Online Video Marketing is Human
January’s edition of Marketing News from the AMA had a piece by Brian Solis, Exploring the Fifth and Sixth Ps Of Marketing, that got me thinking about online video marketing and why it’s effective and why the industry is growing so rapidly.
In the article, Solis contends that in addition to the traditional pillars of marketing–product, price, place and promotion–people and purpose ought to be added. So its Solis’s focus on people in particular that got me thinking. Solis is taking a holistic view here, talking about people in the sense of individual (ie non-demographed) consumers and also members of companies. He’s talking about a human-centric view of consumers and businesses and having empathy for that individual experience.
I’m not going to get into the Mitt Romney debate about whether corporations are people. 
Profiles Are Inherently Social
But I do think that at a very basic level, the upticks in engagement and conversion that we see when profile videos and client testimonial videos are included on websites is a direct result of a basic desire for individual, human interaction and wanting to get as close to that as possible, whenever possible.
Online video marketing is human marketing. The trends toward individualized, socially-driven consumer engagement and direct responsiveness among successful brands and the explosive growth of online video marketing are very intimately related.
When we work with clients and are aiming to produce a profile video that will drive social sharing and social referrals, we recommend that clients not use a script, but rather answer questions conversationally. It’s more intimate, it’s more human and we find it’s more likely to be shared online.
