Learn to achieve success at video storytelling by specializing in themes, constructing tales round emotion, and following some key storytelling rules.
Firms want many issues to thrive: Visionary management, a compelling providing, distinctive service, and way more. However in in the present day’s noisy advertising and marketing panorama, what your model actually wants is a narrative. (Properly, possibly just a few tales, if we’re being trustworthy). Tales make for higher advertising and marketing as a result of they elicit emotion. They’ll affect who we belief, play on our nostalgia, and assist us make sense of complicated data. A very nice story can talk the whole character of a model in lower than three minutes, and video storytelling could be particularly persuasive.
Whether or not it’s in a cute animation or a documentary-style video, manufacturers are presenting highly effective themes we will all rally behind and share. Even B2B manufacturers are taking this oblique strategy.
GE and Cisco don’t shill expertise; as an alternative, they showcase why they’re passionate concerning the overarching theme of innovation. They inform tales that make us giggle, be taught, and typically even have us reaching for the tissues.
Learn on to discover ways to inform a narrative by means of video by specializing in themes, constructing tales round emotion, and following some key storytelling rules.
- Contents
- 1. Give attention to Huge-Image Themes
- 2. Construct Video Storytelling Round Emotion
- 3. Video Storytelling Ideas
- 3.1 Use Humor to Have interaction Your Viewers
- 3.2 Don’t Be Afraid to Get Artistic With Video Storytelling
- 3.3 Create Tales That Have a Starting, Center, and an Finish
- 3.4 Present, Don’t Inform
- 3.5 Don’t Run with the First Factor That Involves You
- 3.6 Inform One Story at a Time
- 3.7 Maintain Issues Quick and Snappy
Together with movies asserting large information and tales which are of curiosity to your subscribers, your video library ought to showcase—in an oblique or enjoyable means—the way you match into their each day challenges.
Cvent does this very well their video, Don’t be a Conferences Dinosaur. Whereas the content material is broadly entertaining, their audience of occasion managers acknowledge the specialised phrases and eventualities offered, and thereby shortly perceive precisely how Cvent will help them with particular day-to-day actions.
The lesson: Weave your goal market’s on a regular basis eventualities into your movies. Even when this implies you’re making a video concerning the boardroom, infuse some comedy like Cvent and showcase precisely how your model helps. Keep away from being too characteristic or jargon-heavy. Cvent strikes the proper stability.
Give attention to Huge-Image Themes
B2B and B2C organizations are transferring away from product-focused video in the direction of telling greater tales round overarching themes.
Give it some thought: Pink Bull doesn’t promote you an vitality drink, they promote the spirit of maximum sport, competitiveness, and rock star residing.
The largest lesson in content material advertising and marketing is that the story shouldn’t be about you, however as an alternative, what you do for others. Look past the fundamentals to search out the “why” behind what your group does, and market that. For those who promote photo voltaic panel software program, your video message ought to be targeted on saving the earth and the struggle in opposition to local weather change. For those who promote telecommunications software program, inform a narrative about connections and actual individuals.
That is particularly efficient for top-of-funnel content material, the place inspiring messages will help entice individuals to your model. Analysis reveals that customers understand the identical sort of character traits in manufacturers as they do in different individuals. Be sure to know what ones you need them to affiliate together with your model.
Nike’s mission assertion is to “Deliver inspiration and innovation to each athlete on the earth.”
They took a daring step, wading into an space thought of controversial by many, for an advert they broadcast through the 2018 NFL season opener.
Narrated by Colin Kaepernick—the headline-making NFL participant who protested police brutality by taking a knee through the nationwide anthem the earlier season—the advert grew to become a viral sensation.
Whereas some individuals known as for a boycott of the model and burned their Nike gear, the advert served to solidify the model’s core buyer base. In aligning themselves with Kaepernick, Nike additionally aligned themselves with the trigger, making the acquisition of their gear a press release of help for Kaepernick’s trigger.
It was an enormous image transfer that paid off. Nike skilled main beneficial properties in gross sales income all through the month the advert debuted and their inventory reached an all-time excessive.
Construct Video Storytelling Round Emotion
One look on the varieties of movies manufacturers are releasing today is sufficient to see that there’s an enormous pattern towards content material that makes individuals really feel. From laundry detergent to software program and all the things in between, manufacturers are enjoying on feelings.
At present you’re not merely bought an airline ticket, you’re handled to a tear-jerking video marketing campaign about households connecting from throughout the globe, pals reuniting, and 80-year-olds boarding their first-ever flight.
This story-based content material is all over the place, and you may guess your backside greenback there’s a motive it’s getting so emotional.
Cineplex tells a surprisingly transferring story a few woman and her frosty good friend of their video Lily and the Snowman. The story connects loosely to the model’s film theatre providing whereas specializing in the broader theme of spending time with family members.
Manufacturers are getting emotional of their video advertising and marketing as a result of feelings compel motion, in keeping with Psychology At present. In truth, emotional advertisements are nearly twice as efficient as these with solely rational content material, in keeping with Neuromarketing.
This strategy to video storytelling is known as emotional advertising and marketing, which “refers to advertising and marketing and promoting efforts that primarily use emotion to make your viewers discover, bear in mind, share, and purchase. Emotional advertising and marketing faucets right into a singular emotion, like happiness, unhappiness, anger, or worry, to elicit a shopper response.”
Some feelings are more practical than others for driving sure varieties of actions, in keeping with HubSpot:
- Happiness results in sharing
- Unhappiness results in giving
- Worry results in loyalty
- Anger results in virality
When creating your movies, begin off with a transparent imaginative and prescient of the sensation you need your viewers to stroll away with and the way your story will create the emotional undertone that may make viewers need to observe by means of in your name to motion.
Video Storytelling Ideas
A video is price 1.8 million phrases, in keeping with Forrester Analysis’s James McQuivey.
That’s a complete lot of room for story.
However how do you get began? Maintain these video storytelling ideas in thoughts as you start to craft tales in your model.
1. Use Humor to Have interaction Your Viewers
Humor from manufacturers could be uncommon—particularly within the B2B area—nevertheless it will also be extremely efficient. That is usually true in industries the place you may anticipate issues to be extra formal. On the finish of the day, you’re nonetheless speaking to individuals: Making them giggle makes you extra memorable and creates a constructive affiliation together with your model.
Lucidchart has created a hilarious collection of movies that showcase their product whereas additionally entertaining the viewers.
The collection, known as “Lucidchart Explains the Web,” makes use of their chart software program to diagram memes, popular culture, and common Web issues.
2. Don’t Be Afraid to Get Artistic With Video Storytelling
Begin with the primary message you need to convey, then take into consideration uncommon methods you possibly can get it throughout. Shock your self with new concepts and also you’ll be extra prone to shock your viewers too.
Google launched their “Parisian Love” video all the way in which again in 2009, nevertheless it stays simply as inventive in the present day.
In it, the tech firm tells a complete love story by exhibiting solely Google searches set to music. It’s intelligent, candy, sudden, and surprisingly transferring.
3. Create Tales That Have a Starting, Center, and an Finish
Work out what they’re earlier than you get began. Ideally, attempt to storyboard out what you assume the story will seem like and write a script to accompany it forward of time. This can aid you establish doable points earlier than you begin filming.
4. Present, Don’t Inform
Use visuals and sound to convey the message you need to share by means of your story moderately than stating it outright. Take into consideration how angles, colours, audio, and extra all work collectively to create a sense.
And don’t hit individuals over the pinnacle together with your product (until it’s a demo video after all). For those who’re making a story video, then embody your product the place it suits naturally with out shoehorning it in.
The equipment makers at Blendtec created an web sensation with their “Will It Mix?” collection. Working since 2006, all of it started with one thing the corporate’s CEO Tom Dickson was already doing: Mixing random stuff to search out the product’s fail factors.
Tom defined in an interview, “George, the brand new advertising and marketing director, found a number of the wacky issues I used to be doing to my blenders, together with shoving 2x2s into the jars to attempt to break the blender. With a $50 finances, George purchased a Completely satisfied Meal, a rotisserie rooster, Coke cans, golf balls, and some different objects, and so they made 5 movies.”
These 5 movies generated 6 million views in lower than every week. The collection has been going ever since. The movies showcase the corporate’s character whereas having a transparent tie again to the product: It’s a top quality merchandise that may deal with so much.
AdAge has even named it essentially the most viral advert of all time.
5. Don’t Run with the First Factor That Involves You
Take time to assume up plenty of totally different prospects and get the apparent stuff out of the way in which. Attempt holding a brainstorm the place there aren’t any dangerous concepts and anybody can throw out any chance.
Fear about assessing these concepts, determining how they might work, and selecting one to execute on afterwards. Giving your self and your staff the liberty to be inventive with out restrictions will usually result in your finest concepts.
6. Inform One Story at a Time
Focus in on no matter story you’re telling and don’t attempt to do too many issues directly. Within the immortal phrases of TV’s Ron Swanson: “By no means half-ass two issues. Entire-ass one factor”. Video storytelling is essentially the most profitable when follows a transparent and concise storyline.
7. Maintain Issues Quick and Snappy
Don’t fall into the entice of considering that longer is best. Quick tales could be simply as compelling as lengthy ones (plus they’ve a greater probability of holding your viewer’s consideration from starting to finish). If Vine (RIP) proved something, it’s that you simply don’t want a very long time to inform a narrative. If random youngsters can accomplish it in solely six seconds, so can your model.
Take into consideration these storytelling ideas subsequent time you’re engaged on a model video. Whether or not you’re storyboarding or scripting, they’re positive to offer some meals for thought.
This publish was initially printed on December 3, 2018. It was up to date on October 27, 2019.
