Hang onto the Vine

Yes, the news is sad, but true. Vine is shuttering. Twitter announced last week that it will be discontinuing the Vine mobile app.  I imagine the goodbyes lasted 6 seconds. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Vine, as a tool for marketers, really took off in 2012 when Twitter acquired the social platform. Since then, B2B and B2C marketers have embraced the platform and the challenge of distilling everything from their value props to their contests down to 6 seconds. 

Over the past several years, I’ve seen a number of brands successfully use Vine as a way to amplify their marketing. I loved GE’s #6SecondScience Vines. What started out as a brand marketing initiative resulted in consumer-driven #6SecondScience Vines that racked up over 800,000 views. Vine also gave HP a way to be humorous when they launched their Windows integration. (Humor and HP are not synonymous.) Other brands such as Cisco, Philips, Adobe and Microsoft also successfully found their “Vine Voice” to communicate to their B2B audiences.

There are any number of reasons I wish we, as marketers, were able to hold onto the Vine. Vine was everything a marketer needed in this real-time, mad-dash-to-create-content world. Vine was super easy to use, creative, engaging and measureable. Isn’t that everything we want in a content distribution channel? Personally, I like that Vine forced marketers to distill their messaging down into the most important words, visuals and animations. Vine forced us to be crisp and to the point.

But we are living in a post-modern marketing world. So, what does that mean? It means that the brands that breakthrough are the ones that create useful, meaningful and entertaining experiences with their audiences.

Although Vine is going, the use of short-form video to create these meaningful and entertaining experiences is expanding. From Facebook video to Snapchat to Instagram, marketers have more tools – tools that have really improved over the last year or so ­– to create and distribute their content.

Would I like to hold onto Vine? I absolutely would. I think the opportunities were tremendous.  However, I am confident that the opportunities will be there, just on and across different platforms. If you agree, share your thoughts on the platform that killed Vine, Twitter #SaveTheVine.