Vine has become more and more popular as a video sharing platform since its launch in June 2012. A common refrain, however, has been “what can you really communicate in just 6 seconds?”, with some even predicting the demise of Vine after Instagram launched its marginally longer 15 second video option. Since that clearly never transpired, we scoured Vine for inspiration, and have broken down some of the best ways to make the most of each second. When done correctly, your brand will be stronger, your reach will be greater, and your audience will be entertained.
Branding
General Electric does a fabulous job with their Vine account. Their posts showcase a wide variety of the different activities GE undertakes, which, considering the size of the company, is on a different order of magnitude than most. Ultimately that might be GE’s biggest branding problem: they do so much that it is nearly impossible to fit it all in a cohesive marketing strategy. Their products range from trains to toaster ovens, with hundreds of products in between. So what does Vine enable GE to do that helps clarify its branding? To juxtapose #6secondscience Vines, which are snippets of cool high school chemistry experiments, with innovation contests, like #GEDesignQuest which involved jet engine brackets and 3D printing, and large scale products like locomotives. Their Vines are attention-grabbing with high viewer engagement – most have over 400 likes, dozens of Revines, and active commenting.
The example above has over 2400 likes, and 931 Revines. Scrolling down through their other recent Vines, you get the picture: science, design, experiments, and engineering are cool because they make the world go around, and also form the backbone of GE’s brand DNA.
Reach
Another household name, Sephora, somewhat surprisingly does not predominantly feature different products or sales on Vine. That would be the knee-jerk marketing move for a beauty retailer, but is not nearly creative enough to get shared widely. Instead, Sephora seems to have mastered stop-motion animation, and employs it cleverly for 6 second beauty tutorials, like this tip to get rid of glitter nail polish – notoriously stubborn to remove. If you take a look at the comments, nearly every person is tagging a friend in their post, so in addition to all the Revines, hundreds of people have been prompted to take a look at Sephora’s tutorial.
Entertainment
That is the key element tying the above examples together. GE has very little in common with Sephora besides their ability to make captivating Vines that hold their audiences’ attention and inspire them. There are tons more examples of companies using Vine in different ways, but the key elements of branding, reach, and entertainment run through nearly all of them.
Have you dipped your toes into Vine’s waters? How has the response been so far? Tell us about it in the comments below, or tweet your best Vine @SproutVideo!
