Branded Content With Scoot

When we talk to people about online videos, the word "viral" inevitably pops up at some point. Noted. People want viral videos. People want their video, their name, their brand to reach far and wide, to be on the tip of everyone's tongues (and not in a chilli-padi-got-me-bad kinda way, but more of an MSG-I-want-more way). But hey, of most of the viral content out there, let's think about two things they have in common: 1) concept and / or 2) talent. It's not about the wonderful filmography and sweeping shots of rolling hills and crashing waves (is anyone else thinking Tree of Life?), though these are indeed important elements in achieving aesthetics.

In our most recent project with Singapore based low-cost airline, Scoot --

The challenges were laid upfront:
To conceptualise, script, shoot, and complete post-production on 3 videos in 2.5 days for their Korea Launch campaign. Oh yes. 3 videos, 2.5 days.

The boundaries had been set:
Scoot's history of being a brand that likes to do things differently - instead of always having their crew as the face of the company, they like showcasing their corporate staff too. So saying, we would be using their staff as actors i.e. this would be a Concept game.

Check out a Facebook Marketing case study here. Note Haresh's (of MoF) dapper goatee and feel free to leave related comments below.

The goals were made clear:
To engage audiences and induce them to a 'call-to-action' to continuously participate actively in the campaign. Yes, continuous participation. Online.

So here's some other food for thought - as devices continue to revolutionise the way we access our content, there has become an increasing need for further thought on 1) the way we access our content, and 2) the actual content itself, to keep up. The trend is for devices to allow personalised consumption of content so we can watch what we want, when we want, where we want. As content grows on the WWW, it takes more than just banner blitzing to cut through the noise. The great thing about video is that audiences' emotional connections are somewhat correlated to their time commitment to the content e.g. 2 second banner vs. 30 second video - having just a banner might not be engaging enough to warrant continuous participation, and video after video can get pretty snooze too (unless you're trolling for hours on YouTube). So let's change it up, people! Scoot obviously decided to since they employed a mixed-media strategy of banners and videos, mainly through their Facebook page.

Wonderful for us since we're the video guys and zhende zhende like the online medium for its power to start conversations, and the ability for quick turnaround to keep them convos going. Our role in Scoot's campaign was thus to provide that excitement, to change up their audience interactivity through video, thereby creating a new dynamic for their community. We sat down with Scoot to conceptualise and script the videos on Wednesday night; given that we knew the power of this video would come from its concept, we decided to come up with a 3-part K-drama spoof (their destination was, after all, Seoul), the effect of which we later pushed with some super hunting for Korean music and subtitles. We delivered the videos to them on Saturday morning after a late Friday night vetting, and over the course of the weekend, our videos helped supplement a real-time feel of the content that was released.

And of course this story has a happy ending - our videos garnered thousands of views (and counting) on Facebook and YouTube, contributing to a weekend long of pillow talk between Scoot and their community, and we managed to tie everything in with Scoot's goals, including their wacky-WTF styled videos. Not too shabby.

by Samantha Lim