Creating Video Ads for Maximum Reusability
Creating effective video advertisements can be a massive undertaking. You have to understand the product you’re trying to sell, understand who you’re selling to, and then go about producing the videos. Any video producer will tell you that planning is key since by taking the time upfront to research competitor ads, create an effective video marketing strategy, and evaluate available resources, you will have a higher chance of creating effective videos.
To take this one step further, though, why not plan so far in advance that your chance of success is even higher? My suggestion, in this case, is to produce videos that can be reused, repurposed, and recycled for many different uses to produce a greater range of potential outcomes. This article will be my case for why creating longer, highly produced videos, is a more efficient and effective strategy than creating one-off, shorter-length videos.
Grammarly’s marketing videos will be the subject of this article since they have mastered the ability to reuse their contcompany that utilizes this approach.
At Air Apps, we reference Grammarly’s videos often as a good example of what we should strive for in our ads. It became apparent shortly after watching a few videos, that they would reuse shots and actors from video to video. Even if the story would change, the shots were versatile enough to be reused with new messaging and in different creative contexts to effectively create a new ad.
This first video focuses on a single user’s experience while using Grammarly, and shows the user in different situations specific to this story. The character, Tyler, appears in a number of their ads, in various contexts, despite the same shots being reused. In this video, you’ll see that the shots that were reused still fit the context of the new video. Having the same characters appear in different videos playing the same roles is a clever way to build some brand consistency, but there are more benefits to this approach that may not be as obvious.
From an economical standpoint, there are many intelligent decisions that were made that allow for such reusability. First, there are a lot of cutaways being used, such as the close-ups on the actor’s hand typing, that not only help to establish the scene but make for greater options when setting the pacing for the edit. Furthermore, text bubbles or graphic overlays can be added and changed depending on the ad they are added to, which makes these a great option for added flexibility.
Another method employed was to shoot coverage of the actors engaging with the product in different ways. While they still shot coverage of the actors delivering lines specific to one story, they made sure to also shoot coverage of the actor emoting in different ways, like smiling as if accomplished, or focused, etc. This allows for the ability to insert the shots of the actors in various scenarios without breaking context.
Here you can see that our character is being pulled from his desk into an antarctic landscape to metaphorically describe how a writing tone can make someone feel. The same shot is used in this video, where the messaging is tweaked to describe how far away Tyler feels from his boss, due to their lack of communication. Both shots work within their videos perfectly and help to further the stories in their own ways.
Another benefit of this strategy from a production standpoint is the ability to focus on higher quality. Rather than having many different shoot days with new actors, new locations, all of which may or may not need budgets, time, and resources, shoot days can be greatly consolidated. By shooting the actors emoting in different ways, getting adequate b-roll, getting different dialog options, and shooting from different perspectives, you maximize that shooting day.
These two shots below appear in different promos, but are of the same actor and would have been shot during the same shooting day. The same shots appear in both promos, but they are used in different ways with different text.
From a marketing standpoint, this opens up a lot of new opportunities as well by creating ads that feature a diversity of talent, targeting users from different backgrounds. For example, all of the characters featured in this ad were actually pulled from their own standalone ads. Each character represents a person in relatable scenarios, each interacting with the app in their own unique way. This style is a supercut, which is essentially a montage of different clips, but as an ad it stills holds up on its own.
One thing to consider while evaluating Grammarly’s ads is that in all cases, they may not have planned to reuse the content in the way that it ended up. But by shooting such a range of perspectives, having the actors offer different performances, and making each standalone commercial focus on a different target audience, the versatility to create something new becomes something highly achievable.
It also opens up the opportunity to test different ads’ performance and easily make tweaks to the edits to improve performance. If for example, it is determined that the young woman from this video, performed better than the one in this video, the two scenarios can easily be swapped.
The potential for versatility does not end there. Oftentimes, different platforms call for different formats and video lengths. And in general, it is a good idea to test different sizes and lengths even on the same platform. This video is another supercut style, featuring characters from their own longer stories, cut down to a shorter length. Again, there is still versatility available for swapping the shots, characters, etc, when desired, but this version stands as a viable ad in its own right. By having such a wealth of options available, you will be in the editing room for weeks after a shoot, testing different lengths and the creative opportunities available to you.
As you can see, there is a wide range of benefits of approaching your video creation with the purpose of reusing, repurposing, and recycling. With the vastness of marketing opportunities available today through the internet, the potential reach of videos has expanded tremendously. In order to fully capitalize on those opportunities, however, having a system that offers the flexibility of messaging, branding, talent, and most importantly, story, will allow video marketers to extend their reach further than ever before.
