When book trailers started popping up a few years ago, they were widely considered a waste of time. But the format has proven to be so popular that some publishers now run author-interview-style trailers on com- mercial television in the US.
Vook, a digital publisher which started out marketing its own video and audio en- hanced titles, now also works with high- profile media companies such as Elle and The AARP Magazine to create content for smart devices.
Is it so ridiculous for magazines to try to bridge the video divide?
Not if Esquire has anything to say about it. The Hearst title dedicated to ‘man at his best’, Esquire boasts a base rate of 700,000 with 21 international editions. Its market- ing strategy takes a page from the Bond movies, a comparison encouraged by the trailer Esquire created for the August 2012 issue. Packed with explosions, pretty girls, and fancy tech, the 48-second trailer got 38,677 views in short order.
It’s clear video is a worthwhile investment. Claire Valoti, the managing director of O2 Media, cites figures from the Internet Ad- vertising Bureau showing that “online ad spend had increased by more than 13.5 per cent for the first half of last year (2012), with much of this growth being attributed to the rise of video.”
The question remains: Which approach is most effective.
A trailer such as Esquire’s is relatively in- expensive to produce, particularly when there’s already footage available. “We had so much extra video for August, so we wanted to put it to good use,” Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger told Adweek.
Another Esquire initiative, a trailer for Chris Jones’ Zanesville Zoo escape feature, ‘Ani- mals, may have done more harm than good. The trailer itself was impressive – rather than creating a Hollywood-esque piece of flash, the magazine created a video pulling together audio and images collected during Jones’ research and interviews to create a compelling piece of video.