With an apparent shortage of premium video inventory against which to advertise, some marketers are taking to producing their own content to get their messages across. But what’s the right recipe for branded video success?

“No matter what … it’s got to be clear, consistent,” says Digitas’ north America media activation head Adam Shlachter. “It’s got to have a distinct voice and perspective and be something people not just watch but talk about, keep coming back to – that’s hard to do.”

The difficult truth about branded video is that there are no quick wins and scale is very hard to achieve. “Unfortunately, it’s a bespoke approach you have to take each time, which does limit the scale,” Shlachter adds. “There’s no one way to do it – if there was, it wouldn’t be effective.”

Shlachter was interviewed by TouchCast co-founder Erick Schonfeld at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico.