How Video Marketing Led to Brand Differentiation and Revenue Growth for The Fresh Diet, Part 1
- Put a face on the nameless, faceless entity, as there were multiple regional and national diets competing for "share of wallet."
- Show customers and prospects alike that they're real human beings, committed to making a real difference in their lives.
- Build a community of deeply engaged and loyal customers who would "walk through fire" for The Fresh Diet.
2. Use video — and social media — to execute your brand's goals. In order to position itself as being human, The Fresh Diet had to be about fun. Dieting, if you've ever done it, is not fun. However, with the right support, it can be made to be.
The videos we created for The Fresh Diet had to be about fun. They needed to have the customer and prospect forget for a while that they were doing something less than pleasant.
We shot testimonials, but we also created video contests, and even rewarded our customers and prospects with a spoof of the TV show "Undercover Boss."
The Undercover Boss spoof was shot in a day guerilla style. We spent half-a-day shooting (in multiple locations), the other half of the day editing, all with just one high-definition camera and a cameraperson who also was an editor. It was very inexpensive. The video got well over 20,000 views — which was quadruple our customer base at the time — and a ton of positive comments and likes.
Moreover, it successfully conveyed that the actors in the spoof — The Fresh Diet's CEO, customer service manager and head chef (and even myself who was the voice of the brand's social media — were real people who didn't take "the serious business of changing lives" too seriously. Compared to those nameless, faceless diet brands, we BECAME real to customers and prospects. The Fresh Diet's trust level went up … as did its sales.
Jim Gilbert has been creating direct marketing programs that drive superior ROI for almost 30 years. Fluent in consumer or B-to-B, creative, operations, and analytics, he marries the strategic and tactical sides of direct and social media marketing in a seamless fashion that gets results. He's CEO of a multidiscipline direct marketing agency, Gilbert Direct Marketing, Inc., which focuses on direct mail, catalogs, DRTV, telemarketing, print, alternative direct marketing media and social media marketing. Jim has been involved in start-ups, expansions and turnarounds, and is an expert in helping multichannel marketers get to the "next level." He's a former adjunct professor, teaching direct marketing at Miami International University, and is President of the Board of Directors of the Florida Direct Marketing Association. Jim loves to talk direct marketing, and has done many lectures on direct and social media marketing.
