Vevo puts its brand ‘front and centre’ as part of revamp to focus on personalisation

Vevo is looking to “reaffirm” its brand position and pull viewers away from competitors such as Spotify by putting a heavier focus on “social, personalised and immersive” video experiences.

Vevo is looking to put its brand “front and centre”, as it revamps its service in a bid to build a community around its music video content.

The digital video company, which currently has nearly 300 million users a month, decided to “start from scratch” last year and build new products into its service. These features aim to create a more “social, personalised and immersive” experience.

The revamp will enable users to create profiles and “build a community” by sharing music with friends. It will also offer a personalised video feed that suggests videos based on the music users listen to.

Vevo has also appointed various hosts and curators, who either work in the music industry or are self-proclaimed ‘experts’, and will look to lure their fan base onto the platform and inspire users to listen to new music.

Jon Gisby, head of Europe at Vevo, told Marketing Week it has been “reaffirming what the brand stands for” by focusing on connecting music video fans with their favourite artists.

“Our original brand was almost like a water mark, as it was always in the background. Now we want to put it front and centre – yet we’re keen to do this in an unintrusive way by still placing a big focus on the artists,” he said.

Vevo is not the only service to focus on personalisation and music recommendations. Spotify also creates weekly personalised playlists for its users by analysing what they are already listening to. However, Gisby believes Vevo can offer its users something different due to its heavy focus on video and by putting “artists front and centre”.

He explained: “We are clearly part of the music industry and we are sat alongside those players [like Spotify]. There is a difference between audio and video. Audio is an immersive entertainment experience, whereas audio is more of a background player experience.

“With our improvements it will become much easier to find and enjoy pieces of video content. It’s much more immersive. We anticipate people will as a result spend longer with us, as they enjoy the service more.”

Vevo also hopes the revamp will help drive revenue. Although the service is currently free, it is looking to introduce a subscription service by the end of the year.

“This puts us on a path to discover different business models.”

Jon Gisby, head of Europe, Vevo

While the brand is not planning any above-the-line activity to promote the new features, it will be looking to use its curators to spread the message on social media. Gisby also believes the service “inherently markets itself”.

He concluded: “If you get the product and experience right, then it almost markets itself – particularly with content like music videos it becomes something people want to share. We hope it will become a community people will want to be a part of, but we don’t necessarily want to shout about it. That’s not necessarily the brand we want to be.”

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