Newburyport, Mass. – More and more business leaders are embracing video as part of their public relations campaigns, and those multimedia messages are resonating, according to the team at Matter Communications, a full-service public relations agency.
Since the PR firm expanded its capabilities to offer professional video production last year, both national brands including Sigma Corporation of America, as well as high-growth companies such as Sea Cuisine and 3DPhotoworks, have worked with Matter to develop video campaigns for websites and social media networks. These creative video initiatives have resulted in increased consumer engagement and greater brand and product awareness across the board.
“There is no question that video changes the communication game,” explains Christine Moossmann, Director of Marketing at Sigma Corporation of America. “It enables us to connect and engage with an audience we might ordinarily miss, and further speak to the audience we’ve been talking to all along. It affords us a platform to make technical information about our extensive line of photographic products more accessible and easier to understand, and doing it with personality and creativity to which consumers always respond and appreciate. The results can be seen through the high user activity on our social networks.” Examples of integrated video campaigns produced by Matter include:
• Sea Cuisine, a division of High Liner Foods, found that its educational “Ask the Chef” video series generated traffic on the brand’s blog and YouTube channel.
• 3D Photoworks, a creator of full color 3D photographic prints, uses video on its homepage to illustrate the company’s product offering and underscore key marketing messages for potential customers.
• PMDA, an association of photoimaging manufacturers and distributors, seeking to create added visibility for its annual Portraits of Love Project, which provides free family portraits to deployed military personnel for the holidays, commissioned a promotional video for PMDA and its sponsors to use online, along with a media-ready b-roll package for distribution to local and national broadcast media.
“Our product really needs to be seen to be understood, and still images just don’t justify the uniqueness of the prints we can produce,” said John Olson, Founder of 3DPhotoworks.
“Our product video is definitely helping consumers understand our technology and what it can do, and we believe that extra layer of understanding is translating to increased sales.”
As a core component to PR programs, videos engage consumers, enhance search engine rankings and ultimately, should drive sales. According to Forrester Research, videos that are optimized for keywords on Google are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than any given text page in the same index. In addition to web-based videos, many brands are including video components in news releases and newsletter content, product demonstrations, thought leadership campaigns and executive commentary and promotional vignettes for trades shows and events.