It all started when I found my thrifty six-year-old watching YouTube videos of kids opening up packs of Pokemon cards. I thought he had lost his mind, but after a quick Google search, I came to realize that we have all lost our minds.
An unboxing video is simply a budget video of a person opening a box for the first time and showing the parts of a product. These videos are getting millions of hits, and there is one for everything from tech to toys to appliances. If you can buy it, there is an unboxing video of it. People are actually making a living producing these budget videos in their basement. These have been around for years, and I am a bit late to the game, but there is still an important lesson to learn.
We’ve all seen the generic “employment bland video” (thanks Steve Levy for the expression). The CEO claims to have employees who are like family, and there is an assortment of employee testimonials from people clearly handpicked from HR. They don’t differentiate one company from another they rarely reflect what’s actually happening inside the company. These are commercials. The problem is that people spend $15 a month on a DVR to fast-forward commercials. The solution lies in the reason for the massive success of unboxing videos:
“Unboxing videos offer an unvarnished and honest peek at commercial products. The glossy, heavily retouched images and videos companies share of their goods often vary from what’s really in the box. People want to know what they’re really getting, whether the product looks cheap or well made, or if there are more parts than advertised. It’s research material for devoted comparison shoppers and collectors.”
Job seekers are doing their research too. Let’s worry less about high production and show them what they want — what is really in the box.
For more tips and some new tech tools to help create valuable videos, watch the recording of my recent ERE conference session below.