that its viewers opt in—the same dynamic of choice that governs all manner of Internet browsing. TV channel surfers click their remotes until they stumble across something that grabs their attention. They make their choices and vote by remote. Web site users click their mice until they stumble across links that intrigue them. Once they land on your site, you have roughly six seconds to slow down their clicking and inspire them to stick around. Auto-play video performs a critical role here because all viewers are curious to see what happens next.
Videoactive Web sites can put to good use the careful start-to-finish scripting that long-form creative requires. An infomercial is not an uninterrupted half-hour narrative, it’s a series of segments. Directors skillfully stitch them together for maximum impact, but each segment has some juice of its own. Online, such segments become chapters you can add or subtract, tighten up or more fully expand. You should plan an optimum interaction where you lead viewers to discover everything they need to understand your product’s purpose, price point and benefits. But don’t discourage consumers from starting in the middle if that’s what they want. If you can close a sale in two minutes rather than 10, that’s something you should celebrate. But whatever you do, provide plenty of content for consumers to clickthrough. The more engaging your videoactive Web site, the greater the odds that your click-happy surfers will stick somewhere on your site. So imbue it with depth and variety, and appeal to both heart and mind … all of it powered by video. Simplified in that manner, it sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?
Broaden Your Horizons
Advertising’s video evolution is nothing to fear. By definition, evolution is a process by which change makes you stronger. Direct response agencies that feel most at home on TV only will weaken if they hide from new Web opportunities. If you know DRTV, you also know video, persuasion and targeting. Now that Internet videoactivity has arrived, you just have to learn a new address.
Timothy R. Hawthorne is chairman and executive creative director of Hawthorne Direct, a full-service DRTV, print, mail and digital ad agency founded in 1986. A 34-year television producer/writer/director, Hawthorne is a cum laude Harvard graduate. He can be reached at (641) 472-3800.
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