Technology
How BrandLens Streamlines Video Content Creation For Brands and Creators
BrandLens is an influencer marketing platform that empowers brands to collect and co-create video content with users worldwide through a template-based system and streamlines the often cumbersome process of producing large-scale, high-quality, on-brand videos.
Founded by Gugo Martikyan, Vahagn Khachikyan, and Vahag Karayan, a former NASA engineer-turned-entrepreneur, BrandLens leverages advanced technology to solve a persistent problem in influencer marketing: ensuring creators adhere to brand guidelines.
“Many times creators, micro-influencers do not follow creative briefs very well, leading to reshoots and inefficiencies in our fast-moving industry,” Vahag notes. “Now imagine if they have on-screen instructions saying, ‘Read this disclaimer first’ or ‘Leave this area empty” or ‘Keep your head here,’ etc.”
With its intuitive interface and AI-powered analytics, the platform offers a fresh approach to user-generated content (UGC).
Additionally, building meaningful experiences is super easy. Vahag provides an example: “Let’s take Argentina’s national soccer team. Messi dribbles past five players and scores. Argentina’s national football team can take that Messi video, put it on BrandLens, and enable users to make their commentary.”
BrandLens serves various customer segments, including agencies, brands, sports teams, and local government entities.
When organizations upload assets and build video templates to the platform, users cannot download the original content, ensuring brands retain control over their assets.
Vahag explains BrandLens’s market positioning as a video co-creation platform that empowers brands to build immersive experiences and capture 100% human-generated content, ensuring authenticity in an AI-driven environment.
BrandLens’s no-app-required, customizable solution serves diverse market segments, enabling organizations to unlock value through seamless, guided content creation and audience engagement.
Empowering Influencers and Brands Through Controlled Collaboration
BrandLens’s unique approach to video content creation offers benefits for influencers and the brands they work with.
The platform’s template-based system allows brands to maintain control over their messaging while providing room for creativity.
“The brand controls every single aspect of that video creation,” Vahag notes. However, he points out that brands can adjust creative freedom and be “as restrictive or free as they want.”
BrandLens is also exploring how established influencers could leverage the platform.
Vahag envisions a scenario where influencers with large followings could use BrandLens to engage their audience:
“For example, the influencer creates a video that performs very well., Then the influencer creates the template of that video on BrandLens and sends it to their followers and says, ‘Hey, create your version of this and share, and I will feature the best ones on my channel.’”
Versatile Campaign Applications
BrandLens offers more than just video content creation; it provides brands with valuable analytics and AI-powered insights.
“All the videos are AI-tagged where the brand can easily find things,” Vahag reveals.
This feature allows brands to efficiently search through large volumes of UGC, enhancing their ability to identify and leverage the most relevant videos.
The platform’s versatility is demonstrated through various successful campaigns across different sectors. Vahag highlights three distinct use cases:
Internal Activation for Educational Institutions
UCLA Anderson School of Business leveraged BrandLens to facilitate student introductions before the academic year began.
Vahag explains, “Before incoming business school students meet their classmates, the school creates a fun video template with icebreaker questions like, ‘What’s a book, movie, or song that has changed your life?’ or ‘What’s your unusual or distressing hobby?’”
Students record and submit their answers using BrandLens, and the videos are shared privately within the class in a TikTok-style swipe-up gallery. Each video includes the person’s name, organization, and title, making it easy for students to connect and get to know one another before classes begin.
This approach allowed students to familiarize themselves with their peers through personalized video content in an enhanced onboarding experience.
Trend Replication for Marketing Agencies
One agency utilizes BrandLens to quickly reproduce trending TikTok content.
“They build the template, send it to their creators, and the creators recreate the trending video,” Vahag notes. He reports that the brand has about 20,000 videos on the platform.
This strategy enables the agency to quickly produce relevant, timely content for their clients, staying ahead of competitors and trends.
Product Integration for Retail Brands
Hershey’s incorporated BrandLens technology into their packaging, creating an interactive gifting experience.
“Hershey’s wanted to incentivize people to buy the Hershey’s Kisses and gift it to a loved one,” Vahag recalls.
The campaign allowed customers to attach Hershey’s personalized video messages to Hershey’s Kisses boxes, adding a digital, emotional element to the physical product.
Technology and Human Touch
BrandLens positions itself as a B2B SaaS platform, offering flexible pricing models to cater to various client needs.
“Anybody can sign up,” Vahag shares. The company provides monthly subscriptions for most clients, project-based pricing for agencies, and custom enterprise solutions for large corporations.
As the creator economy follows AI advancements, Vahag sees significant opportunities for BrandLens.
He highlights the enduring value of authentic content: “I do think AI is going to play a big role, but I think the authentic content is here to stay. Influencers are going to stay here. They just have to stay relevant.”
While acknowledging AI’s potential in content creation, Vahag remains skeptical about AI-generated UGC.
“UGC, by definition, cannot be AI-generated. It’s fake,” he asserts, but recognizes AI’s efficiency in content production.
Vahag believes BrandLens’s ability to verify human-created content will become increasingly valuable.
“One key advantage for brands moving forward is the ability to guarantee that the video content we collect is 100% human-created, not generated by AI,” he notes.