#2 – Don’t tell a story about the issue
Whenever Don Hewitt, the legendary creator of 60 Minutes, was asked about the secret to the program’s success, he answered with four words: Tell me a story. Hewitt said 60 Minutes doesn’t do stories about issues; it does stories about the people who are swept up in them.
He said, “Even the people who wrote the Bible were smart enough to know: Tell them a story. The issue was evil in the world. The story was Noah.”
“Storytelling” has become a cliché regarding marketing and video in particular. But we would argue that less than 30 percent of the videos being produced by brands qualify as actual stories—at least, as defined by Hewitt.
Most of the video content we see is all about the issue. There’s an easy way to tell. Does the video feature boring stock footage of people climbing mountains or collaborating in conference rooms paired with an inspirational voiceover? This generic, vague footage signals that there is no clear story. It’s all just facts and figures.
So what do you do instead? Pull a page from 60 Minutes’s playbook. Tell a small story about a big issue.
Think about your favorite movie. In the grand scheme of things, the film you love so much is a very tiny story.
The Shawshank Redemption is really just about a small group of prisoners in Maine. The net impact on the world-at-large from their story is zero, yet the movie probably changed how you see the meaning of life because it covers larger issues about humanity, friendship, love, hate, and so on. It’s an amazing, yet small, story.
This is how you must think about your marketing videos. Ask yourself: What is the smallest story you can tell to convey your message?
#3 – Trust your audience
Assume your audience won’t “get it” at your own risk. If you really want to engage your audience, you need to trust they will figure things out.
In fact, it’s the “figuring things out” that makes for engaging video marketing.
People like a good mystery.
The reason why shows like Game of Thrones and Lost became such runaway hits is that they withheld information. We watched every week to find out who would become ruler of Westeros or what the meaning of the island was.
Put it this way, if Agatha Christie told you who the killer was in the first 10 pages, you wouldn’t keep reading.
People want to be active participants in what they watch. They don’t want to be spoon-fed.
As Andrew Stanton (director of WALL-E and Finding Nemo, among others) puts it in his TED Talk, “the audience actually wants to work for their meal.”
He continues, “We’re born problem solvers… It’s the well-organized absence of information that draws us in.”
Trust your audience to be smart people.
We have heard countless times from marketers, “We get it, but our audience won’t. They need everything spelled out for them. They’re CFOs after all!”
Wait.
So CFOs – people who went through years of college, climbed their way up the ranks, and now manage the finances of your company – won’t “get it?”
It’s illogical to think CFOs are too dense to figure things out on their own. After all, CFOs use facts and inference to steer the financial future of a company.
The real issue is that they’re bombarded with corporate videos that spell everything out for them. So yes, they are disengaged. And they do have a short attention span for marketing videos that don’t require engagement of the brain.
BUT… If you were to give them a mystery – or not spell everything out for them – you’ll see they’re people like you and me. They’re smart, curious and looking to solve problems. That is their job after all!
Your audience is made up of smart people who are in a position to buy your product or service. If their company trusts them enough with this responsibility, shouldn’t you? Instead of shying away from making your audience think, shouldn’t you require and even indulge it?
#6 – Spend more time thinking than doing
Many folks think of scripting and storyboarding as an activity to do on their way to the shoot. They hire a video production company, set the shoot date and then dedicate a couple weeks to scripting (if they do this at all) while they are concerned about shoot logistics.
The result? A “corporate” video.
Because little time was spent on developing an original concept, the video is made using bits and pieces of videos the crew has previously seen. This mish-mash of concepts leads to a video that is either weird, hard to understand, or bland and generic. There’s no creative heartbeat. The video is essentially made in post-production using an amalgamation of text callouts to bridge parts of the story that don’t sync up and stock footage of farmers on iPads to symbolize “digital transformation.”
Instead of spending 20% of your time thinking about the video idea, then rushing into production and spending 80% of the time making a half-baked idea, reverse it.
You (or your agency) should spend 80% of the time writing and re-writing the script. Sleep on it. Pre-visualize the video using storyboards and animatics. Sleep on it. Put the video’s music on your phone and listen to it every day. Sleep on it.
This may seem like a huge time commitment, but you’ll get the final video in your hands sooner because you won’t be sending the video editor a thousand notes trying to make something work. Oh, and your boss will be happier since you’re staying on budget and getting something that actually performs.
Measure twice, cut once.
