Increas­ing­ly, as brands seek to forge more mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with con­sumers, they are behav­ing more like media com­pa­nies and cre­at­ing their own con­tent. So how do brands cre­ate video con­tent that their cus­tomers want to con­sume and that is actu­al­ly share­able?

At the recent ad:tech event in San Fran­cis­co, Jonathan Perel­man, vice pres­i­dent of motion pic­tures at Buz­zFeed, said he has a the­o­ry that brands will be the next great pro­duc­ers in Hol­ly­wood, point­ing to “The Lego Movie” as one exam­ple of this con­cept, as well as Hasbro’s poten­tial deal to buy Dream­Works.

For his part, Marc Ecko, founder and CBO of Com­plex, a con­tent site that focus­es on music, style, enter­tain­ment, sports and sneak­ers, said mov­ing beyond tra­di­tion­al media, “which is, ‘Buy my shit,’ to con­nect­ing the dots between con­tent by either delight­ing, mak­ing my day short­er or giv­ing me insight” is what is gen­er­at­ing a much more impact­ful rela­tion­ships with con­sumers.

This means a lot more videos. To wit: Perel­man said the growth of video has been phe­nom­e­nal – by a fac­tor of 56 since just 2013 – and that’s due in part to Facebook’s native video play­er.

Jes­si­ca Ulin, vice pres­i­dent and part­ner of port­fo­lio man­age­ment at media agency UM World­wide, shared three guid­ing prin­ci­ples for mar­keters to cre­ate brand­ed videos that bet­ter con­nect with con­sumers.

1. Authentic Value Exchange

This means brands must uncov­er true val­ue and need, Ulin said.

“Whether that’s util­i­ty, infor­ma­tion, or humor, it’s impor­tant for brands and pub­lish­ers to dive deep and fig­ure out what that nugget is,” she said.

Ulin gives the exam­ple of Charles Schwab, which part­nered with Yahoo to cre­ate a video series with tips for every­day trades. It is a twice week­ly live show with promi­nent brand­ing through­out.

“We look at con­sumers as the cen­ter,” Ulin said. “The con­sumer is at the heart of it.”

2. Strategic Syndication

In oth­er words, mar­keters need a media plan to sup­port the video.

“You can have the coolest piece of con­tent out there, but if there’s no media plan, it will get lost,” Ulin said.

She points to Denny’s, which cre­at­ed a humor­ous brand­ed con­tent series, the Grand Slams, and paired it with inte­gra­tions with like-mind­ed brands such as the Onion and sup­port­ed the series with native media.

“Con­tent is king, but dis­tri­b­u­tion is queen and she wears the pants,” Perel­man said.

3. Realistic Results

Brands must fig­ure out their met­rics and align their objec­tives with key stake­hold­ers.

“Mea­sure­ment is impor­tant. It’s impor­tant to under­stand the ROI,” Ulin said. “There is no mag­ic for­mu­la for share­abil­i­ty, but you can be pre­scrip­tive when it comes to increas­ing chances of engage­ment.”

Four addi­tion­al tips for mar­keters beyond these basic guid­ing prin­ci­ples:

4. Finding And Using A Unique Voice

Ecko said not fit­ting into a box with his brand voice is in part what has dri­ven share­abil­i­ty. H said Com­plex is now up to 250 mil­lion month­ly views. The brand has worked with part­ners like McDonald’s on its music series, Mag­num Opus, and Moun­tain Dew on online mag­a­zine Green Label.

5. Forge Intelligent Partnerships

Ulin notes mar­keters are start­ing to get smarter about part­ner­ing with like-mind­ed brands in authen­tic ways to bring val­ue.

She also not­ed that when brands work on their own and are not part­ner­ing with pub­lish­ers, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to put spend and strate­gic thought behind their plays.

“It’s about get­ting it out there and pay­ing mon­ey, but in a smart way and to make sure you’re using data,” Ulin said.

6. Seek Out The Right Talent

Accord­ing to Ecko, tal­ent plays a cru­cial role in cre­at­ing engag­ing video con­tent.

“Not just known celebri­ties, but intel­lec­tu­al­ly curi­ous expres­sive tal­ent is the cen­ter of grav­i­ty for the media busi­ness,” Ecko said. “You sheer away tech­nol­o­gy and data and at the end of it, there’s core emo­tive tal­ent. Ulti­mate­ly the media busi­ness is won and lost on tal­ent.”

7. Create Videos That Hit On Emotion, Identity, Information

Perel­man said brands should strive to con­nect with view­ers in at least one of these ways, by mak­ing them feel some­thing or see some­thing they can relate to and/or learn about.

He points to Friskies’ Dear Kit­ten video,which has more than 22 mil­lion views to date as a good exam­ple of this con­cept.

Do you have any video mar­ket­ing tips to add?