Video Packaging

/digital-marketing-pro:video-packaging

Packaging decides whether a video gets watched; the content only decides whether it deserved to be. On every video surface the viewer sees two elements at once — the title and the thumbnail text — and the craft is that they must do different jobs:

• The title carries context and keywords — what the video is, phrased the way people search and the way the platform's systems read it.
• The thumbnail text carries the tension — the number, the contradiction, the "wait, what?" that a human reacts to in half a second.
• Overlap is wasted real estate. A thumb word that already appears in the title bought nothing with the scarcest pixels the brand owns.

Discovery intent — tag every package

A video idea earns discovery one of two ways, and the packaging differs:

Intent	How it is found	Packaging consequence
Search	Typed queries; ranks over months	Title leads with the query phrasing (front-load the keyword); thumb adds the differentiator vs the other results
Browse	Suggested/home feeds; spikes on click-through	Title can spend more of its length on intrigue; thumb carries the pattern-break
Both	Rare; usually a search topic with a browse-worthy angle	Package for search, let the thumb do the browse work

No search or browse logic → not a video idea yet. Route it back through topic development before spending packaging effort on it. For search-intent videos, pull the real query phrasing from /digital-marketing-pro:keyword-research rather than guessing it.

Generate mode

Input: the topic or concept, the brand, target platform, intent if known.

# Video packaging — [topic]

**Discovery intent:** Search / Browse / Both — [the reasoning in one line]

## Pair 1 — [angle: curiosity / benefit / identity]
**Title:** [≤60 chars where possible — what survives truncation comes first]
**Thumb text:** [1-3 words]
**Why they pair:** [the different jobs, and how they combine into one click decision]

## Pair 2 — [different angle]
## Pair 3 — [different angle]

## Recommendation
[Which pair leads and why — grounded in the intent tag, not taste]

## A/B note
[Which single element to vary if testing — never both at once]

Critique mode

Input: an existing title and/or thumbnail text (works from a screenshot description too).

# Packaging critique — [the draft]

## Verdict: PASS / FIX / FAIL

## The pairing check
[Do title and thumb do different jobs? Quote any echoed words — each is the
finding, verbatim.]

## Working
[What earns its place]

## Not working
[Specific, quotable problems — vague titles, buried keywords, thumb text
restating the title, curiosity with no clarity]

## 3 fixed pairs
[Revised packages, same content, same claims — packaging never promises what
the video does not deliver]

Critical rules

• Reject any pair where a thumb word appears in the title. This is the countable core rule — check it word by word, not by impression.
• Titles ≤60 characters where possible; when longer, everything that matters sits before the truncation point.
• Thumb text: 1–3 words. Four is a caption, not a thumbnail.
• Clarity beats curiosity. A pair that intrigues but does not say what the viewer gets fails — curiosity-gap packaging that the content cannot pay off is churn, and on regulated brands it is a compliance finding.
• Packaging never outpromises the video. The claims in a title pass the same brand guardrails as any other copy; run /digital-marketing-pro:check before anything ships.
• Three pairs minimum in Generate; three fixes minimum in Critique. One option is a decision already made; the client gets choices with reasoning.
• Tag the intent every time. An untagged package is a guess about how the video will be found — and search and browse reward different structures.

Pairs with

• /digital-marketing-pro:video-script — the script this packaging fronts; its thumbnail-concept step follows the same pairing rule
• /digital-marketing-pro:keyword-research — real query phrasing for search-intent titles
• /digital-marketing-pro:check — claims and compliance gate before publishing