It was great to be back talking all things Video at the IAB Australia Video Summit on Tuesday 10th May 2022. A large number attended the event in-person to network and listen to expert discussions on video effectiveness, creativity and data.
Here is a wrap up of the discussion and key takeaways.
The morning event kicked off with Natalie Stanbury, Director of Research, at IAB Australia presenting results from wave 2 of the Video State of the Nation Industry Survey of media agencies, creative agencies and brand marketers conducted in March/April this year. Worth a watch of the whole video here, Nat gives a great deep dive into the key drivers behind continued video investment including expanded reach of tv campaigns, the offer of better targeting and personalisation and reaching audiences at scale.
Brand building remains the key objective for all types of video advertising including on connected TV’s, desktop and mobile devices but usage of video for other lower funnel campaign objects such as educating, increasing purchase intent and driving sales conversions has increased since last year. But is digital video delivering on these objectives? Yes! Over 8 in 10 agencies who use digital video for brand building state that they have been satisfied with campaign results.
Agencies are expanding their measurement toolkit and moving towards sustainable measurement techniques to assess video advertising success. These include the increased use of market mix modelling which has increased significantly since last survey and brand lift studies. With a variety of video formats being used such as short form, in-feed, long form and high impact across CTV, there are plenty of opportunities in this space for brands and advertisers.
This brings us to the top 5 tips on what you can do now when it comes to your video campaigns.
Next up we saw an animated panel of brand marketers who discussed trying different production techniques, tapping into the community, and the role of video within the marketing funnel. These marketers gave us great insights on how they are using video to make their brand stand out and create engagement using particular media environments.
For DTC brand ‘twentyfivefour’, Marketing Director Patrick Whitnall spoke about utilising smaller budgets in smarter ways and always ensuring they are trialing and testing what is working and what isn’t. He discussed looking beyond R&F metrics for success, it is about using video for education in a different way in a different format. His ultimate tip is, ‘you have to be nimble, you have to utilise the opportunities you see and if it works fantastic and if it doesn't then learn from it and try something new’.
Sarah Sorrenson, Director: Media & Digital Hub from Unilever echoed Patrick’s thoughts on how Unilever uses video to tell brand stories and also takes a test and learn approach across emerging video formats such as in gaming environments. Sarah spoke about the importance of partnering with local creatives to ensure the brand concept resonates with the consumer at a local level. Sarah also highlighted that while bigger brands may have bigger budgets, their challenges are still very similar in that they need to ensure they are reaching the right audience at the right time in their consumer journey.
William Hasko, Market Lead, ANZ, SG & MY – Small Business Marketing at Dell got into discussing the importance of measurement in video especially from a very transactional business perspective. He discussed the importance of ensuring the rest of the business is across why these video campaigns are being created and how they drive business outcomes. The use of stats to justify the money spent on the production of the video assets is an important part of his role and ensuring they trust him when he explains that if they switched off the campaign then sales will also take a hit as will brand equity. Will believes that those bigger brand-building campaigns play an important role but as you move down the funnel into educating the local consumer, you need to become more localised in your creative approach to video.
Bella Tayler, Senior Marketing Manager AUNZ for Spotify spoke about the challenges they face as a brand, ‘we have good local brand awareness…what we are fighting for is time so there is always a strong argument to be made for creating fit for purpose, fit for channel content’. She explains the importance of trying new ways of looking at the creative process, it doesn't always have to be the ‘sexiest thing you have ever created’, you can find an influencer that works well for your brand and that piece of content can be just as effective.
The Video Summit then provided insights from Kantar’s 2022 Creative Effectiveness Awards, presented by Irene Joshy, Regional Creative Head at Kantar. Irene’s key message was that web original content is more effective than re-purposed tv content, in other words, content that is fit for purpose delivers more on brand disposition and purchase intent. Kantar’s work reinforced a key theme from the summit, that it is worthwhile testing and learning to understand how content can be created to work most effectively within the environment it is placed in. Irene showcased great examples that have stood out in Kantar’s testing by utlising strong strategic and creative thinking in their executions from Whirlpool and Disney using the film ‘Encanto’ in their creative, to Chupa Chups utilising the TikTok platform to Kitchen Aid incorporating the trend of cooking at home due to Covid, worth having a look at the others as well, you can check them out here!
Last but not least the summit finished with a Creativity in Video Panel featuring Olia McDonald, Creative Technology Director at Resolution Media, Matt Stephens, Head of Client Engagement at Finecast, Paul Chappell, Founder and MD of Brand+Story and Nathan Richman, Co-Founder and MD of Elastic. Olia discussed the importance of having a media mindset when creating fit-for-purpose creative, she poses the ‘ideal world’ is where creatives and media planners are in the same room at the start of the conversation. Let's hope this event can get this collaboration to happen IRL.
Paul echoed that the key ingredients to creativity are ‘originality and effectiveness’, the landscape as he currently sees it is very vast and there are many opportunities available across a multitude of platforms. It is how you utilise those platforms with the brand that is key. It doesn't come without the challenge of pressure to ensure you are across all of those platforms and can deliver key ideas that utilise each channel to its fullest. Nathan went on to discuss how creativity comes down to ‘a really great seed of an idea with the audience at the heart of that idea, then looking at those channels and how they influence that creative’.
Matt gave a strong perspective on an industry opportunity for digital video across devices, more specifically Connected TV - knowing the audience capabilities and what the big screen digital platform itself can provide is important for brands and creatives to be across. This really shines the light on how vast digital video is from device-level - CTV, mobile, desktop, to the format of short form, long form then the environment of individual channels, the landscape is a big one! Luckily, the IAB Australia Video Council is looking to help simplify this in our next project for the back half of 2022.
This brings me to the end of the event with the key takeouts as follows:
1. For brands and marketers - keep testing and learning with digital video, creating content that is fit for its environment will only deliver good things.
2. For agencies and creatives - getting together at the start of the process, all being in one room will ensure both the creative idea and its media execution are in harmony.
3. For everyone - there isn't a secret sauce or special formula for video creativity, it is what works best for the audience, the brand and the environment so don't overcomplicate it!
AdNews did a great wrap up of the event too, check it out here!