How Online Video Can Benefit Brands When It Comes to Search

Touchstorm and Others Are Creating Useful Branded Content That Informs and Entertains -- and Gets Clicks

by Abbey Klaassen
Published: November 02, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Viral-video marketing, as it's traditionally been defined -- create a cute, funny, breathtaking or unexpected piece of content, seed it in the right places, and watch users pass it along -- has developed into a legitimate form of marketing. But what if marketers' fixation on all things viral is leading them to neglect other valuable and more consistently successful online-video strategies?

When General Mills' Betty Crocker brand wanted to move its web-video presence beyond "infant stage," it eschewed traditional trappings and worked with a digital content company, Touchstorm, to go another direction: study what kind of information consumers are hunting for, and then give it to them.

So they turned to search-query data. Turns out lots of people wanted information on cakes -- more specifically, kids' birthday cakes. The companies created a video series about how to make cakes shaped like princesses, pirates and ponies. The result? More than 4 million views and 50% greater time spent viewing than typical for consumer-package-goods-branded videos, according to online-video-measurement firm Visible Measures.

"There's a hole in the market when it comes to what consumers are searching for and where marketers can reach them," said Alison Provost, CEO of Touchstorm, part of PowerPak Holdings.

Brands in the search space are very organized around bottom-of-the-funnel terms or product-related terms -- search for digital cameras, and you get results for more than a half-dozen retailers or manufacturers. But brands are rarely organized around topical, top-of-the-funnel terms -- search for how to take black and white photos, and it's a brand wasteland. It shouldn't be that way, Ms. Provost said.