Best product videos

NeTT 23 February 2010Last Updated: 13 October 2021

0 244 2 minutes read

The internet is packed full of average videos promoting products.

A very, very small number of them actually incorporate the subtleties of the medium into their message, and these are the best ones. Here are a few that tick the right boxes:

Inspired bicycles

Long, long before the internet, pro-skaters turned amateur film-makers were producing countless videos for skateboard and bike enthusiasts the world over. These videos were highly sought after-it wasn’t unheard of for people to pay upwards of AUD$50 for a mail-order copy of a sought-after US or European release.

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This product video, created and published by Edinburgh’s Inspired Bicycles, is exactly of that ilk of 90’s trick sports video. It addresses the interests of its niche succinctly and compellingly, by providing the niche with something they value highly (sweet tricks! for free!), all of it subtly branded. No surprise this has gone viral.

Boone Oakley marketing

It’s a relief to find a marketing agency that wears their Web 2.0-compatible sense of humour proudly on their sleeve. There’s no better way (other than a few thousand positive tweets) to promote a marketing agency online than with a well-executed, disarmingly animated and coyly self-reflexive video. The appeal of this is not just the hilarious narrative and lo-fi drawings, it’s also the way the video endeavours to make the medium look more high-tech than it actually is (check the ‘buttons’ stationed along the progress bar). A hilarious example of YouTube being used with just the right amount of lo-fi to advertise something that is usually over-branded.

Samsung

Advertising an HD video camera phone with a video-based riddle that is only solvable in high definition on YouTube is a remarkably clever thing to do.

The demographic that is most likely to buy such a camera are just the people who are tech-savvy enough (or who think they are, anyway) to solve such a tantalising riddle. This video is quietly brilliant, as it draws together the product, the medium and the interests of the target demographic into an irresistible and unprecedented marketing idea. As is often the case with ‘viral’ style product video campaigns, however, the ROI is difficult to gauge-especially given the viewers began to figure the riddle out after about 35,000 views. A good idea, regardless, and one that no doubt planted the Samsung brand squarely in the psyches of a highly desirable ‘electronic consumer demographic.

Smule

As we’ve seen with United Breaks Guitars, using goofy musical parodies in online video is an effective way of engaging an audience. Enter The Jeffersons singing ‘Moving on up’, Flight of the Conchords style, with accompaniment by a new Smule product: the leaf trombone iPhone applet. This video doesn’t initially seem as outrageous as it is, probably due to the absurdity of the advertisement cancelling out the absurdity of the product. But, the charmful pairing of content that references Gen-Y pop-culture with a product that is seeking the same audience is at once effective and endearing. #