Twitter’s Head of Content Shares What Video Ads Work Best

Published in

Video Strategist

3 min readJul 19, 2019

In the third episode of season two of The Rough Cut, Storyhunter co-founder Alex Ragir continues our special series at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, often considered the most prominent event and award show for the advertising industry.

We’ll be releasing a new episode from Cannes Lions weekly for the next two months with some of the biggest names in the industry. In our second episode from Cannes, we talk with Stacy Minero, Global Head of Content Creation at Twitter.

She oversees the Content Creation team, which helps brands develop content for a connected world, focusing on mobile-first content. Stacy’s crew has worked with brands like Bud Light and NBA on TNT to develop engaging content for the social platform.

Alex and Stacy discussed content optimization for Twitter, the potential for integrated marketing campaigns, and how paid and organic reach should complement each other.

Below are edited highlights of the conversation:

Short-Form Content is Great For Twitter

“Digital Content shouldn’t be the same on every platform. For Twitter, short-form, which is usually fifteen seconds or less, is the most effective. These kinds of videos can be the engine of your content strategy and convey information efficiently. One challenge on Twitter is accounting for how fast people scroll through their social media feed. Your content has to command attention, create ‘stopping power’ and slow the speed of the scroll.”

Make Your Audience View, Consume and Engage

“Commanding the attention of your audience is imperative, but if that’s where your work stops, there’s a lot left to be desired from your digital content. Once you command attention, you want to maintain it. Give information, graphics or visuals that entice people to view and consume the content. This means that they’re taking in the media and internalizing it. Lastly, make them engage with it. This can be in the form of a purchase, a retweet, or talking about the content verbally with their peers.”

Source: Budweiser Twitter Account (@budweiserusa)

Utilize Integrated Marketing Campaigns

“An IMC campaign that I really enjoyed from a marketing perspective is the Nike campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. The ad had an anthemic tone, included many of their ambassadors and existed in television and social media as well. Distributing the content in both the social media-sphere and on television sparked a conversation between social media users and non-users. The conversation spread like wildfire and at the end of the day, benefited Nike’s business. Consider integrating your messages across multiple platforms if your goal is to start a conversation.”

Paid and Organic Reach Are Not Mutually Exclusive

“There seems to be this negative perception of paid growth, but really it’s just another tool in your digital marketing tool chest. Paid media, coupled with great content, is like putting fuel on a fire. It gets your message out to the right audience at the right time. By eliminating it from your strategy, you limit the scale of your campaign.”

ICYMI: Last week, we launched a new product called Storyhunter Studios. This is a global production solution that we’ve built on top of our existing network and technology. It will allow you to produce digital content efficiently, on a mass scale. Go to www.storyhunter.com/studios to learn more about how our new feature can help your brand achieve digital greatness.

Previous episodes of The Rough Cut:

Season Two:

Ari Halper, Chief Creative Officer, FCB New York

Mickey Meyer, President of Network, Group Nine Media

Season One:

Courtney Coupe, VP of Content, Great Big Story

Stone Roberts, VP of Global Video Strategy, Refinery29

Jason Beauregard, Head of Studio, VaynerMedia

Zahra Rasool, Editorial Lead, Contrast VR

Warren Cohen, Head of Video, New York Post

Greg Gilderman, Global Head of Video and Editor-in-Chief, Weather Channel

Jamie Bolding, Founder and CEO, Jungle Creations