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How To Make Reactive Video Ads about Trending News

Today’s marketer needs to be on top of the news. They need to stay relevant, reactive, and adaptable to ever-changing consumer preference, trend or mood of the month (and minute). Marketer’s read the news to keep up with what’s going down – to avoid faux pas or use it as a muse.

Not only do marketers need to produce content at scale across a growing number of channels, many marketers have to come up with strategies that fit into global discussions. For #trending, all of this needs to be done before the story is #dead.

Doing this is known as reactive marketing, 

a strategy that marketers use to take advantage of unforeseen events, trending news and recent stories that their audience is tuned into or fits their brand narrative. Many companies use this method to advertise their products, generate brand awareness and attract new customers.

One such company is Mini (@MINI), who decided to use the 2013 European horse meat scandal to spread its image on social media. With their advertisement intertwining the scandal of horse meat with the intricacies of their product, they capitalized on a very popular topic of discussion to help bolster their brand voice.

Our very own dark horse...

Tide (@tide)‏, the laundry detergent company, was also able to make do with their nearly 100,000 Twitter followers and 3.5 million likes on Facebook in order to play with the Super Bowl XLVII Blackout in 2013. Shortly after the superdome lights went dark, Tide constructed a short but sweet message to capitalize on the commotion surrounding the blackout.

These are great examples of how Tide and Mini used reactive marketing to broaden their audience by joining global conversations. These big brands were able to use static images back in 2013 to make an impact.

But today, static images tend to get lost easier in our content-saturated world.

While reactive marketing is still a wise opportunity for brands to join a conversation about a hot topic, the competition can be fierce with so many text-based ads. And so, marketers should look for new ways to make their impact on consumers. One of these is short-form social video to increase the chances of higher engagement on social sites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. One example of this is a recent social video we created with Mercedes Benz created for Instagram, check it out!

Didn’t that hold your attention? Now imagine if the content were about current events. Remember the Ocasio-Cortez primary upset in New York? Within 72 hours, Sightworthy was able to use existing public footage to create and publish three social videos celebrating her victory. The benefit of creating short videos for social is so brands can join-in on trending news without disrupting existing workflows or other production cycles.

Check out the victory videos here:

 

Click to see more video marketing examples from brands like Mercedes and Pupperoni.

 

 

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