Fourth Floor Creative recently hosted the first in its series of Takeaway events, and the night was both a huge success and a lot of fun.

We had talks and panel discussions with 7 industry experts that covered how food and drink brands can create compelling social video on any budget. Our impressive roster of guest speakers had over 100 million combined followers and included Adam Park, Head of Video and Production from Jungle Creations; Barry Lewis, a successful YouTuber with almost 1 million subscribers and, celebrity chef and Instagram legend, Dean Edwards.

There were so many great talking points on the night that this list could have gone on forever, but here are my 7 top takeaways from our first Takeaway event.

Gen Z is taking over

Now we’re in 2020, Gen Z takes over millennials as the biggest demographic, and brands should be preparing themselves for this shift. Gen Z’ers have grown up in a digital world and have thrown-out tradition viewing methods, favouring laptops, mobiles and tablets to consume over 3 hours of video content every day on average.

Watch-time has overtaken views as the key success metric

We heard from Adam that Jungle Creations used to measure the success of their videos based on the number of views and how ‘viral’ a video went. They now look at the total and average watch time of a video as a leading metric, and look at the amount of returning viewers to help define future content and strategies.

People are inspired by the idea… not the execution

This is so true. How many times have you watched a video and shared, liked or commented on it because of how well it was made? Unless you’re a videographer, probably never! People aren’t inspired by the execution and the kit you used to make a piece of content. They are inspired by the idea, the message, the story, and the emotion. How it makes you feel is way more powerful than how it looks, so having a good idea should be more important than how much budget you have to create it.

This all comes down to having a strategy, knowing what you want to achieve (and for what audience), and having the right creative process in place to create those killer ideas.

You don’t have to be the hero of the story, you just have to facilitate a good one

Take the Christmas adverts from John Lewis, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer as an example. What they all have in common is that none of them are filmed in-store. In fact, their branding or the product lines barely feature at all. That’s because they’re not trying to be the hero of their own story. They don’t need to be. They just want to be part of an affecting, engaging, human story that resonates with their audience.

Proper storytelling like this will take your video content’s powers of connection to the next level.

YouTube engagement and views are expected to explode in 2020

There was a lot of chat about YouTube at Takeaway, which is unsurprising when you see arresting stats like the above. A 21% increase in engagement and 16% growth in views is huge, and offers a really exciting opportunity that food and drink brands should be taking more seriously.

The consensus on the night was that food and drink brands tend to be Instagram-first when planning influencer marketing campaigns. Yet the long-form nature of YouTube, and the die-hard audiences YouTube influencers have, lend themselves perfectly to creating real, meaningful connections with their audiences.

A lack of regular posts is the number one reason most social channels fail

This is obviously a social media truism in general, and not specific to video content, but it is a fact that too many businesses still ignore.

Consistency is key. You don’t need to post every day, but you do need to consistently post great content.

Avoid generic ‘influencers’, and look for the right content creators to collaborate with

On first glance you might think that we're splitting hairs with this one; content creators and influencers – it's semantics, right? But while there is some cross-over between the two, there are definitely two different types of social personalities that you can partner with for branded content campaigns.

‘Influencers’: Let’s face it, anybody with a smartphone has the ability to take a selfie or a photo of their burger and post it to Instagram. That’s not to say that influencers are not content creators, but their content tends to be much more personal and less creative than a ‘content creator’. And this is fine. Influencers are masters of their personal brand and can provide huge, valuable followings for brands to tap into. What qualifies somebody as an influencer isn't their ability to create content, it is their ability to ‘influence’ their audience.

Content creators: Content creators are creative directors. They are videographers, storytellers, scriptwriters, and photographers with a flair for executing high-quality production content in a variety of tones and genres. Partnering with a content creator, be it a YouTuber, a Twitch streamer, or an Instagrammer, will allow you to provide a creative brief, collaborate on the production and execution of the content, and inevitably provide you with higher quality, more engaging content, meaningful storytelling, and longer-lasting results.

Takeaway events are exclusively for the food and drink industry and will cover a range of exciting content and influencer marketing topics. If you’d like to come to one of the next events, drop Thom an email to get a personal invitation: thom@fourthfloor.co

This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Fourth Floor’s four food & drink campaign manager Thom Whitchurch.