Wouldn’t it be something if you had your very own spokesperson to represent your company? As leaders in video spokesperson services, we are more than confident in telling you that nothing is more influential than a “real” person endorsing your product or service. Perhaps most important of all, spokesperson videos inject a legitimacy to your business’ online presence and helps build your brand…and that’s what we’re going to cover in this Green Screen Talent Now blog.

A brand spokesperson can bring a brand to life, give it emotional range and create instant recognition and connection. But as we delve deeper into the subject of brand ambassadors and using video spokespeople for building your brand, it’s important we take a look at some of the key issues to keep in mind when working with a brand spokesperson:

 

• Asset Management –

Characters, or representatives of your company, are a valuable asset built over time. Like any asset, they can also be mishandled and must be protected. As unbelievable and counterintuitive as this may sound, the brand spokesperson or character may evolve to the point he or she holds more value than the brand they represent.

 

• Emotional Benefits –

Spokespeople often have different benefits than the brands they represent; when the spokesperson is invested with emotional value as the brands stay more “rational,” there’s a powerful synergy that allows you to both connect and satisfy. Brands can focus on “grounded” aspects such as recipes or coupons, but that is much more limiting than if they really understand the emotional benefit and translate it into a dialogue wherein consumers can “love you back.” You know what a good example of this is? Flo from Progressive Insurance. Flo boasts millions of Facebook fans, yet Progressive has only a couple hundred thousand…because Progressive is relegated to doing real-world-grounded tasks such as answering complaints, while Flo can “have fun.”

 

• Recall and Likability –

A spokesperson/character can break through the white noise of advertising using their familiarity and recall. Likability helps persuade consumers and offers a leg up when promoting new products or extensions in a way we’ve never seen before…and Green Screen Talent Now are experts in this area!

If your company, in its efforts to create a powerful brand image, has a spokesperson or character that represents it in radio, print, TV and/or FSIs and you’re not using it online, there is a disconnect for consumers as well as a missed opportunity in branding. Video images and characters have always created a connection with people – can you now visualize the very first moment the Pillsbury Doughboy was poked in the belly? Can you just hear that giggle right now?

 

Building Your Brand with Today’s Technology

Successful spokespeople in today’s ever-evolving and lightning-fast market need a cross-platform approach. We can at least agree that most often we see recognized brand characters launched via the TV medium, but while TV enjoys a seriously broad reach and longer history of brand characters, even those more recently born and flourishing online – like Flo, the Aflac Duck, the Roaming Gnome, the Old Spice Guy and the Dos Equis Man – seem to have benefitted from the full sound, motion video experience and mass reach that the visual medium offers. What’s our point? These spokespeople acquire dimension online as they have many more interactions while talking back and challenging viewers; remarketing opportunities like email lists, fan lists, Twitter lists, coupons and other valuable “touch points” built through this diverse platform are predominantly and most effectively delivered online.

One of the trials associated with having a spokesperson online is that it’s not just a content challenge…it’s also a brand challenge. These elements come together at this vital juncture, but usually a brand challenge can be addressed with strategy that speaks to cross-medium issues while content strategies must be tackled online and off. When there’s a video spokesperson in play, they fuse: You have content and brand challenges wrapped up as one, and we can tell you that brands that aren’t prepared for that can fail spectacularly.

What we can say with all manner of certainty is that the value of a successful online spokesperson is undeniable, even if it’s not an easy thing to do well. These fun, quirky characters require a great deal of thought and work when building a brand, especially when they’re tasked with connecting appropriately to your audiences and adding value to your business. For every Flo there are probably a thousand spokespeople or characters that were not as well thought-out, not supported with regard to cross-channeling and not consistently used…and that’s probably the reason we’re not on a first-name basis with them.