Yet another new iOS app has come out of the entrepreneurial minds at MIT, and this one is aimed at video marketing. Trio is a “video mash-up” app that allows users to pull together photos, videos, music, GIFs, and other assets to create easily shared multimedia videos. With video continually being demonstrated to be a powerful tool for content marketing, easy access to the medium is certain to be welcomed by both users and brands looking to engage users in new ways.
This isn’t the first video creation or mash-up tool out there. For a couple years now, sites such as Wideo and Stupeflix have been giving marketers tools to bring together various photos and video clips into a single project, while apps such as PowToon give marketers a cheap way to create motion graphics or animations without hiring a freelancer.
But it’s in the small features that Trio is able to fill in the cracks the other services don’t: Trio is completely free, while the other services require a membership to access full features. Likewise, Trio exists on mobile while the other platforms are almost exclusively Web based. This could seem limiting, but the fact there are now tools available in both arenas for marketers should only be seen as a plus. Trio shouldn’t replace all your video efforts, but it fills a helpful space on mobile that no other tools have filled until now.
On top of the benefits for video marketing campaigns, Trio is also unique in how it protects content creators. While the app allows you to pull media from all over the Web—be it from a website or social media—the app constructs videos with built-in links back to each piece of original source content, much like Pinterest. The intention is to enable app users to be as creative as possible in making their mash-ups, while still protecting the work of the content creators included in those videos.
The app’s creator, Misha Leybovich, hopes the app will be as popular with regular users as it will be with brands seeking to get their messages and creativity out there. And Trio is already catching on: Before the app’s official launch in March of this year, PBS sponsored Trio as a preferred way for students to create content for their #MyZeitgeist event. The result was a beautiful collection of videos from students about the events that defined 2014. Now that the app has officially been launched, we can certainly expect to see more content marketing campaigns that incorporate either brand- or user-made mash-ups to engage with audiences and tell stories in an easier way than ever before.
One thing’s for sure: For content marketing success, every brand should be looking for new ways to engage their customers with multimedia content. Whether Trio will present a game-changing shift in how multimedia content is created, however, remains to be seen.
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