Brand videos: creating the best tales ever told

The best stories are the ones that move us. That was true from when our Stone Age ancestors told tribal tales two million years ago, to when the first novel was written in 11th Century Japan, and continues to present day. 

Moving stories are fast becoming the best marketing channel. Almost four in five consumers say that a brand’s video storytelling has persuaded them to buy its product or service. Marketers are aligned: 81% state video has directly improved sales.

By creating slick narratives that resonate on screen, your brand can stand out from the competition, strengthening emotional bonds with audiences.

With 87% of viewers globally willing to trade first-party data for compelling content, it’s no wonder, then, that more B2C and B2B brands are making their pitch via video storytelling to prompt an emotional response from their audience.

But there’s a plot twist. Too many brands fall into the trap of thinking: “This exists, so I need to do it.” Doing it badly, for vanity or volume, is worse than not doing it at all.

Moving stories are fast becoming the best marketing channel.

Getting it right means understanding the difference between channels. A study by Citrix identifies the ‘Born Digital’ generation: they’re the people driving 50 million TikTok views daily. It’s no wonder brands might want to jump on this bandwagon. The problem is, leaping straight to TikTok-style clips means you’ll rely on simply being tactical.

How can strategically used brand films benefit the business, not just garner clicks and likes? What impact do you want, and do you know how to measure it?

Instead, a comprehensive brand video strategy, which builds customer experience and engagement, is required. Brand video consumption will only grow as technology and bandwidth improves, and attention wanes for other formats. To keep pace, brands that have told stories solely in the 2D world are shifting to video.

If that’s your goal too, you’ll need to take a step back first to make sure you’re reading from the right script.

It's important that brands develop a comprehensive video strategy to build customer experience and engagement. 

Five steps to memorable brand storytelling

Too often, tech is viewed as the be-all and end-all of video storytelling. It’s crucial, of course, that production quality is paramount. But this one-dimensional view ignores the need to also focus on the viewer - your customer.

That’s why a phased approach to embedding ‘storytelling as a service’ is vital, from setting objectives to creating great content. This can help you avoid wasteful, tactics-driven content development and dial up strategic storytelling. 

PLAN - As stated earlier, rushing headlong to production won’t deliver the results you need. First, take a step back to assess what you’re really trying to achieve with video content. Consider objectives in the round: how can strategically used brand films benefit the business, not just garner clicks and likes? What impact do you want, and do you know how to measure it?

Fortunately, the world is awash with storytellers who have the skills and wisdom to bring the brief to life.

ANALYSE - Without audience data analytics and insight, your video may look good, might raise a smile and even provoke a response. But the story won’t land as well as it could - almost certainly not with the consumers who really matter to you - and your goals will be missed. This stage also informs what assets you’ll need and how video can synch with other channels for maximum success.

With campaign goals set in stone, it’s time to assemble the creative talent who will bring your story concept to life. 

COLLABORATE - Next, bring together the entire team charged with storyboarding your video strategy. This isn’t just the creative guys; you’ll need marketing brains, leadership representation and possibly external experts. It’s hard to get the whole picture without a neutral view from beyond your organisation.

CONNECT - With insights in hand and campaign goals set in stone it’s time to assemble the talent who will take your story concept and turn it into engaging video content. Fortunately, the world is awash with storytellers who have the skills and wisdom to bring the brief to life.

CREATE - Once your creative professionals are in place, marshalled by a robust project management team, execution of your storytelling vision can commence. The end product should provide a customer experience like no other and your unique objectives will be met.

An impactful showreel can highlight the intricate utility of products and services, solve customer pain points and build brand love.

There’s one more chapter to this story. Video content captivates, and emerging automated services enable distribution at scale. But data, insights and technology can also allow brands to speak directly to an audience of one: we're talking about personalised video vignettes that resonate with individual consumers.

Nowadays, content can be enhanced for each target consumer with insight-driven tweaks to colour, size, copy and other elements such as embedding QR codes. Up to 10% of the content can be automatically personalised. This works well in retail and e-commerce, for example, to showcase the unique qualities of different products.