The Two Types of Video Every Brand Needs | Waves Media

We’ve talked to a lot of marketing leaders who feel like their video content isn’t working — and when we ask what they’ve made, it usually falls into one of two camps.

Either they have one really polished hero video they spent a lot on two years ago and haven’t touched since. Or they have a backlog of short clips that go up sporadically with no real through-line.

Both camps feel stuck. And for the same underlying reason: they’re only working with one type of video when they need two.

The Anchor

An Anchor video is your brand’s most important story, told well.

It’s the video that explains who you are, what you do, and why it matters — in a way that makes someone feel it, not just understand it. It might be a brand film, a flagship case study, a manifesto, a founder story. The format varies. The function doesn’t.

An Anchor video does the heavy lifting. It’s what you send to a prospect before a call. What you put on your homepage. What your sales team shares when someone asks, “so what exactly do you do?” It can live for years and keep working.

Most brands understand they need something like this. The problem is they treat it like a finish line — make one great video, and the job is done. It isn’t.

The Express

Express content is everything that keeps your brand present between the big moments.

Short-form videos. Reels. Behind-the-scenes clips. Quick takes on what’s happening in your industry. A client story in sixty seconds. A thought from your founder filmed on a Tuesday afternoon.

Express content isn’t trying to be your best work. It’s trying to keep you in the conversation — visible, consistent, human. It builds familiarity over time in a way that a single polished video never can, no matter how good it is.

The brands that show up consistently on social — the ones whose content you actually remember — aren’t just talented. They have a steady stream of Express content running alongside their Anchor work.

Why You Need Both

An Anchor without Express content is a brand that makes a strong first impression and then disappears. You see their hero video. You’re impressed. Then nothing. Six months later you’ve forgotten them.

Express content without an Anchor is noise. You see a brand posting constantly but you can never quite figure out what they actually do or why you should care. There’s activity, but no weight behind it.

Together, they work the way good brand building always has. The Anchor gives people a reason to take you seriously. The Express keeps them close enough to act when the time is right.

The Brands That Get This Right

The marketing leaders who have cracked this aren’t producing Anchor and Express content by accident. They have a system — a way of planning, producing, and distributing both types on a regular cadence without it becoming a second job.

They’re not making a video when there’s a campaign. They’re always making video, because they’ve built it into how their marketing runs.

That’s a different relationship with content. And it produces a different result.

At Waves, we build content systems for both — the Anchor work that defines a brand and the Express content that keeps it moving. If you’re only doing one, we’d love to show you what the other one unlocks.