Yuit Communications
Yuit Communications
arketing brains know the “age of digital content” is now and has been going strong for a number of years. Digital content marketing has evolved from novel to necessary for startups and billion-dollar corporations alike. In fact, a common adage in the field is the phrase “content is king.” If that’s the case, video content is undoubtedly the supreme ruler of the land.
Cisco’s Visual Networking Index projects consumer video traffic to comprise 82 percent of all online traffic by 2021. Marketing tech company Unruly calculates that about 18 percent of internet users share videos on social networks at least once a week and that 61 percent of American Facebook users share video advertisements specifically.
Alaska’s marketers are leveraging the capabilities of digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Hulu, and even their own companies’ websites to create more robust brand strategies through the use of targeted, compelling video placements. This business pursuit involves a balance of creative storytelling and technical savvy that distinguishes digital video marketing from its traditional media counterpart, the classic television advertisement.
“Ten years ago, a company was progressive if it had a website and a Facebook page, and it posted [on Facebook] once a week. Now, if that’s all you have, you’re going to get left behind,” says Ingrid Klinkhart, partner and senior account strategist at Anchorage-based Yuit Communications. “You’ve got to consistently engage on a variety of platforms to stay relevant, and those depend on who your audience is and what type of service or product you’re promoting.”
Source: First National Bank Alaska YouTube channel | Production: Yuit Communications
“For digital marketers, ROI has always been a hot topic,” says Kerry Youngren, senior digital marketing strategist at MTA. “That is the case now more than ever. With the growth of online marketing platforms and all of the analytics you can get, people want to know, ‘How much money did I make off of that video?’”
And creative material can be changed at the drop of a hat. “The ability to be able to react quickly to your market, to your demographic, to be able to put a video out there and say ‘Oh, that didn’t work,’ and immediately launch the next one [is advantageous],” says Ryan Horn, marketing manager at Upper One Studios, a full service creative production company. “It’s no longer quarterly reports or annual reports that you build marketing strategies around. Now, it’s weekly reports or even daily reports that you can flex to.”
Cameras are becoming more of a commodity thanks to technology like smart phones. Video production is now feasible even within the smallest marketing budgets. “I think that the days of massive crews and extraordinarily expensive production are coming to an end as the tools are getting commoditized,” says Tyler Williams, owner of Mammoth Marketing in Fairbanks. “If you hop on YouTube, you can find single-man operations who can rival Hollywood videos because of their skill. I think it’s going to become more and more of a skill game of how to stand out.”
Not every business can outsource video production to a creative agency, but there are advantages to such a relationship. Upper One and MTA have forged a dynamic in which MTA’s in-house marketing team develops its objectives, identifies the right audiences, and has a comprehensive understanding of its brand identity. In turn, Upper One is tapped for the creative execution of MTA’s videos. According to the companies, the relationship allows both camps to invest more time and energy into their respective skill sets.
Source: MTA Solutions YouTube Channel | Production: Upper One Studios
Source: MTA Solutions YouTube Channel | Production: Upper One Studios
Digital video advertising isn’t as simple as uploading material that would otherwise have been used for a TV spot—marketers can’t command the attention of users in the same way. All it takes is a simple scroll for a video that misses the mark to be forgotten.
Upper One Studios
The opportunity to increase the production rate of videos also comes with a caveat on creativity, he adds. “The tricky balance is when you do more [videos] faster, you lose the creativity because you have to execute, but I think there is a balance in there somewhere.”
Over years of shooting for clients, Channel Films has accumulated a massive amount of footage that not only had use for a specific project at the time of filming but also had use for another video a client needed later on—sometimes years later. “Overshooting” has become an added value because of how much content can be stored in archives.
“I’d say we have half a petabyte of data at this point,” says Bob Kaufman, co-founder and co-owner of Channel Films. “We’ve gotten to the point now where we can shoot whatever we want and know we can find that stuff. You wouldn’t have done that in the old days because there was just no way to manage or find that much footage. I would say the idea of accumulating a lot of footage is practical now, where it wasn’t as practical in the past.”
Emma Sheffer, creative director at Channel Films, adds that in order for archiving to be effective in future projects, video crews need to understand the contextual potential of their shots not be revisited “From a filmmaking standpoint, you [need to] know what is going to be useful and that it’s going to be good clips that could be used in the future—not just random, long takes.”
From a technical standpoint, she also notes the significant impact that technological changes have on video quality, given that a team’s shots may not be revisited for a year or even three years. So even if the shots are still great compositionally, things like resolution quality may cause the footage to be deemed out of date.
“Not all 4K is created equal,” she says. “We really have had to think about what the technology of the future is—what color spaces are the most useful and the most malleable, how we’re going to compress our footage to be useful five years from now—and that longevity is tricky. It takes a lot of tech-heads on our team to really make predictions. We’re always figuring out better systems to make this more streamlined and efficient and useful to our client.”
“People like stories, and that’s why they love video,” muses Klinkhart. “Video creates an emotional connection with its audience like no other medium. Grab them at the beginning, in that first five seconds, and tell them why they should be interested in your brand. You can do that with video. You can grab at those heartstrings, you can make them laugh or make them cry.
“Everybody should be [using video]. I see the results and it works.”
Source: Young Brothers Hawaii YouTube channel | Production: Yuit Communications 
