This Is a Generic Brand Video – brilliant stock footage promo

This is a generic brand video is a video by stock video footage provider Dissolve. It is excellent in the way that you recognize many, many stock video moments in this single video.

It’s amazing how ‘Everything you hate about advertising’ (as Adweek puts it) is in the video. From science labs to city scapes, from people from all ethnicities to fast trains: it’s all there.

A generic brand video – but who is Dissolve?

Dissolve is a stock footage video company which sells royalty-free HD stock video footage. Prices range from $5 to $500 per clip. Their tagline: “Better footage, better stories”. Their promo video does just that: tell the generic brand video story in one single video. A straight hit if you ask me.

Click below to view the full video:

There’s even a baby in there! And of course, don’t forget the ‘big words that are synonyms for progress’. Words passing by supported by the generic stock music track are ahead, onward, go-forward, paradigms, innovation and of course, virality.

It’s quite unnerving to watch this video – especially if you are one of the marketers who has ever commisioned a generic brand video like that and used that exact stock footage or similar. Then again, if you don’t have the budget, the tools or the means to make a unique video of your own, stock footage can be just the thing for you. If it helps your company tell its story, why not. Thousands of other brands do it, and are succesful with it, so why shouldn’t you do it as well? But be careful not to put too much stock footage in your promo video, or it might end up like the example from Dissolve.

Hiring real creative people who can come up with a message that shows what your company is about -and- a message that lands with your audience will be wortwhile, even though it might cost a bit more than stock footage.