Video marketing and branding is a hot topic in today’s fast-paced consumer environment, and no wonder! The average internet-user spends about 100 minutes per day watching video content, and 88 percent of marketers list video as providing a high return on investment.
In short, video is an excellent modality for effective branding.
But it isn’t just about providing a video — it’s about providing video content that is clearly and identifiably branded. And the best way to brand something? By using your logo.
Let’s get into the specifics of the most effective ways to include your logo in a branded video.
Add Your Logo In Your Intro
Video credit: Dribble
There are plenty of suggestions, tutorials, and opinions on the most important content to include in your video intro. But for branding purposes, your logo should definitely be involved. If you haven’t gotten one yet, try and get one from a logo creator software like DesignMantic.
However, it’s not really enough just to highlight your logo on the screen at the beginning of the video content. You want your logo to have an impact, and you can help it along by including a music sting, sound effect, animation, or brief clip to add weight to your great logo design.
Research suggests that the first ten seconds of a video is all-important when it comes to capturing interest and inducing engagement. After that, the likelihood of sustained engagement falls off sharply.
So make sure that your intro, with your logo, is included within that first ten seconds.
Branding your video with your logo isn’t just about reminding them of the name of your company — it’s about giving them a taste of your brand personality. If you can include your logo in an intro that involves a thought-provoking question or something funny, it will connect the two in the mind of the viewer, giving them a reaction of, “Oh, I recognize that logo — I like this brand, because it’s interesting.”
And Don’t Forget About The Outro
Intros and outros are often used as a group for video marketing purposes, because they are both integral to video branding. But your bumpers don’t have to match up completely.
It’s a good idea to avoid simply repeating your intro as an outro. That’s a good way to make sure your audience clicks out of the video before they get to the end.
You do, however, want your outro to match your branding stylistically. So you can certainly use your logo once more in your outro content. Just mix up the accompanying content around it.
Product (And Brand) Placement
Paid product placement is a big deal in movies and TV, with companies spending millions of dollars to have their products represented in the media.
Since you’re creating your own content, it’s the perfect spot to include your own products — and you don’t even have to create an extra placement budget. Along with the products themselves, you can insert the brand logo.
How you do this will vary depending on the type of content you’re creating, but here are a few examples:
- In creating a tutorial, make sure to use products that your brand makes, and show the products themselves, complete with logo. Take a look at the example of the tutorial below. This makeup tutorial by L’Oréal prominently features their products such as the micellar water and mascara. Viewers can get a clear view of the company’s brand identity design on their screens.
- In creating an informational video, cite expert advice backed by your own brand. You can include a link to your website and make it a clickable version of your logo.
- In creating a testimonial, make sure that the product or brand is mentioned by name and include the logo on-screen when the name is spoken. In this video, HP created a testimonial video for their Indigo Digital Presses and it showcases their logo in the bottom corner throughout the duration. So while the product is mentioned by real customers using it for their businesses, the company also incorporates its icon which can be seen until the very end.
- In facilitating customer-created content, ask them to pose next to or display the branded product.
Add In A Watermark
Watermarks are excellent identifiers, and you can add one into your video to make sure that everyone knows where the content originally came from.
If you think about it, there’s really not that much of a difference between a logo and a watermark and the two can work interchangeably as well. With a watermark, you are basically using a simpler or monochrome version of your brand symbol to mark ownership of digital content such as videos or images. Most of the time these are included with opacity to the max so that they don’t interfere with the video content or cover part of the screen. A logo on the other hand, like the above examples you’ve seen, are pretty much visible and have a dominant role in video branding, like this tutorial.
Sometimes, you could use a watermark or a logo to help people become familiar with it and increase brand awareness. Consider the example given above to get a better idea.
The image above is actually from a tutorial by Tronix which I captured to show the difference. You can see it being used as a watermark in the side of the video below which tells the viewer that it is unique content created by the brand. As it shouldn’t be distracting or overpowering, the symbol is lighter in color.
There are plenty of free (and paid, of course) software programs out there that allow you to insert a watermark into every frame of your video, or just into certain sections. Software programs like InShot and Kapwing are free and easy to use. Just upload your logo and/or other text content.
Logo Bug
A logo bug is similar to a watermark, though it is usually placed in the video in a way that won’t interfere with the actual video content, such as in the lower corner away from the main action. In the example here, Callaway Golf has incorporated their logo bug within the tutorial video about their golf clubs.
Logo bugs also serve as a continual placement of your logo, providing a constant reminder of the brand behind the video.
You can choose to use your full logo, if it shows up well against video backgrounds. Alternatively, this might be a good time to create another version of your logo design to adapt it into a simple, stripped-down iteration.
Be Careful About Placement
Many videos that are branded with a logo place it in the lower right hand corner. This is very typical practice, unlike websites, which typically place the logo in the upper left, interestingly enough.
However, there should be caution used here. It’s good practice to provide closed captioning for your content— not only is that more inclusive for the hard of hearing, but viewers are often watching short videos on lunch breaks, at work, at school — places where they don’t really want the video to be loud or even heard at all. Around 50% of consumers say that captions are important because they watch content with the sound off.
Image: Wave.video
But captioning tends to run along the lower third of the screen, and may extend almost to the corners. So extensive captioning could actually obscure your logo if you’ve chosen that placement.
Consider other placements, such as the upper right hand side. Or you could go the website-design route and place it in the upper left.
Using Your Logo In Video Branding
If you’re getting ready to unleash some video content, congratulations! A branded video is one of the most effective ways of advertising your company, garnering shares and likes, and attracting new customers or viewers.
Video content is always a good idea, and the scope of creativity for videos is practically endless. No matter what company you run or brand you represent, video has a place in your branding process.
Remember that it’s more than just where, when, and how you place your logo throughout your video content — it’s also a matter of the quality of the video itself.
After all, a great logo isn’t going to help your brand if the video content surrounding it is irrelevant.
The best plan is to think about content first and usage of the logo later. Focus your skills and energies on creating a great video that provides value to the viewer, whether for educational, informational, or entertainment purposes.
Once you have the framework of a great video, then you can fit your logo in using one or more of the ideas we’ve listed above.
