Online videos power customer engagement

Internet video instruction has proven itself quickly. From cooking to assembly to playing a musical instrument to planting a garden to fixing a broken [fill in the blank]. Yes, even craft instructions have been available online for quite awhile.

The key for retailers is the link between the education piece and the retail piece. Should be straightforward for non-perishable retail, tougher but not impossible for perishables. This is not new, folks. Only new angle here is Michaels becoming a content aggregator and presumably a validator of accuracy.

The importance of consumer education will vary slightly by what’s on the shelves — but it certainly can’t hurt. For stores that are about serving people’s passions and interests (arts and crafts, home improvement, fashion, cooking) these classes are a great way to serve both the customer, providing them with the ability to learn new skills that they are always seeking out, and yourself, by promoting brand loyalty not only through emotional attachment and getting people to your site or store, but also by encouraging the use of exclusive products.

Michaels is making a great move by partnering with Creativebug. This allows them to outsource the content creation while creating a mutually beneficial relationship with a company that is a great fit for them.

Putting the right information in the right places is always good for business. But this type of effort may not create business for the company paying to put it out there and keeping it current. Today’s consumers are willing to show me all day long what they have learned about doing it, whatever it is, themselves. Amazingly much of the information comes from the sites built by the makers and sellers of products and services they have ruled out of their buy equation. What does work is creating an experience that allows for buyer and seller to understand the needs and wants of each other. There is plenty of fourth and fifth generation software that can be used to build for this opportunity but little initiative to venture in this direction. This is surprising with how social media demonstrates every day that consumers respond to live interaction applications more than any other software type other than games. I guess that might indicate a need to make the software fun and easy to use as well.

In this situation, education can be a powerful adjunct to some product sales. However, I’ve rarely seen sponsored educational content drive the same consumer action as the spontaneous “how to” work that’s generally available on the web.

Why? No sponsor is going to produce the video without ensuring it follows their brand and communication guidelines. And that leads to errors that consumers really hate. For example, in a DIY category, when the video recommends a specific product (e.g. an adhesive) because (a) it’s from the brand or (b) it’s from a brand partner that DOESN’T match the known industry best practices, the viewer calls BS on the video.

Further, sponsors always worry first about the creative values. But the spontaneous DIY video are concerned first and foremost with saying what’s important—and quite often succeed by ignoring “best practice” creative values (yup…many are ugly).

The most valuable (and therefore successful) educational content has to develop from a solid user viewpoint where brand is in the background. So when it’s developed by the brand owner, marketers just can’t help taking those steps that lose consumer trust.

Will Micheals succeed? I doubt it. Their ad is so sanitized that, as a consumer, my first thought is “looks like useless videos to me.” And I’ll go find how to do things elsewhere.

COULD they succeed? Yes. But only if they were willing to radically release the brand handcuff’s in order to have the video be exceptionally lightly branded and put communication ahead of arbitrary communication values.