Vine. A growing revolution in Meaningful content.

By January 31 2013, 9:45 am Leave a comment
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Vine represents a new era in social media content creation and has the opportunity to revolutionise how brands talk to consumers.

There has been a lot of talk about Vine this week, not all positive.

But I believe this one deserves the hype – if brands are brave and take up the mantle.

And the reason why it will be successful is because what Twitter is doing through Vine, which other platforms like Facebook have yet to do, is help brands and users make stuff, rather than hinder them.

They’re embracing creative freedom while other social networks are restricting it. This is PROPER consumer innovation.

I think it’s just typical of how some social platforms are people-first, while others are money-first. Spotify is another nice example of a nice people-first platform.

Brands in general have been slow to pick this up so far, but remember it has not been launched long, so marketers are likely to be taking their time to evolve their content strategies and work out where this new dynamic format fits. A good decision.

Although, some have decided to give the medium a go, with charities leading the race – which when you think about it, is obvious.

 

If you’ve been living under a rock and are not aware of Vine, it basically allows you to create a 6 second video then post it out on Twitter. Yep, sounds a little like a fancy GIF doesn’t it? Essentially it is.

But it’s also a simple, quick, targeted and effective way of directly engaging with an audience – which also makes it exceptionally Meaningful.

And it one of those rare products that has been created based on already-existing behaviour – and what users actually want.

It also allows the audience to be creative with very low barriers to entry.

In the past, the idea of shooting your own video and going to the trouble of uploading it on a dedicated website seemed laborious, and often content uploaded to a Facebook application just got lost.

Vine makes participation easy and we should see some great campaigns using the app over the next few months.

But in the very near future it isn’t hard to see brands grabbing the mantle and creating a flurry of video content directly targeting specific people or even addressing important issues in almost real time – it could even be used as a way of passing on quick advice/help/support.

In my opinion there will be two waves of Vine initially.

The first will be tentative steps by brands to test the water of what it can offer and will be a largely one way street brand advertising with videos aimed at a mass audience.

However, I believe that we’ll quickly move to a place where brands stop blanket bombing videos and trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors by using Vine as part of over arching campaign to interact with consumers on a micro level – or go further and actually make a real difference to people’s lives.

DiabetesUK have already tried this.

Whether this be something as simple as giving your consumers an easy way to interact with your brand, eg a competition for best Vine with a reward for the best  to using Vine as part of a cross channel campaign to create an immersive experience that brings consumers together and enriches their lives.

6 seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but it also doesn’t take very long to make a Meaningful Connection with someone.

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