Check out this 40-second web video! As far as B2B content goes, this video made a lasting impression on me. With most well done web commercials, I vividly remember the story, the actors, and even the last minute twist, but I am unable to recall the brands. But for this video it’s easy to recall these elements, as well as the humor, the products, and the brand.
Now, go ahead and play this creation by Doremus for Logitech.
The Brand Content Challenge: Global to Local
I’ve been asked how to create global content with minimal localization and translation while taking into account local needs. This video is a great illustration of how to approach the task. Unlike conventional B2B content that focuses on products, this video puts storytelling and emotional connection first, and then weaves the products into the story in an organic way.
The 5-Step Brand Content Solution: Identity to Broadcast
1. Discover the brand identity: Ata macro-level, marketers need to understand why the brand exists, and then communicate that to the audience.
Logitech is a well-known computer peripherals brand. Chad Thompson, Worldwide B2B Marketing Director at Logitech, and Joe McCormack, Creative VP at Doremus, tried to unearth the new spirit of the Logitech B2B brand in their campaign.
With ubiquitous connections and on-the-go mobile devices, work and personal boundaries no longer exist; any place can now serve as an office. Logitech identifies itself as offering products that are designed to help business users work in offices, wherever they may be; thus, the idea for “The New Office” was born.
2. Start with crisp strategy: Three marketing strategies were in play here to bring the Logitech brand persona to life.
Reclaim relevance: Showcase Logitech products’ compatibility with new technologies to solve “office anywhere” challenges.
Cross-promotion: Focus on the usage models. Here, Logitech redefined the categories not by devices but, rather, by the concept of “workspace”. Four workspace categories are relevant to the Logitech brand: larger/open workspaces, smaller office spaces/cubes, home offices, and to-go workspaces (e.g., a café; the airport). This strategy of focusing on the category, rather than on a specific product, also allows for cross-selling of multiple products.
Engage customers: Redesign websites and customer-facing interfaces or collaterals with new creative to reflect the new brand promises.
3. Create stories to scale:Once they identified the “why” (brand essence) and the “what” (marketing strategies), Logitech and Doremus created the “Welcome to the New Office” campaign.
From the get-go, they set their minds to creating video content that could easily be distributed throughout different regions. Because of this, the creative content could not heavily tie into rituals, local customs, cultural differences, or too many dialogues. Yet, the story framework needed to be familiar and understood by all audiences, regardless of where they live. This video, featuring a dad making dinner for his kids and attending a meeting, is something that small business owners or working professionals, like me, can relate to.
4. Find a great director:Onceyou have a good story and script, the next step is to find a director who can bring the story to life in a visually compelling way.
Given that the budget was tight, it was even more essential for the Logitech team to find a director who would be attracted to good storytelling. They were very lucky to find Eric Steinman, who loved the script and was willing to work astutely within the tight production budget.
5. Make it happen.
The original script had more dialogue.To make it work more globally, the team worked hard to find visual ways to “show” the dialogue without words. They also made casting global. The shooting took only one day in Los Angeles, using non-union talent. The whole process from planning to production took three months.
A good product markets itself. A good story idea attracts collaborators who want to be part of it. The secret is to find the humanity.
Really take the timeto pinpoint scenarios that highlight your audience’s pain and present the solution in a very human, simple, and universal way.
(Special thanks to Joe McCormack of Doremus, who shared his insights and thoughts for this article.)
Pam Didner, selected as one of BtoB’s Top Digital Marketers in 2011, is the Global Integrated Marketing Manager for Intel. She has led Intel’s Enterprise product launches and worldwide marketing campaigns, and she has managed Intel’s main proprietary event, Intel Developer Forum, across nine countries. Didner is an expert in creating successful global marketing plans that meet local marketing’s needs. At Intel, Pam develops and manages Intel’s worldwide Enterprise and Small Business Strategies. She also provides strategic guidance on audience development, messaging architecture, editorial planning, content creation, media buys and social media outreach on a global scale.
Pam is also a guest blogger for BtoB Magazine.
Follow her on Twitter @pdidner.
This is a great story, Pam; thanks for sharing it. You mentioned a tight budget; any idea what the budget was for this?
One of the concerns I keep hearing as a digital media producer is around production cost — not just $$, but time involved in these high-production-values films — even short ones like this. There can be no question that a video like this can be worth every penny invested when it’s on the home page or TV ads or in another place where tens and hundreds of thousands might see it. But the big challenge for us as content marketers is how to produce engaging video content on the lower-volume end of the long tail, where you can’t do the “Full Spielberg” on everything.
