Accord­ing to Google, mobile devices – par­tic­u­lar­ly smart­phones – have for­ev­er changed the way our cus­tomers live. It’s also frac­tured the con­sumer jour­ney to online pur­chase into hun­dreds of real-time, intent-dri­ven micro-moments. And this has for­ev­er changed what con­sumers – espe­cial­ly 18-to-34-year-olds – expect of brands. And that makes each one of these micro-moments a crit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to shape their deci­sions and pref­er­ences.

Thanks to mobile devices, micro-moments can hap­pen any­time, any­where. In those moments, con­sumers expect brands to address their needs with real-time rel­e­vance.

What Are Micro-Moments?

Per­haps the best way to get up to speed on the con­cept of “micro-moments” is to watch a short video from Think with Google, “Micro-Moments.” Uploaded to YouTube on Sept. 23, the video’s descrip­tion explains, “Life is lived in moments. And today, so many of these moments are mobile – whether we’re enjoy­ing a new playlist, shar­ing a vaca­tion pho­to with fam­i­ly, or check­ing in on what our friends are up to.”

Thanks to Think with Google, there’s a full PDF guide with strate­gies, insights, case stud­ies, and cus­tomer exam­ples for mas­ter­ing micro-moments.

How­ev­er, once you get up to speed on micro-moments, you’ll real­ize that one of the things that they will require you to do is dra­mat­i­cal­ly change your video strat­e­gy.

Up to now, the smartest video strat­e­gy seemed to be the one employed by John Lewis, the lead­ing depart­ment store chain in the Unit­ed King­dom. Each year at this time, John Lewis would launch a new Christ­mas advert on YouTube – “The Jour­ney” in 2012; “The Bear & The Hare” in 2013; and “#Mon­tyTheP­en­guin” in 2014. This year, the John Lewis Christ­mas advert is “#ManOn­The­Moon.”

But this may be the last time that this wide­ly-antic­i­pat­ed, big bud­get, annu­al effort may be the best video strat­e­gy for John Lewis or oth­er brands.

Why?

What Video Micro-Moments Mean For Your Strategy

Four hun­dred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, so when we turn to our mobile devices to watch video, we can choose from a near­ly lim­it­less library of on-demand con­tent. That makes what we choose to watch more “momen­tary” than ever.

Lucas Wat­son, the Vice Pres­i­dent of Glob­al Brand Solu­tions and Inno­va­tions at Google, tack­les this issue in a recent arti­cle, “Video Micro-Moments: What Do They Mean for Your Video Strat­e­gy?” He wrote:

“Video con­sump­tion has gone from prime­time to all-the-time – and to address this shift in behav­ior, we need a new mar­ket­ing mod­el when it comes to video strat­e­gy.

When con­sumers look for answers, dis­cov­er new things, or make deci­sions, they’re often turn­ing to a device for help. At Google, we call these micro-moments, and they can hap­pen in search, on your brand’s web­site, in an app, and – increas­ing­ly – they’re hap­pen­ing on YouTube.

These moments of intent are redefin­ing the pur­chase jour­ney; peo­ple want the right infor­ma­tion right away. Brands’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with con­sumers through video have explod­ed into mil­lions of these moments. But to win at video micro-moments, you have to know how to iden­ti­fy them and how to act on them.”

He goes on reveal that video micro-moments gen­er­al­ly fall into four cat­e­gories:

• “I want-to-watch-what-I’m-into” moments, when peo­ple are seek­ing videos on their pas­sions or inter­ests. And 53 per­cent of online video view­ers watch online video to be inspired or enter­tained.
• “I want-to-know” moments, when peo­ple are try­ing to learn some­thing. And near­ly 70 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als agree they can find a YouTube video on any­thing they want to learn.
• “I want-to-do” moments, when they’re look­ing for step-by-step instruc­tions on how to make or do some­thing. And search­es relat­ed to “how-to” are up 70 per­cent year-over-year on YouTube.
• “I want-to-buy” moments, when they’re using video to try before they buy. And 18-to-34-year-olds say YouTube is the best place to learn about a prod­uct or ser­vice that inter­ests them.

