The right image for a particular product can be a valuable marketing tool but does your product need more than a picture and a few choice words?
Sometimes a product is complex, exciting but visually doesn’t live up to its great purpose. More than that… its a product that demands the customer’s emotional interest. The willingness to buy from an image is as quick as a page turn but a 20 or 30 second video can be effective, especially when the in-flight retail sector begins its 1st digital "baby steps".
There is though no definitive way to create a product video that engages emotionally and involves the end user as the customer depends on your marketplace and in travel retail we have a cutsomer in a unique environment. Add to this equation that customers have huge expectations on ‘how’ they experience certain products and their complex pre-conceptions on how they make purchasing decisions.
However, there are a number of things that are common to all the great product videos out there. The video will tell a story but without context your product video isn’t going to make any sense. You can produce a large number of product videos for your product page that just show the item in a disorientating 360 degree spin but is there any point in spending the money to produce such a video that you can’t really use anywhere else? Your company/product video requires branding, it needs to put your product or service in context. That often means it needs to be shown "in use", a lifestyle movie… showing a great example of your products’ qualities and why the customer can’t help themselves and buy it, to continue pushing home your brand values and promise.
Product videos are seldom longer that 30 seconds — especially for the sake of sharing on social media, marketing onboard or within targeted emailing campaigns. Car manufactures have been very successful at this on TV whereby you are visualising yourself in the driving seat ... even creating speed within the regulations of not actually showing speed.
Text alone simply doesn’t get this across, you want the video production to show emotion and honesty - whether it shows actual people or its a product that can evoke emotion all by itself - and wanting the viewer to look away feeling as though you understood them and spoke to them as if you were in the same room.
... in summary you need to put the potential buyer in the video.
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Pat Ager is an award winning photographer who has worked closely with multiple travel retail exclusive brands, inflight advertising in Europe and Asia, in store POS creation for Europe and the Middle East and product packaging design for the travel retail market. To discuss Pat Ager's work further contact him via pat@patager.co.uk or visit www.patager.co.uk. Pat is a member of the JES Partner Programme.
Disclaimer: Guest posts and comments represent the diversity of opinion within the travel retail world. The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author.
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