In other words, what do you do when the appetite for online video grows faster than the available budget?
I’ve jotted some notes at RichContentDaily.com/blog about this. It’s getting to be a critical issue.
Michael Kolowich
Founder and CEO
KnowledgeVision
http://twitter.com/WinAstonMartins Sid
probley a lot more than mine l;ol
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner Pam Didner
It’s higher than mine, too.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner Pam Didner
Michael-
You brought up a good point. Agencies and production companies often struggle with creating great video quality for the web because the world’s expectations are high, based on TV, but budgets for the web are often a fraction of what they used to be for broadcast TV.
It’s really hard to say how much it costs to produce a great video. It’s depens on the script, number of crews, locations, technologies required etc. To produce a great video with 60-90 seconds can easily start with $50K or more. But that’s a minimum and can go up exponentially based on the concept.
sara zehnder
Emotion.
Customers don’t buy just because you discover their needs, they buy because you
tell them how to feel.
Charlize Theron on the sidelines of a Lakers game. She’s in a grey men’s hat
looking every bit the Starlet that she is. She’s captivating. Why do we admire her at the most or
show interest in her in the least? Because we VALUE actors. We love what they
do and what they do is bring to us an emotional state that we may not get to
without them. The Greeks knew this and threw weeks long festivals just to embrace
this point. What makes us humans and not Vulcans is our emotions and getting
our customers to latch onto the emotional state that feeds their WHATEVER at
that moment is our job as great marketing specialists. Stories do that and every brand has one.
Everything else is, well, just logical.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner Pam Didner
Sara:
Well said with one word: emotion. I was using a slightly different word to express the same sentiment: humanity. Business marketing tends to put product benefits first. BTB’s challenge is find a compelling story to evoke that emotional connection, then weave the product benefits naturally.
BTW, I totally love Charlize Theron. She possesses that timeless beauty I just can’t take my eyes away from her. She evokes an emotional connection with me. However, that emotional connection is not strong enough to propel me to buy movie tickets to see her films…
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Creating a Powerful Global to Local B2B Brand Impression with Video: 5 Steps
Now, go ahead and play this creation by Doremus for Logitech.
The Brand Content Challenge: Global to Local
I’ve been asked how to create global content with minimal localization and translation while taking into account local needs. This video is a great illustration of how to approach the task. Unlike conventional B2B content that focuses on products, this video puts storytelling and emotional connection first, and then weaves the products into the story in an organic way.
The 5-Step Brand Content Solution: Identity to Broadcast
1. Discover the brand identity: At a macro-level, marketers need to understand why the brand exists, and then communicate that to the audience.
Logitech is a well-known computer peripherals brand. Chad Thompson, Worldwide B2B Marketing Director at Logitech, and Joe McCormack, Creative VP at Doremus, tried to unearth the new spirit of the Logitech B2B brand in their campaign.
With ubiquitous connections and on-the-go mobile devices, work and personal boundaries no longer exist; any place can now serve as an office. Logitech identifies itself as offering products that are designed to help business users work in offices, wherever they may be; thus, the idea for “The New Office” was born.
2. Start with crisp strategy: Three marketing strategies were in play here to bring the Logitech brand persona to life.
3. Create stories to scale: Once they identified the “why” (brand essence) and the “what” (marketing strategies), Logitech and Doremus created the “Welcome to the New Office” campaign.
From the get-go, they set their minds to creating video content that could easily be distributed throughout different regions. Because of this, the creative content could not heavily tie into rituals, local customs, cultural differences, or too many dialogues. Yet, the story framework needed to be familiar and understood by all audiences, regardless of where they live. This video, featuring a dad making dinner for his kids and attending a meeting, is something that small business owners or working professionals, like me, can relate to.
4. Find a great director: Once you have a good story and script, the next step is to find a director who can bring the story to life in a visually compelling way.
Given that the budget was tight, it was even more essential for the Logitech team to find a director who would be attracted to good storytelling. They were very lucky to find Eric Steinman, who loved the script and was willing to work astutely within the tight production budget.
5. Make it happen.
The original script had more dialogue.To make it work more globally, the team worked hard to find visual ways to “show” the dialogue without words. They also made casting global. The shooting took only one day in Los Angeles, using non-union talent. The whole process from planning to production took three months.
A good product markets itself. A good story idea attracts collaborators who want to be part of it. The secret is to find the humanity.
Really take the time to pinpoint scenarios that highlight your audience’s pain and present the solution in a very human, simple, and universal way.
(Special thanks to Joe McCormack of Doremus, who shared his insights and thoughts for this article.)