Brands Winning Consumers In Video Micro-Moments

Wat­son goes on to out­line three ways to make sure you’re stay­ing rel­e­vant and use­ful in moments that real­ly mat­ter. He uses beau­ty brand Sepho­ra as an exam­ple of a brand has fig­ured out how to use video to play a mean­ing­ful role dur­ing one of these micro-moments.

But oth­er brands are also using video to shape the deci­sions and pref­er­ences of smart­phone users based on what they want in the moments that real­ly mat­ter. Here are five exam­ples.

1. Coca-Cola

When Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” cam­paign, it rec­og­nized that peo­ple may turn to mobile to find their own cus­tomized Coke.

In “Coca-Cola Meets Con­sumers in the Moment on Mobile,” Wendy Clark, Pres­i­dent of Sparkling Brands & Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing for Coca-Cola North Amer­i­ca, reveals how “Share a Coke” inspired con­sumers to take action and how Coca-Cola was there for them in the moment on mobile.

2. ‘Star Wars’ (Disney)

Before mil­lions of peo­ple go to the movies, they go to YouTube – often on their smart­phones. This is espe­cial­ly true among teens and young mil­len­ni­als, 65 per­cent of whom agree that watch­ing trail­ers on YouTube influ­ences which movies they will see.

Per­haps this explains why “Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens Trail­er (Offi­cial),” which was pub­lished on Oct. 19, 2015, already has more than 57.3 mil­lion views.

3. Realtor.com

Realtor.com’s mar­ket­ing team real­ized that search­ing for home list­ings is only one step in a long (and often con­fus­ing) home-buy­ing jour­ney. To be help­ful to first-time home­buy­ers, they enlist­ed the help of actress Eliz­a­beth Banks to cre­ate step-by-step videos to walk con­sumers through the home-buy­ing process.

For an exam­ple, check out “Episode 1: Know­ing When You’re Ready.” The two-minute videos res­onat­ed with con­sumers, dri­ving 400,000 YouTube views in the first three weeks and more than 1.4 mil­lion views in the first four months.

4. Home Depot

Home Depot mar­keters fig­ured out years ago that do-it-your­selfers were turn­ing to their phones to learn every­thing from “how to tile a bath­room floor” to “how to build an out­door fire pit area.” Many con­sumer end­ed up search­ing for answers on YouTube.

So to be more use­ful in these I‑want-to-do moments, Home Depot began to build out a bet­ter con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy by cre­at­ing a “how-to” col­lec­tion on YouTube. Today, the col­lec­tion has hun­dreds of videos, with the top videos reach­ing more than a mil­lion views. The full Home Depot “how-to” col­lec­tion has received more than 43 mil­lion views.

5. Unilever

Unilever real­ized that online demand for hair infor­ma­tion wasn’t being met by beau­ty brands. So they part­nered with Google to use search term data to pre­dict hair trends and con­sumer behav­iors before they hit the mar­ket.

Based on these insights, blog­gers for Unilever’s “All Things Hair” YouTube chan­nel cre­at­ed new con­tent with con­sumer intent and con­text in mind. They pro­vid­ed sim­ple, cred­i­ble answers to con­sumers in their I‑want-to-do hair care moments and drove phe­nom­e­nal brand engage­ment.

The result: Unilever’s chan­nel became the #1 hair brand chan­nel on YouTube in just 10 weeks. With­in a year, the chan­nel had amassed over 50 mil­lion YouTube views! Fifty mil­lion times when peo­ple want­ed help with their hair, Unilever was there.

Now that video con­sump­tion has been frac­tured into hun­dreds of real-time, intent-dri­ven micro-moments, brands need to shift their video pro­gram­ming sched­ules and adver­tis­ing bud­gets to cap­i­tal­ize on these micro-moments. Yes, Christ­mas will con­tin­ue to be a major event on the depart­ment store chain’s cal­en­dar and, yes, the Christ­mas sea­son now stretch­es from ear­ly Novem­ber to late Decem­ber. But what about hun­dreds of micro-moments that occur through­out the oth­er 10 months of the year?