A good brand storytelling video highlights the best ways your company has a positive impact on its customers. A bad brand storytelling video weakens your company’s brand image or attracts negative attention.
There are two types of bad brand storytelling videos:
- Storytelling videos that get ignored and fail to attract meaningful views
- Storytelling videos that attract lots of views but create negative attention and have a negative effect on your company’s brand image
Some companies have invested millions of dollars into a brand storytelling video only to create a net negative effect on their company’s brand image. Some of the world’s biggest and most influential corporations – from Chevrolet to Pepsi – have been caught creating bad brand storytelling videos in the past.
What’s wrong with your brand storytelling video? How can you fix it? Keep reading to find out.
You’re Failing to Tell a Meaningful Story
This one seems obvious but it’s often overlooked: a brand storytelling video is a video that tells a story. Too many brands seem to forget the “story” part of the equation.
A good story has a beginning, middle, and end. It has characters, a plot, and a theme. It makes people feel happy or sad or excited.
It’s tough to package all of these story elements into a 2.5 minute clip. That’s why good brand storytelling is so difficult. Brand storytellers have to walk a fine line between preaching and advertising. They need to avoid being too dramatic while still telling a meaningful story.
If your brand storytelling video fails to tell a meaningful story, then it’s more of a commercial video than a storytelling video.
You’re Attacking or Ignoring your Existing Customers
Brands often deal with this problem: they have a strong current customer base but they want to attract new customers from a different demographic.
Some brands deal with this problem by targeting the new demographic in a focused video marketing campaign. A brand trying to attract younger viewers might launch a video marketing campaign on Snapchat or Instagram, for example.
There’s nothing wrong with catering to a different demographic, but there is a problem if you attack your original customers.
The infamous Oldsmobile video campaign from the 1980s comes to mind. In that video campaign, Oldsmobile tried to convince the world that their vehicles were, “Not Just Your Father’s Oldsmobile” and that this was a “New Generation of Oldsmobile”.
The video campaign sounds good in theory.
Unfortunately, it failed to resonate with the intended audiences. The video marketing campaign was disastrous. It alienated older Oldsmobile owners. They suddenly felt un-cool and dated for driving an Oldsmobile. Younger viewers, meanwhile, failed to hear the intended message and continued buying vehicles from other manufacturers.
The end result was that Oldsmobile tried to target two generations and failed. They were ignored by the younger generation and hated by the older generation.
If your brand is trying to tell a story that targets a new demographic, make sure it includes your existing customers in a positive light.
You’re Making the Video About You When It Should Be About Your Customers
Who is the star of your video storytelling campaign? Some people (understandably) believe the star of a video storytelling campaign is the brand itself.
That’s not really true. The star of an effective video storytelling campaign isn’t your brand or your corporation: it’s your customers.
Many good brand storytelling videos have succeeded because they emphasized the impact that a brand’s products have had on customers.
Nobody wants to be preached to in a storytelling video. People don’t want to hear about your low prices, your Thanksgiving sale, or your discount specials. That’s for a commercial video. A storytelling video highlights the impact your brand’s products and services have on the community.
Don’t make your storytelling video about your brand. Instead, focus on how your brand’s products affect your customers in a positive way. Follow your customers in an average day, for example, and explore how your products make that average day a little bit better.
You’re Targeting the Wrong Audience in the Wrong Way
Today, 80% of mobile users watch video advertisements with the sound turned off. People scroll through social media in public places – on subways and while waiting in line at Chipotle, for example. Most people don’t want sound – especially an advertisement – to annoy the people
around them.
That brings us to a crucial lesson: if you’re targeting a mobile audience, then add subtitles to your video. Assume that many of your viewers have the sound turned off.
Or, better yet, create a video that doesn’t need subtitles. Create a video that entices users in the first five seconds regardless of whether audio is turned on.
That also leads us to another crucial lesson: create vertical videos for a mobile audience. The vast majority of smartphone users hold their phones vertically when scrolling through social media. If you’re creating a mobile-focused video storytelling campaign, then create a version of your video optimized for social media.
Vertical videos with subtitles outperform horizontal videos without subtitles on social media every day of the week.
Create an Effective Video Storytelling Campaign by Avoiding the Mistakes Above
Creating an effective video storytelling campaign is challenging. Some of the world’s best video production companies are great at creating commercial videos – but not so great at telling a story.
If you need effective video storytelling in Denver, get in touch with our team at Lucid Narratives. Backed by combined decades of industry experience, we can tell your brand’s story in an unforgettable way.