For those who think there isn't all that much that can be effectively communicated in a six-second video, I'm here to say that you might be mistaken. I was very recently shown by a group of 17 to 21-year-olds that there is quite a bit — almost all of it quirky — that marketers and fans of brands can do on Vine, Twitter's six-second video app launched earlier this year.
It's clear that marketers are looking at Vine as a means to reach consumers. The question is whether this form of social communication is simply a novelty that will be gone in a blink or has real staying power from a marketing perspective.
Posted on Vine's blog page is a Burberry's Menswear fashion show filmed in London yesterday shown in its entirety — in seconds.
Adweek reports that Regal Entertainment Group, which operates movie theaters, is using Vine to promote Monsters University and World War Z.
"The limitations of six seconds can actually lift the storytelling," Gabrielle Kessler, accounts manager for Something Massive, which handles social media for Regal, told Adweek. "You get to home in on those emotionally engaging moments that both marketers and filmmakers are after."
With over 13 million downloads of the app on Apple's App Store, it was only a matter of time before Vine competitors popped up. Instagram, owned by Facebook, is expected to launch its own short video service tomorrow. Many expect, since Vine has been referred to as the "Instagram for Video," that an Instagram service could cause Vine to whither. Some beg to differ, but consumers and the marketplace they represent will decide.