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By Jeremy Merle

at Brightcove

5 Useful Tips For Using Your Video Player to Increase Your Brand

Brightcove News

One of the key ingredients for creating a successful brand requires consistency. Yet when it comes to video, branding the player often gets overlooked.

Maybe you have detailed guidelines that describe exactly how and where your branding should be used or you could just have a logo and color palette.  Either way you can gain value in extending your brand language to your video player. By following these tips you can help increase your brand awareness and take advantage of the many places your video will appear online.

1. Add Brand Consistency By Customizing Your Video Player

Probably the easiest and most effective way to extend your brand is to customize your video player. This may seem like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised at how many companies just use a generic look and feel.  There are many options here, from simply adding a few accent colors to match your site or completely customizing the player using imagery, color and typography.

Sometimes less is more. Here’s an example of how changing the default theme and a few colors can give the player a fresh new look.

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Or take it a step further and customize all of the colors for a deeper brand experience.

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Quick Tip: Follow the colors and style of your website.  For example, if your site primarily uses flat, solid colors and a minimal design, try to emulate that with the player. Similarly, if you’re using gradients to add depth, reflect the same styles in your player for stronger consistency.

Learn more about customizing your player.

2. Extend Your Brand By Customizing Your Viral Player

Most likely, your video lives on your viewer’s blogs and websites in addition to your own site. A viral player is the player used when a viewer copies the ‘embed code’ and adds your video to their blog or website. If you allow viral distribution, it’s really easy for viewers to share and help promote your content. This is a great way to extend your brand reach and increase traffic.

The viral player can be customized individually, just like any other player, and set for use anytime a viewer embeds your video. Since this content will appear outside of your website, it’s important to make the player look and feel consistent with your brand standards rather than just appearing in a neutral player design.

Quick Tip: Consider the format of your content. For example, if most or all of your videos are shot in widescreen (16:9 ratio) make sure your viral player matches that format for optimal viewing.

Learn more about how to create and use a viral player.

3. Reinforce Your Brand By Using a Logo Overlay

You see them on almost every network TV show, the semi-transparent logo in the bottom right corner, subtly reminding you that you're watching FOX or Discovery. Logo overlays or watermarks were made popular by network television but can help reinforce your brand online and drive traffic back to your website. These images are really easy to create and can be anchored to any corner of your video. Each image can have a click-through link associated with it, great for driving traffic to your site or promoting a specific page.

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You can also go beyond just using your logo.  Have a new episode coming out next week?  Want to promote a new album launch?  Want to drive traffic to a new contest or promotion?  Try getting creative with the video space but just be careful about taking too much attention away from your content.

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Quick Tip: Keep the images small. About 15% or so of the video size is recommended.

Learn more about how to create a simple logo overlay and add it to your videos.

4. Animate Your Brand By Adding a Bumper Video

Like the logo overlay, bumpers are used frequently in network television. A bumper is a short video clip that plays before a video starts. Think of it like a show’s opening sequence. Bumpers are a great way to brand a series of content by adding a consistent clip that becomes synonymous with the show. Another option is to add a quick logo animation that plays before your videos to help reinforce your brand. You can add bumpers to each video individually or to your player so that all videos have the same bumper clip. Bumpers can be used with any type of content but be careful not to over do it with long intros, which may prevent viewers from watching more videos.

Quick Tip: Don’t have a series to brand or the budget to create logo animations? Try using the video still image. The video still image appears over the video window before a viewer clicks play – usually a screenshot from the video. This is a fast and easy option for additional branding in your videos. You can add the video title or completely brand the image however you want. Just upload the image in association with your video and it will automatically appear before the video is played.

Learn more about how to use bumper videos.

5. Add More Impact By Using Custom Fonts

Most companies have a specific typeface that is used with their brand. For example, at Brightcove we use a consistent typeface anywhere a graphic font is used and in printed materials. By default most video players use a system font like Arial, which tends to make the players all look the same. By using an embedded custom font you can extend your brand consistency and help differentiate your player from others in the market. Custom fonts currently require a small amount of development work, but in terms of brand consistency they can be well worth it.

Quick Tip: Strive for readability. When using a custom font, make sure your text is easy to scan and read by the viewer. Another important factor is contrast. Be careful when using low contrast text and background color combinations, especially since each monitor will render the contrast a bit differently.

Here’s a full list of supported custom fonts and instructions on how to use them with your players.

Putting it all together

When you put these small pieces together, you can create a deeply branded video experience that will leave a lasting impression with your viewers and help set you apart from the competition.

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