Purple has come a long way since their Kickstarter days. In 2015, founders Tony and Terry Pearce decided to reinvent their wheelchair business and start a direct-to-consumer mattress company. Within two years, the company ballooned from a team of 30 to a team of hundreds, and in Summer 2017, the Utah-based startup merged with Global Partner Acquisition Corp., putting the brand on the public market.
But if you go back to their original Kickstarter page, you’ll notice one Purple touch that hasn’t slowed down — their creative take on video marketing:
Flash forward to 2018. Earlier this year, Purple released a series of new videos, featuring a similar style:
The roughly five-minute video has garnered more than 3.3 million views on YouTube since it was published on March 25.
Purple’s also thought smaller, experimenting with a variety of different video formats to captivate their audiences across different channels. The brand recently partnered with Oath, for example, on a native video campaign which featured six-second video snippets (among their array of ads) to capitalize on micro-brand moments and retargeting opportunities. According to Oath, the campaign blew benchmarks out of the water.
“Content is a crucial way to reach consumers, so marketers are constantly seeking to understand the best medium to communicate their brand story and values. Through video, the question becomes how can you ensure audiences will pay attention to and retain your message?” Jeff Lucas, Head of Americas Sales, Oath, said. “The key — and often the challenge for brand marketers — is creating video content that is authentic and resonates with the brand. With Purple Mattress, they leveraged smart and good-humored native video ads that aligned with the company’s brand voice, paired with advanced targeting to reach the right audience.”
We asked Bryant Garvin, director of digital marketing, Purple, to share his insights on how the mattress brand built a competitive video marketing program:
DMN: Why is video considered an important part of your marketing strategy?
Garvin: Consumers usually make their purchase decision through emotion, and we’ve found there is no better way to tap into emotion than through video. That’s why we always use it as one of our first touch points with customers.
DMN: What challenges did you encounter when getting your video marketing strategy off the ground?
Garvin: The biggest challenge for us was figuring out how to create content that fits inside each unique platform. How do you take one piece of content and make it work for Facebook, Youtube, etc. so that it feels “native?” We’ve had to learn how to maximize the resources we have available at any given time.
DMN: How does your video marketing strategy tie in with the rest of your marketing efforts?
Garvin: We utilize video as a first touch point in the consumer journey. We then remarket to people who have viewed our videos with additional videos, display ads, native, etc. in order to help walk them toward conversion. We are also working on creating more brand videos that get to who we are and not just what we sell.
DMN: In terms of content, how do you approach video marketing differently than with your other marketing efforts?
Garvin: We’re really into testing, but we definitely test video the most out of any of our other marketing content. We put a heavy focus on the first five seconds of the video to see what resonates with audiences and encourages them to engage with the rest of the video. Because video is often the first entry point for a customer to our brand, we put a lot of attention on that content.
DMN: What advice do you have to other brand marketers who may be looking to improve their video strategy?
Garvin: Test, test, test. And when you think you’ve tested enough, do some more. You never know what will convert. We’ve been surprised over and over again by what content converts best. And for brand marketers, focus on video that resonates with normal people, not just something that’s beautiful.
