Should a creator video ask viewers to comment?

The brief has one line in it that nobody has argued about: ask them to drop a comment. It reads like the cheapest thing in the document, which is why it's still there.

You sell a magnetic strip that holds knives on a tiled wall, with nothing going into the tile. Filming is two weeks out, so the line can still be cut. What has to be settled first is whether the checks you run on every other line in the brief even apply to this one.

What kind of ask is this?

We've written before about the line that asks a viewer to do something once the video is over — a call to action (CTA). That guide says at the top what it rules on: a line that "finishes somewhere outside the video". A page. A shelf in a store. And it says out loud that this version isn't its business — "an ask for something that happens where the video already is, like a reply under it, is a different question this piece doesn't take up". We'll use the ask here for the line under review, whichever way it points.

That's the line in the knife strip brief. Tell me in the comments doesn't send anybody anywhere. What it asks for happens in the window sitting directly beneath the post, a few inches from the video that asked.

So it looks like the easy case.

Does it pass the questions you already use?

That guide stopped at asks that finish outside the video, but its two questions are about a destination, and this ask has one. So you can still run them on it.

The first is whether there's anywhere for it to go — somewhere that exists while the video is being watched, not somewhere that exists by the time the brief is signed off. This ask clears that — the comment window is on the screen while somebody is watching.

The second is whether the thing the line states is yours to state. That one has nothing to bite on: tell me in the comments doesn't state a fact at all. It names no price, no stockist, no launch week, so nothing in it can turn out to be wrong a month after the video is up — unlike the line two rows above it in the same brief, which carries the address of the page where the strip is sold.

Neither question stops it, and neither asks who the window belongs to.

Whose window is it?

Not yours. When you settled which account the video posts on, the answer came back that it posts on theirs, which is the version where what you're buying is the people already following it. Our guide to answering in that window puts the ownership in one word: "Theirs." It's a room you don't run, and the knife strip video will be sitting in it.

Had that question come back the other way — they film it and the only place it ever runs is your ad account — there'd be no post of theirs to comment under, and this decision wouldn't arise.

That guide answered the ownership question in order to decide whether you reply to what arrives. This decision comes earlier.

What doesn't the ask buy?

It doesn't buy the window. That window opened when the post did, and the same guide is specific about it: "The comment window under it came with the post. It was there yesterday for their last video, and it'll be there next week for the one after yours." You aren't deciding whether there's a window under the knife strip video. What the ask changes is how much arrives in it.

It doesn't buy a number you can read. "An arrival can only carry a name if the video handed out something that names it" — that guide sets that condition for arrivals at a destination outside the video, and the reason carries here: nothing was handed out. This line hands out nothing. What lands under the knife strip video carries nothing you issued, so there's no named arrival to read as a number later. Whether the video did the job you bought it for gets read against the list you wrote before it went up, and that guide has the method.

How many people end up seeing the video is a separate question from either of these, and so is anything that follows from it. Nothing in this decision rests on either.

So what decides it?

It turns on something you wrote down before anyone mentioned comments.

The guide to answering in that window runs each comment through "one test: is somebody asking you something, and could anybody else in the thread give the whole answer?" Of the four comments it works through, the two it hands to the brand are an allergy question and a shipping question — both are asked of the brand, and nobody else in the thread holds the answer.

Where those two came from is the part that matters here. They "came from people who watched a video about heat and asked about something else". Nothing in that piece says its video asked for comments, so it can't tell you what an invitation brings. What it does show is that the questions only you can answer don't have to come out of what the video said — so your own brief won't tell you which questions a video will get.

So the question isn't what will arrive. It's whether this campaign is asking people to believe something only you can stand behind. That is the second question over again — is this yours to state? — asked about the campaign instead of about the line.

For the knife strip, run it twice.

Here, the one sentence a viewer walks away understanding is your knives can live on the wall, and no screws go into the tile. That is a claim about load and adhesion, and your short list is where it lives: the weight the strip is rated to hold, the surfaces it bonds to. A viewer can watch the whole video and still not have it, and the creator can say it held theirs but not what it's rated for. You are the only party who can stand behind what the campaign is asserting, and that is what the line would be pointing people at. The ask passes.

Now suppose the sentence is your knives stop living in a drawer. Same product, same creator, same short list. That claim is one a viewer settles by watching: the knives are on the wall or they aren't. Nothing in it rests on the rated weight, so there's nothing here that only you can stand behind. The ask fails — and a line that settles nothing still gets read as a requirement and built around, which is what it costs you.

What has to be settled before the line goes in?

If the answer came back yes, write who answers before you write the line.

That's already an item you settle before the post goes up: "Who answers what." The creator takes what it was like. "You answer what's in it." Brand-side material on working with creators points the same way — it treats the handling of criticism under a post as something to set out for the creator up front.

And what arrives comes on somebody else's clock: training material written for creators treats working a comment window as live work done while the video is going.

For the knife strip: the rated weight is yours, so before that line goes anywhere near the brief, somebody at your company owns answering it, and the creator knows that one is yours to answer. Settle that and the line is worth its place. Skip it and the line goes into a room you don't run with nobody named for the one thing it points at.

Frequently asked questions

A comment came in and the creator made a second video answering it. Is that one of ours?

That's a separate thing to have agreed on, and asking for comments didn't settle it. A comment can be used as the starting point for another video, so an ask for comments can end up upstream of a post that was never in the brief. Whether a further post is inside what you bought belongs with the things you agree before the shoot, and if you want to put that second video anywhere of your own, there's a separate decision waiting there too.

We'd rather ask people to save it than comment. Same question?

The same question gives the same answer: the rated weight is still the one thing only you can stand behind. What changes is where a save goes. A save leaves that window empty, so the person you'd have named has nothing to answer. The line does no work there.

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