We have reached the one month anniversary of Instagram video, and brands are beginning to further refine their short form video strategy through contests, video series, and more.
As we have written before, a number of brands came out the first day with a number of videos (some even had early access to the new feature to test) to mixed reviews.
One brand, Walgreens, went one step beyond to actually offer a discount for their loyal Instagram followers that they could track thanks to a handy discount code.
We spoke with Samantha Ogborn, Walgreens Social Media Manager, about how their Instagram Video Promotion came about:
Social Fresh: What was the thought process behind the promotion?
Walgreens: It really made perfect sense for us. We were one of the first retailers to bring Print from Instagram to market, and we thought it’d be a fun way to celebrate Instagram prints with a special video discount for our fans.
Social Fresh: How did you execute in such a short amount of time?
Walgreens: While we were able to create the clip the day Instagram’s video feature launched, the clip itself actually took about two hours to create. Instagram, unlike Vine, allows you to go back and edit segments, so we re-shot a lot of what you see to get the lighting and sound steady.
You can grab yourself a nice little discount when you watch our first Instagram video here: http://t.co/TF4b4JjAAc
— Walgreens (@Walgreens) June 20, 2013
Social Fresh: Do you have any future plans for promotions with short-form video?
Walgreens: We’re always looking for new ways to interact and if our fans are creating videos and/or consuming video content, we’ll be right there to engage them in any new means we see fit.
Social Fresh: Twitter has been hiring a full team of video producers to create stunning Vines. Gary Vaynerchuk announced the creation of a short form “Vine Agency” Grape Story last month. How do you (or your team) go about creating your videos? Is it the social team internally or a seperate creative agency?
Walgreens: Video production and ideation happens right within our social team. Luckily, we were able to leverage a Walgreens photo expert and an internal video specialist to help get this just right. Making our content in-house affords us the opportunity to be authentic and timely.
It’s not just Walgreens who incentivized their fans from day one. 16handles, who became the first brand to run a promotion on Snapchat earlier this year, also offered a giftcard to one fan who shot an Instagram video at their local 16 Handles with the hashtag #16Handles.
Still others are taking a different angle, like Nissan’s “Your Door to More” campaign, are using Instagram to offer their fans a chance to create their own video ads, by supplying them creative assets supplied to fans.
How have you used Instagram Video so far for your brand? What successes or failures have you had?
Share your story in the comments.