By Adam Wakefield
There is a school of thought within the marketing and PR world that says viral video content, a pinnacle of earned media, cannot be created.
Grech, in South Africa presenting a series of workshops, does not mince her words when she says; “I believe that is rubbish”.
“I believe there are four things a video needs to have, and there’s a way to craft the copy to do it. Lots of new start-ups and smaller businesses are doing it. It’s much harder as a big company to get that personal connect over video,” she says.
These four things are:
- Humour or heartfelt connection;
- Tackle the objections;
- The benefits; and
- Sustainability good will feeling.
Through video, smaller businesses have a platform like never before to promote themselves and the flexibility to fully utilise video’s strengths.
“If you learn the call-to-actions, how to stand, how to sit, how to connect, how to talk in the language of your avatar, you are on to a winner. You can craft something. There is a way to make something go viral. People share things for a reason,” Grech says, pointing to the 2012 advert produced by DollarShaveClub as a video that was designed to go viral.
“I use it when I teach tutorials. It has all the points, the four things that you need to make something go viral,” Grech says.
Grech notes how the DollarShaveClub’s video was filmed, story-boarded and scripted specifically to go viral, and it resulted in them becoming “a million pound company in 48 hours”.
“That’s the camp I sit in. You can literally have that kind of conversion. It’s not a mistake. It’s being able to create it with authenticity,” Grech says.
The importance of authenticity
Authenticity is a word Grech focuses on when filming, taking photos or teaching a seminar. While acknowledging that it has somewhat been appropriated by the advertising industry to the point of being jargon, Grech says authenticity is what makes or breaks being in front of camera.
“If you can’t communicate authenticity in front of camera, it doesn’t matter how well scripted it is, it doesn’t matter how well filmed it is, or how much you spend on production. People can tell in your eyes. It’s not connecting,” Grech says.
“When you speak from the heart and connect, not just communicate, you naturally do the right things. But when you are taught them without connecting, you are wondering, ‘What am I doing with my hands? Am I touching my hair? Am I leaning forward?’ You are in your head. It’s almost learning the wrong things not to do."
Subconsciously, Grech says, we take so much more in than what we hear and see with others judging you in the first five seconds, even before you open your mouth to speak.
Why video and what’s next?
With video taking the marketing and publicity world by storm, the question is ‘why?’ And for Grech, who spends her days filming and taking pictures of others, the answer is simple.
“Video is so powerful. It’s the next best thing to meeting face to face. When you see someone in front of you, you can feel it, even though it’s a video. It’s the nearest thing to having human contact. You can look at their eyes, see their gestures and decide whether you connect and believe them,” she says.
Even though video has now become part of mainstream thinking, Grech says it is still to reach its peak, with derivative mediums such as live streaming and virtual reality dotting the horizon and already beginning to boil over into the marketplace.
“For me right now, for all my businesses in and out of the creative industry, my head is in virtual reality. I would love to see some entrepreneurs embracing video, but jumping, asking themselves ‘What I am going to do to pioneer virtual reality in this country? How does my product fit with it?’ The big players have spent too much money for VR to fail,” Grech concludes.