LONDON: Brands need to concentrate on a 'hero, hub and housecleaning' model in order to get the most out of the burgeoning online video trend, participants at a panel organised by Warc have said.

Representatives of both client and agency sides agreed that video would become an ever-more-pressing issue in 2016, with Facebook alone already accounting for 8bn views per day.

The panel was organised at a launch event for the 2016 Toolkit, a report which examines six marketing trends for the year ahead, distilling the thinking and research published on Warc and Deloitte Digital's practical experience into a guide for marketers.

Ian Forrester, insight director at Unruly, a video ad tech specialist, cited different frameworks that brands could use in creating a video strategy.

One of these is dividing video content into 'Hero' videos, aiming to achieve the broadest reach and awareness, 'Hub' content, aimed at securing regular and engagement, and 'Housecleaning', videos that address the day-to-day concerns people may have about the product or service.

But, for Forrester, it is the hero content that is most important. "You need to reach lots of people with your videos, so go big with the hero, front load the impact and then create follow-up content that supports that hero video."

He added: "More and more brands are waking up to the need for excellence in their videos. They are moving away from just discussing product benefits and towards emotion, aimed at making people share the content." 

Paul Wilson, managing partner for strategy at Starcom MediaVest Group, agreed with this last point. "It's about light users and reaching them, remembering the lessons of 'How Brands Grow'," he told the audience. (Warc will be running a webinar with Jenni Romaniuk, co-author of this book, in January.)

For Garry Woodcock, head of digital marketing at BT Global Services, the telco, getting the balance right between video types should be a crucial concern for clients. "We have hero video and hub videos, because we need to have different conversations with different people," he said.

Nick Turner, partner at Deloitte UK, pointed out that content production would be an increased concern for agencies in 2016, with Deloitte's own data suggesting that 40% of CMOs expect greater reliance on external providers in future.

"The marketplace is changing," he said. "There is a demand there to create more content. Clients need this stuff built."

Along with the video revolution, the 2016 Toolkit also includes five other big marketing trends for the years ahead, full discussion of which can be browsed by subscribers.

Data sourced from Warc