Creating a Branded Content Series
Creating a Branded Content Series
As much as we love a new social channel, new content style to test, and new campaigns to storyboard, creating consistent content for your brand is key. The reason a lot of brands HAVEN’T don’t this is because they haven’t found that formula that works for them. The one that looks like this: fits the budget and team bandwidth, feels genuine to the brand and will be engaging on a long term basis to the audience, and has the format to take on many forms.
If you think about it tv shows and our favorite influencers have this down. They have a winning formula that people can’t get enough of. People watch it, love it, and go back to it because they know what they can expect.
Here are a few brands/creators doing this well with their video content on social:
Sake Soda Guy: A classic - live in-store taste tests.
Rit Dye: Who thought this would be a popular account - watch what Rit can dye.
Candy Works: This brand has a few series, but one of the more popular ones is their snack taste tests and freeze dried candy.
Keith Lee: Food review may seem easy, but Keith really knows how to captivate the audience
Glossier: Their “Get Ready With Me” series started over 7 years ago on Youtube and is still going strong.
What’s Poppin’ Show: Davis got it right, street interviews in Washington Square Park.
Tanner Leatherstein: Is this also on your for your page? This account deconstructs designer bags to let you know if it’s worth the money
Claire and Peter: Our favorite traveling couple, their content is around their life and travel, but the consistent content is the budget they set and how much they spend each day
Now, how can you think about creating this for your own brand? Here’s where we would start:
Ideation
Concepts: What content over time has always performed well for you? What performs well for competitors? What content feels natural for your brand to be creating?
Long Term Trends: Typically for the last 10 years, consumers are drawn to game shows (people love to win or watch others win/lose), drama (who isn’t addicted to Love is Blind?). And we have to mention, the new show all over TikTok - Jury Duty. People LOVE shows like this, controlled and uncontrolled variables, someone out of the loop, no ones knows what will really happen and we all are drawn to watch things unfold.
Consumer: What type of things are your consumers always searching for? Who are their favorite influencers? What are those people doing?
Format & Placement
Understanding how to shoot this content in an engaging way will be key - as well as making sure you know how that will look on the social channels (or keeping in mind the adaptations the content needs when shooting). Think about your idea and how you could mix it with a certain style to make it different than what other people are doing. You’ve probably had some great ideas that just were not executed well previously.
Here are a few examples of content that used a format that has been proven to work:
Reality Style
Documentary Style
Talking Head
Talent
This may make or break what you are doing - working with the right talent that not only understands the vision, but excited about it, can contribute their own ideas/takes, and excited to do this. As an agency we have a lot of ideas and especially working with a lot of UGC creators recently (or being told employees will be good to be on video) doesn’t always turn out well, or a clear vision that you can’t fully articulate or have a creator with similar examples can truly kill the vibe, which kills the idea. This needs to come natural to everyone involved.
Intimated or overwhelmed? We get it - this is one of the hardest things that a brand can do and why most brand’s haven’t done this yet. But as you saw from the examples, the ones that do see the results.
