High-end Interior Brands can make YouTube work for them

With more than 1 billion unique users visiting YouTube each month and over 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, getting noticed is no longer straighforward. The opportunity to create video content that consumers seek out and share with friends is the holy grail for any brand. 

With kittens, babies and comedy moments get countless clicks, how can a sophisticated high-end interior brands compete in an environment where the silliest stuff seems to get the most attention?

Fortunately, high-end brands don’t need to compromise their core principles to find an audience on YouTube. With a few simple strategies, your brand can get results with smart content targeted to relevant viewers.

1. Create video concepts that feel genuine coming from your brand

We can all be seduced by concepts that offer pure entertainment value, but this can take the brand into questionable and uneccesary territory. It takes discipline and long-term vision to navigate away from good ideas that simply don’t connect with your consumer’s belief in your brand. You should know exactly what your brand stands for. 

2. Produce experiences your consumers actually want from your brand

Resist the temptation to adapt your brand values to YouTube. Instead, stay focused on your long-term core equity and find ways to make that come to life. Explore our other benchmarking editted collections of high-end brand videos such as Luxury and Craftsmanship Part 3 or any others in the series in our blog series.

3. Transcended traditional selling to offer an audience-driven experience

Once you get over the fact that online videos are not long TV advertisements, a whole new paradigm opens up. Selling the brand becomes secondary to offering an experience your audience wants. From that perspective, your brand gets credit for sponsoring the experience, while product attributes generally take a back seat.

4. Make your video content stand out in ways people care about

You have an incredible amount of competition for eyeballs on YouTube, so make sure your video offers real value. If you’re showing  “how-to” instructions, make them easier. If you’re creating a product demo, make it more dramatic. Good examples of this are found withIf you’re creating a fantasy kitchen, make it more spectacular. Your competition is good—you need to be better.

5. If you saw this video on YouTube, would you watch it?  Would you want to share it?

In subtle ways, many of us look down on our audience. “Well, this video doesn’t appeal to me, but I’m sure that others might like it.”  Make the quality of your video content a personal challenge. If you’re excited about a concept and can’t wait to show it to friends, family and associates, chances are your consumers will feel the same way.

As Angela Ahrendts from Apple puts it:    

1. Know thyself. What’s your core, your passion, your reason for being? Young or old, all great brands and individuals stand for something – it’s the starting point for every story.
2. Dream. Stories are where dreams can become realities. Be brave, audacious, take risks.
3. Be authentic. Share a consistent, pure vision – write your next (or your first) chapter, not a new book every time.
4. Trust – your instincts, each other. Trust engenders belief, the basis on which all stories live or die.
5. Engage, entertain, excite. Emotion is at the heart of every story, in every age, in every context – round a campfire, on the printed page, in a movie theatre, online. Today, digital is opening up a whole new era of opportunity, putting the power to create emotive content and share it widely in everyone’s hands. Use it smartly, and wisely.