It’s no secret that in the era of social media, audience attention spans last approximately 2 – 3 seconds.
The irony? Facebook’s recent changes to their algorithm means their news feed now prioritises long-form videos.
“So what does that mean for brands making videos? Well, essentially you have to sell 2 – 3 minute videos to audiences who will decide in 2 – 3 seconds whether they’ll watch it or not.“
That’s where teaser trailers come in.
We’ve all seen videos that begin with a trailer. They’re short, flashy snippets of content that showcase the best bits. These days some movie trailers even have their own trailers. Yeah, it’s some nitty-gritty Inception-level stuff.
These trailers summarise the entire video in the first 7 seconds, so the audience can then decide if they want to keep watching. They don’t give away the entire story but instead tease the audience with enough information to intrigue them. It’s basically like a taste-tester for the video.
These teaser trailers are particularly important when creating videos for social change. With the saturation of video on social media, we found our videos needed teasers to hook our audience so they’d watch until the final call-to-action (and then hopefully sign the petition or join the campaign!). Our videos were often long, with a lot of information to digest, so the teaser trailer was way of easing in the audience and convincing them to watch until the end.
Here’s a few trailers within videos we’ve created lately.
This video for GetUp! needed to spark immediate action and convince viewers to lobby the government to protect the Murray Darling. The intro teaser increased viewership lengths, and the video reached a wide audience with 1.1k likes and 106 comments.
This video for Climate Council had to breakdown a complex climate solution, and encourage councils and local government to get involved in tackling climate change. Again the teaser increased viewer lengths, reaching a wide audience with 2.7k likes and 420 comments.
So whether you’re looking to increase viewership on your videos or advertising a movie trailer with its own trailer (still weird!), a teaser trailer is a surefire way of hooking your audience early-on.
