ComScore and EXPO have released a study indicating that professionally-produced video content and user-generated product videos, when used together, drive higher sales.

Groups of consumers were asked to evaluate sales effectiveness on a professional how-to video, a user generated video and both of them together.

The professional video generated a 24.7 point increase in Share of Choice for that product, while the user video represented a 18.7 increase. When those two are used together, the point increase was 35.3, higher than the combined point value of the videos added individually. Showing, that when used together, the sales power is greater than their sum.

Frank Findley, Vice President, Research and Development at comScore said, “In the campaign examined, professionally-produced content and product videos drove strikingly higher lifts when used together than when either was used individually. While marketers may already be familiar with the effectiveness of professional video content alone, these results suggest that even greater returns can be had by combining their use with authentic, user-generated content.”

Consumers were then asked to evaluate their interpretation of the key message and emotional impact of the videos. For the most part, they found the emotional intensity, key message and their ability to relate to the video were all better for the user generated video. However, when the two were combined, all of the numbers were higher than each of them individually.

Jessica Thorpe, Vice President of Marketing at EXPO said, “we found that consumers perceived feature benefits as more believable when coming directly from the brand through professionally-produced content, while the unbiased user-gen videos were more believable in verifying specific product claims, such as superiority and convenience. When used together, all of the perceived gaps get filled in and consumers become more confident in their purchase decision, resulting in better sales effectiveness from the advertising.”

The message is clear, if you can combine professional video with user-generated video in your marketing campaigns, you should do it. Together, they c