When you think about your favorite brand, what comes to mind? Oftentimes, it’s their superior product or service, or it can be as specific as their aesthetic or lifestyle. Think about Apple products — when you think about Apple, you aren’t overwhelmed by the processing power of their computers and tablets, but the simplicity and style of their product design. Try visualizing an “Apple-lifer” — you know the type, someone who has created a whole lifestyle representing the Apple brand, carrying an iPhone, with an iPad in his bag, an iMac at home, and an Apple Watch on his wrist! Just by rocking the white Apple earbuds on the bus, an onlooker can guess you’re pro-Apple.
A lifestyle brand like Apple markets its products or services to promote a certain attitude and style, usually reflecting (or informing) that of a select culture. For example, lifestyle bloggers and influencers are paid to promote products that’ll appeal to their specific demographic of followers because of their similar cultural appeal. Lifestyle brands similarly aim to mimic or create a specific ideological or cultural appeal.
Whether you’re a lifestyle brand or not, you can use the same techniques lifestyle companies use to create a lifestyle video that appeals to a niche demographic, helps them visualize how your product fits into their way of life, and motivates them to take action and become a customer.
What is a Lifestyle Video?
A lifestyle video is a video that exemplifies the ‘lifestyle’ behind your product or service, and appeals to the customer demographic you’re trying to reach. Lifestyle videos focus on the product or service, using beautiful visuals and action shots to paint a stunning picture of what your prospective customer’s life will be like if they become a consumer of your product or service.
Where traditional commercials use actors, animated videos use motion graphics, and mini-docs use interviews to tell a story, lifestyle videos focus on the product in action. If the focus of the video is on a character narrative or interviews, it’s not a lifestyle video.
Lifestyle videos usually range between 30 seconds and two minutes, and feature locations that best highlight your product’s exemplary features.
If you’re an electric bike company, for example, and you’re trying to appeal to urban riders, your lifestyle video would show young people having a blast riding their e-bikes through the hip downtown center of a popular city.
Alternatively, if your demographic is hippie, baby boomer, beach types, setting a lifestyle video by the beach as an older couple cruises the coastline in silhouette might be a better fit.
When Should I Use a Lifestyle Video?
If you’re a company jumping into video marketing for the first time, you might not know a ton about the many different styles of videos you can use to promote your business. These different video styles have different strengths, making them better for different purposes.
The main objective of the lifestyle video is to appeal to a certain demographic, culture, or subculture. By using the lifestyle video format, you’re catering to a specific look or style. You’re defining both yourself and your customers, inspiring them to take action.
A mini-doc video, for comparison, is best for capturing your company’s core value or mission statement through interviews and real-life examples. Animation videos are best used to educate consumers and simplify complex topics. And narrative videos are used to tell a story, whether about your company or a specific character to highlight certain product features in a funny or insightful way.
Lifestyle videos are best for attracting new customers and engaging with prospective consumers once they’ve visited your page. A deeper dive into your company, like the kind a mini-doc offers, might be a better fit for nurturing potential customers once they’re already invested in your brand and are looking to buy, but a lifestyle video is perfect for giving a brief (and stylish) overview of your product or service for those looking for a taste of what your brand has to offer.
How to Create a Lifestyle Video
The best lifestyle videos are sleek, polished, and visually stunning, but creating them is actually pretty easy. Here’s how we do it here at Lemonlight.
Step 1: Pre-Production
Pre-production is when the planning happens. Everything from creative brainstorms to storyboarding happens here, setting up every detail for the production stage.
Pre-production begins with a creative call with our team, so we can get a feel for your product, how it works, and who it appeals to. If you’re doing this on your own, you might make a list of product features and what type of person they would benefit.
Next, you script out your video, writing down your visual ideas and any product features or dialogue that go alongside it. This helps the video team map out what they‘ll be shooting, what actors or extras they might need, and any locations that need to be set up and acquired in advance. It’s always good to plan your shots in advance along with the script, especially because you’re going for a certain look. Plan your aesthetic and create a storyboard.
Finally, round up any talent: actors, extras, voice-actors, and locations needed to film. Our team categorizes locations differently — some lifestyle videos work in a generic setting, like your company’s office or an unbusy street corner, while some require a speciality location, like the kitchen of a high-end restaurant, or a populated boardwalk along a beautiful beachfront.
Step 2: Production
Now that your lifestyle video is all planned out, it’s time to film it! Our team typically schedules a full eight-hour day for your average lifestyle video, but some videos with multiple locations can require two full shooting days or more. It all depends on the demands of the script.
Remember, your lifestyle video is meant to capture a specific way of life and appeal to a specific type of person. You shouldn’t cut corners when it comes to quality, so make sure you give your video team more than enough time to get the footage required. The better the quality of the footage, the more appealing the final product will be.
We could share all our tips of the trade on how to shoot excellent, high quality video here, but we’d rather work with you so you can see exactly how the magic happens!
Step 3: Post-Production
In this stage, you gather the footage you’ve collected and put it together alongside music or voice-over, depending on the demands of your script. Typically, the best lifestyle videos use a combination of both, but lifestyle videos can be just as strong when cut to a soundtrack that fits your brand’s style. The ultimate goal in this stage is to put the visuals together in a compelling way, that promotes your product or service and appeals to the ideologies and lifestyles of the customers you’re trying to attract or engage with.
Once you’ve cut the film together, added music, added any necessary effects or motion graphics, and color-corrected your beautiful images, you should have a complete lifestyle video that showcases your product or service in a sleek, cool, and visually engaging way.
Where Can I Distribute My Lifestyle Video?
Now that you’ve finished your lifestyle video, it’s time to distribute it on the proper channels to start attracting and engaging with new customers.
Here are a few of our recommended distribution channels to get the most out of your lifestyle video.
Your Website: Hosting your lifestyle video on your company’s website, especially your homepage, is a great way to immediately introduce any incoming web traffic to your brand and increase your SEO ranking. We even do it on our own homepage, so feel free to check it out. Sharing your lifestyle video on your blog is also a great way to repurpose your content.
Social Networks: Because lifestyle videos are aspirational in nature and aim to appeal to and inspire specific demographics, they’re great for sharing on social media. Share your lifestyle video across your various social media accounts with a call to action for others to share.
Media Outlets: Find related blogs and media outlets that your prospective customers read, and pitch journalists interested in your product or buy advertising space on their website. There are definitely right ways and wrong ways to do this, so make sure you research how to properly pitch media outlets in advance.
Niche Groups/Forums: If you’re targeting a specific demographic, you will want to reach out where people from that demographic hang out online. Research what subreddits your current or prospective customer-base hangs out in, or what industry chat rooms they frequent. Just make sure they’re relevant to your target audience, regularly updated and include active users.
Paid Advertising: Pay to feature your video on popular social networking sites and blogs, and take advantage of their hyper-specific targeting tools to reach the right demographic. Sites like Facebook and Youtube have great tools for reaching specific demographics, and Twitter and LinkedIn are getting better, too.
So what are you waiting for? Depending on your goals and your company’s ultimate mission, a lifestyle video may be just what you need to create your brand statement, promote your lifestyle, and get more people excited about your product or service.
But don’t go it alone! Here at Lemonlight, we create these videos on a daily basis. Schedule a free call with one of our creative producers to see how we can help you create the lifestyle video you’ve always wanted.