We’ve written previously about the importance of content marketing in the age of DVRs, adblockers and shrinking attention spans (see the post What is content marketing?). Here in Myanmar where mediums like blogs and podcasts are less popular than elsewhere, video is one of the most import content marketing platforms. This reflects the broader worldwide trend as well, where the popularity of and demand for video has been surging for years, and shows no sign of stopping.
What it boils down to is that brands must provide content if they really want to reach consumers today, and that content has to offer real value to the brand’s audience. These audiences have demonstrated that they overwhelmingly prefer that content to come packaged with a play button. And in Myanmar, where until recently low smartphone ownership and slow internet have made video fairly inaccessible until recently, the floodgates have opened. For most brands in Myanmar video is the most important content marketing medium.
Video content marketing topics and ideas
The types of videos brands can create span a much broader spectrum than most people might imagine. As an example, a camera company could take an obvious approach and create video tutorials with photography tips. But they could also choose to leverage the exploding popularity of fast-motion recipe videos, as long as that fits in with the brand’s larger integrated marketing campaign, in this case something food photography related. There are only two real limits to how far out a video topic can get: It must provide real value to make it shareable, and it must make sense in the context of the brand’s overall marketing and positioning.
Leveraging existing opportunities
It is common during the course of any ad campaign for an inexperienced content marketer to look around and realize that they have a perfect opportunity to create a piece of video content, if only they had a film crew on hand. Anytime a brand is doing something either with consumers or with brand ambassadors, there is probably a video in it. Larger brands usually work with entire film crews on even these types of videos, but those on a budget can make do with a single videographer and editor, or even just a smartphone and Snapchat or Facebook Live.
We recently worked with the smartphone maker OPPO on a pair of TVCs for two phones in the Myanmar market. Each spot had a major celebrity featured, and of course the brand leveraged its social media audience by releasing the TVCs on Facebook as well as through their ad buy. But since we already had the talent in a studio with professional lighting, hair and makeup, branded assets etc., we also brought in a second crew to film a behind the scenes video. Only the first has been released so far. On OPPO Myanmar’s Facebook page, the video has already received 170k views from 600 shares.
The time for video content marketing in Myanmar is now
Brands that don’t have a video content marketing strategy for Myanmar right now should make it a high priority. The country’s consumers are hungry for video and ready to share it. The good news is that there is a huge area of opportunity here as demand for video still far exceeds the supply, at least as far as quality video with local topspin that Myanmar consumers can really relate to and derive value from. With some of the highest ROI of any marketing channel, video simply cannot be ignored.