6 seconds of fame: what Vine did to change the world of marketing
The history of Vine is a short one, but it is one that made a huge difference on the way that we make and remake video content. It exploded into existence after it’s initial launch in 2013, hitting more than 200 million active users merely 2 years after. The flames were not meant to last though, as Twitter Inc., it’s owner, decided to lay the meme machine to rest in 2016, finally closing off new content this January.
The legacy of Vine will not die, not just because of the hours long compilations on YouTube, but also for what it did to mobile marketing strategies. We found out many things about the internet and it’s users through Vine. First, capturing the attention of the internet means you really only have 6 seconds to make your pitch. Second, video is the way to go when trying to reach out to an audience. Finally, we learned going viral can be as giving your snippet of content over to the world.
- 6 seconds is all you need. 6 seconds is all you have.
When Vine began, the creators knew that their videos needed to be at least short enough that people could share their components through text or email messages. The six second length stumped a lot of people trying to make it in the social media marketing world, but as it turns out, internet users don’t give you that much time to make your pitch anyway. Research done in 2016 says that humans’ attention span lasts about 8 seconds, which means it’s a tough job for anyone in the business of selling to make a lasting impression.
As the interface started to become more popular, Vine-making started to become less of a fun thing to do for the average person and started to become much more of an art form. Thousands of sites have dedicated at least an article to what it means to make a great Vine. PR Daily, the world’s best news source on all things PR, jumped aboard the Vine train very early on, giving ways brands can use Vine to their advantage and how to do it.
To make a great Vine, you really have to copy everyone else. The blog Simply Zesty outlined the types of videos that are most popular on Vine: Stop motion, Quick Cartoon, Narratives, Previews, How-To’s, Behind the Scenes, Event Summaries, and Entertainment. It’s best if you can do multiple of these categories at once. If you can emulate Vines like Thomas Sanders, you can stand out amid the crowds of people selling.
2. Video is the new Photo
Before Vine launched, the popularity of video content was limited to sharing things on Facebook and uploading your content to YouTube. However, shortly after Vine gained popularity, mobile marketers began pushing video as the way to reach new audiences. Pinterest, Instagram, and other media began allowing video as a new form of content.
Business2community, a site that helps all businesses connect to their audiences, gives us all of the great reasons why video is the new photo. A photo may be a thousand words, they say, but you can get 30 pictures a second in a video. That means there is 360 pictures per vine and well, I’ll let you do the math. All together, videos utilize the emotions of a photo, the personalization of music and sound, and add the bonus of motion that captures the eye of the internet users you are trying to reach.
With all of this and the six seconds that is just inside the attention span of internet users, Vine is truly the epitome of the perfect place to push your brand, if you know how. But there is one component of Vine that truly changed how marketers reach their audiences.
3. Snack-sized is the best size.
How many Vines have you seen on other forms of social media? How many times have your friends showed you a Vine that you had already seen? Like I mentioned earlier, the creator of Vine knew that the videos on the platform needed to be easily shareable so that people could reach out to others. Because of this feature, that ensured that Vines were made to go viral and suddenly, Vine was the meme center of the world.
Memes are the symbol of what is popular. They are pictures, videos, and short one liners that have gone viral enough to become part of pop culture, and Vine was one of the biggest meme factories the world has ever seen. Phrases like “On fleek”, “Ain’t nobody got time for that” and “Do it for the Vine” made their way into every day conversation and never quite went away.
To make it viral though, you had to allow users to remix your product into the meme that you so wanted. Lush cosmetic stores hit it big through Vine as users made and remade Lush’s videos of bath bombs. Even if the users were making fun of the product, they also gave a name to a company that many didn’t know well before. From that moment on, marketers were trying their best to recreate the same situation, eagerly handing over their silly or emotional content to the hands of Vine users around the world.
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The legacy of Vine will last a life-time as it is the perfect example of the perfect form of mobile marketing. It is small enough to not be overwhelming to users, it conveys enough information to get the point across, and it’s share-ability allows users to interact with the product and the company in a way that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter still does not quite allow for. Vine was the jokester social media, the one that breathed a little life into the rest of the photo-and-text-centered internet. Vine will be missed by marketing and average users alike, but it’s legacy will carry on well into the future.