Youtube as a Start-Up Marketing Tool. Case Studies of Polish and International Start-Ups

The way start-up organizations create marketing messages differs from the standard approach made by companies that have an established position in its industry. The authors will present differences in the promotion between start-ups and not-start-up entrepreneurs by conducting detailed analysis of video messages. In order to make a comparative study, the authors have focused on video content distributed in the form of indirect ads on YouTube. The main research problem at the beginning of this article was to define “start-up”. There are a number of definitions. Authors decided to choose the international definition of Steve Blank which says that a start-up is an organization which is looking for a repeatable and scalable business model. Based on this definition authors chose to analyse 2 startups: Brand24 and Spotify. Authors compared their videos to the video of a regular company - Allegro. They analysed three aspects: (1) Space arrangement and composition restrictions, (2) Social aspect, (3) Brand archetype and (4) Message objectives which contains focus points, message forms and purpose. The main difference between start-up and regular companies is message objective. While organizations that are not start-ups will focus on building PR and attracting clients, start-ups will focus on the search for investors, creating fast and concise messages with high viral potential.