The Secret to Successful Brand Videos (With Examples)

Branded video content is an effective way of improving your audience’s perception of your brand without annoying them with a salesy approach!

After all, by focusing on your brand, you can end up with a more substantial piece than a traditional ad, which is why the style has captured the attention of both customers and marketers alike!

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That said, corporate video productions can be really challenging. These videos need to strike the right tone between speaking volumes about your brand but never coming across as “preachy” or arrogant. It sounds a bit tricky, doesn’t it?

Fret not! Today, we’ll reveal the secret to creating successful branded video content and, while at it, we’ll show you some examples that illustrate how it’s done. Let’s go!

What Are Brand Videos & Why You Should Be Using Them!

“Branded video content” accounts for those audiovisual pieces that focus on conveying a company’s values and identity without explicitly promoting it. In fact, many of these videos hardly feature the company’s name or products in direct ways!

For those of you used to traditional advertisement, this may sound like a ridiculous idea. However, the audience nowadays tends to prefer subtly branded video content to outright advertising pieces. Especially when you add social media into the mix!

You see, unlike highly promotional videos, brand pieces tend to be more meaningful and contribute to their audience’s “conversation”. They revolve around generating brand awareness that stems from positive association rather than from a pushy ad.

On top of awareness, these videos also boost brand recall, as they are meant to leave a lasting impression on the audience.

In a nutshell, brand videos play a big part in building and enhancing how people perceive your brand in the digital age.

The Secret to Successful Brand Videos

What makes for killer branded video content? Authenticity.

As said earlier, these videos are meant to nurture your audience’s perceptions about your company and brand – which are both unique. So, any video you make should highlight and convey that uniqueness, that thing that makes your brand… well, your brand!

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But in order to express the values and style that set your company apart, you must take care of a few things during your brand video production process.

Let’s talk about some of those:

Effective Branding

We stated these videos include a subtle brand appearance. But ‘subtle’ doesn’t mean ‘non-existent’! While these videos’ content doesn’t overtly revolve around branding elements, they should include details that speak volumes about it.

Every creative decision should be made with the brand style in mind: the aesthetics, tone of the script, storyboard, color palette, jingles, and so on.

The visuals are particularly important when it comes to branding because they allow you to incorporate the distinctive elements of your brand identity and organically make them part of the piece.

Your special color palette, typography, and logo can appear in the video, adding to your brand awareness and the video’s authenticity.

Just make sure these elements appear organically in the video. They shouldn’t look forced or interfere with the story. Instead, they should flow naturally with the rest of the piece.

Your Target Audience

I know you know the importance of the audience factor in any content creation. Still, this is a topic worth reinforcing, especially when it comes to brand video productions.

As you are about to see, branded video content is meant to strike a chord with the viewer, and that is only possible if you know the viewer enough to provide them with videos that resonate with them.

Being familiar with your target audience will allow you to create relatable stories that stick in the viewers’ minds and prompt them to share your videos with their peers.

Now, there’s no need to explain why shareability is a positive asset of any video marketing campaign. We are talking about people spreading your message willingly – a clear sign that they are thrilled with your content!

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Emotional Value

A video that provokes emotions is memorable. And no, we are not just talking about videos that make people cry – we are referring to any audiovisual piece that sparks empathy, joy, motivation, or any other kind of strong emotion.

Here, storytelling plays a significant role. The right story will convey your brand’s values in a memorable and empathic way. It will not only impact the audience emotionally, but it will also help them associate the message of the story with your brand’s philosophy.

That said, storytelling is not the only factor in the emotional value equation – visuals and sounds are also instrumental. The colors and temperature of the visuals help set the right mood for the story. And let’s not forget about the music! This powerful resource can convey as much emotion as the script itself.

Practical Value

Some brand videos are meant to help the audience understand a certain topic related to your field. They are called educational videos, and they can explain a subject matter (in which case we are talking about explainer videos) or a process (known as tutorial or how-to videos).

Offering your audience practical value is another way to connect with them beyond a commercial relationship. This connection comes from the fact that you would be oh-so-selflessly giving them a helping hand… and they are bound to appreciate that.

However, what may seem like a selfless act is actually a marketing strategy designed to foster trust in your brand, helping people perceive it as an expert in its industry.

As with every other kind of branded video content, you must remember your brand presence should be subtle. These videos are about teaching, not selling!

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Does Your Brand Need a Video?

By now, you’ve probably realized that creating a unique and authentic feel for your branded videos can hardly be achieved with pre-made templates. Templates that have already been used by who knows how many others! That’s a big no-no!

When it comes to branded video content, customization is practically non-negotiable. A custom brand video production is the only way to assure your video will be effective and appealing to your target audience.

Luckily for you, many video production companies work with this tailored approach. We here at Yum Yum Videos, for example, only create animated videos from scratch, customizing every tiny detail to our clients’ style and needs.

In fact, we are so committed to meeting our customers’ needs that we adapt our production timeline to fit their schedule requirements.

It is a philosophy that has led us to work with companies from over 20 countries around the globe, including prestigious firms like Walmart, Fox, McKesson, and Red Bull, to name a few.

If you want to learn more about our work, you can visit our portfolio and take a look at the work we did for them, or skip the heavy lifting and watch our reel below! It sums up many of our most recent works. 😉

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Looking for a video like that? Just drop us a line. We’ll be happy to help!

Awesome Brand Video Examples

The following brands have managed to convey their unique voices through video content. Let’s see what we can learn from them!

What Is Inbound Marketing? – Yum Yum Videos

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In this video, we provided our audience with some practical value doing what we do best – creating an explainer video!

Now, we don’t want to brag, but we managed to brand this video pretty smoothly. We didn’t mention our brand at all and still managed to fit our unique style into the piece.

We incorporated our logo at the right time and place, without disrupting the story development. We also used our particular color palette here and there, hinting subtly at our company. Finally, we wrapped up the video with our logo, giving viewers a final but non-intrusive reminder of our brand.

The LEGO Story – The LEGO Group

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LEGO has mastered the art of branded video content – they have branded entire movies, for Pete’s sake!

This particular video stands out for its fantastic use of storytelling. The history of the company was not only amazing enough to turn it into a video, but it was also the best way for LEGO to convey their values: “Only the best is good enough.”

“But wait, wasn’t it that these videos shouldn’t focus on the brand itself? That video is all about LEGO!”

Yes, but it doesn’t strike viewers as a promotional piece. It’s not as subtle as other brand videos, but it’s not trying to sell anything either (at least not explicitly). Can you see the difference?

Wheels – Canada Tire

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Remember what we said about sparking emotions? Because in that sense, this video hits the nail in the head – or are you going to tell me there’s just something in your eye?

With amazing subtlety, Canada Tire (which sells sports products, among other things), put forward a heartwarming story about inclusion that is meant to represent the brand’s values.

The video is so good at transmitting emotions that it’s prone to stick in the viewers’ minds. Even better, they are likely to associate this positive emotion and value with the brand in question, even if it’s hardly mentioned in the video!

Parting Thoughts

Branded video content helps to establish your brand personality and values, but it’s not all it takes to shape the public’s perception of your brand.

You see, your video can speak volumes about your company values, but if it doesn’t match other messages from your brand, then it will lack cohesion and may fall short. What you need is a closely-knit content strategy in which all videos, posts, copy, and more, share the same theme.

Summing up, brand videos are only a component inside an integrated content strategy. Still, they play the most instrumental role in it!