• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 19, 2016

Forget content, or for that matter, any other C-word, if you’re a brand utilizing video to engage a consumer marketplace, it’s all about the cadence of your content, not the content per se. That was the main takeaway from Ernie Kelsey, Senior Manager, Regional, Experiential and Social Marketing, American Honda Motor, during his opening keynote at OMMA Video in New York City this morning.

Kelsey, who showed a number of current, as well as some soon-to-be-released videos from the Japanese automaker, said it’s not just the content, but the who, what, when, where and why of how a brand distributes it to its consumers, as well as the emotion and sentiment associated with it.

“People get confused with emotion and emotional,” Kelsey said, adding that the intention of the video campaigns it to leave consumers with a “positive sentiment,” but not necessarily to make them laugh or cry explicitly.

He showed an example of Honda’s current don’t-text-and-drive campaign that does both of those things.

The campaign, which features an off-camera “mom” cutting her on-camera daughter’s hair while texting on her phone to less-than-optimal results was designed to be a more “light-hearted” way of delivering a message that Honda takes “very seriously,” Kelsey said. While the video has a great sight gag, Kelsey said it did produce negative sentiment from some consumers, as well as professional hair stylists, because the actress portraying the daughter was so realistic about her disappointing hair cutting results. Kelsey shared with the OMMA crowd that the actress was wearing “hair extensions” and it wasn’t her actual hair that was violated.

“The important thing remains that a connection is made at an emotional level in an authentic way,” he said, likening the strategy to a “good news hook” in journalistic storytelling.