videos have a longer shelf life.. when the idea is share-worthy.. Top that with killer in-house execution.. 
So ibis India asked us to make a video about their new hotel in Goa. The challenge was to figure out a way to celebrate an overly celebrated destination. For the video to be share-worthy, it had to be about the users, not about Goa, or the hotel or the brand or us. So we asked ourselves.. What’s the number one problem for youngsters when they plan for Goa? Take a guess.. Parents! After few hours of brainstorming of all the things they say, we flipped it and our idea was born :)
Mobile Native: Square videos are mobile native, and don’t need tilting for the full experience. Videos have been rectangle for long, but now we consume them vertically. Vine and Instagram started the vertical ‘square’ video trend, but Facebook is what brought it front and centre (at least in India)
Make It Easy to Understand: After much discussion, we decided to meme-ify the video and add a black strip with title on top, so when Facebook auto-plays it you know the context till the end. Even though meme videos are like the graffiti of video world, but what the hell.. it’s about storytelling and share-worthiness :)
Make it Sound Proof: From our data, 75% of video views are without sound on Facebook, so the video had to be sound proof and since this was a first where we had actual dialogues, subtitles are super important. And subtitles not in a different language but the same as script, so it matches the visuals.
Move Fast: First 3-6 seconds is our target, to make it compelling enough to continue. As marketers our dream is for people to stop in news-feeds, hit play, watch the whole thing, share it and then give us their kidney! lol First 3-6 are most crucial.
Execute, Execute Execute: We were really skeptical of going all in with in-house capabilities. Heck, I played a role too (my first). The only thing I told myself: Let’s follow the plan, however it looks and execute.. if it doesn’t look good. we’ll figure something out. But wallah, team did a kick-ass job.. :)
Results: The video is off to a good start, got about 200k views on first day (On Facebook)
After our success in videos over the last few years, ixigo is taking on limited clients (Travel brands only) for videos, ibis being our first :) Do check out the other video we made for ibis Goa titled ‘How To Fake a Goa Vacation‘
Remember I was writing a book? Yes I’m still on it going strong. Sign-up to get it before anyone else when it comes out :)
Few months back I did a webinar on the best practices in viral video marketing, the method to the madness in producing and distributing video content. Here’s a quick 5 minute video with highlights from the webinar, the longer version you can find below. Happy Content Marketing to you :)
Content ideas are everywhere, execution is everything
Operate like movie studios, do ten experiments, two will work