It’s hard to figure out what to say in your marketing videos, especially if you’re trying to produce content yourself without the help of a production team. When you’re just dipping your toes into this powerful medium to see what happens, it’s best to start simple.
Good videos have a message. Good videos have a story. In an earlier article, I offered four questions to help you find the story of your organization and draft a basic script that will speak to your audience. Then, I examined the first question, “Who are you?” That article covered the different ways that you can use visual cues alongside spoken lines to drive understanding of your brand identity.
In this piece, I’ll go more in depth about the next one, “What do you do?” It’s about using visuals to make your offerings clear and interesting.
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- Why do you do it?
- Why should we care?
This one is really simple. It’s probably best to keep this phrase in mind: Show, don’t tell.
That phrase will come up a lot in these articles, because it’s an adage used every day by filmmakers to tell better stories. Is there anything more frustrating than hearing about an awesome event that happened offscreen, or having a narrator handhold you through a scene, or the dreaded exposition dump, where a character talks for minutes on end, filling in blanks to keep the plot from falling apart?
Good movies and television shows demonstrate important pieces of information through visuals. Telling the audience that an old man is sad because the love of his life passed away through dialogue or narration doesn’t hit nearly as hard as the iconic opening sequence of Pixar’s Up, where we see it play out without a single spoken word. The images contain more than enough information.
When the Up animators want to convey something specific, like the couple’s infertility issues, they still don’t use words. The montage goes straight from Carl and Ellie preparing the nursery to the couple at the doctor’s office, heavy with grief. (The pregnancy poster on the wall is a nice touch that provides more clarity to children watching.)
Is there a feature of your product or service that can be more effectively shown visually? Is there something that you can keep in the frame to convey more at a glance than words could in 30 seconds? Before you shoot, take a look around with fresh eyes and search for opportunities to improve clarity through visuals.
My former film teacher used to hammer home the importance of B-roll in storytelling. This term refers to supplemental footage that’s intercut with the main shots. It’s used to illustrate points and/or cover up editing.
I’ll never forget the time our class was working on a collaborative project and she asked to see our progress. As we rolled the draft, she just kept saying things like this:
“Industrial applications? Show me something industrial!” We came back and added a clip of giant smoke stacks from a local industrial park.
“Henry Anslinger? Show me Henry!” She was right, of course; Adding a picture of Henry made the project better.
B-roll is your chance to educate the audience and show them something cool about your brand behind-the-scenes that they may not have seen before. On top of that, frequent cuts to B-roll — done with intention— renew the audience’s attention again and again.
Some offerings are more visually-interesting than others. That’s a fact. The packaging of rubber O-rings will never be as eye-catching as flying objects or fire (although the success of the TV show How It’s Made may belie that claim). If you’re in one of those industries, you’re in luck! Show off your process, because it sounds amazing to watch.
If you’re packaging O-rings, though, maybe your process isn’t where the story is. Maybe the real story is where your product is used. Truck engines? Watches? The space shuttle? Maybe what you’re really doing is making those amazing, visually-interesting processes function as a third party. Take some ownership of that, and consider asking your customers if you can film their work. Maybe they’ll even be willing to appear on camera themselves to comment on your offerings!
This section of a video can be as short or long as you like, but it’s best to keep it fairly short. That’s because what you do is important to get the viewer caught up, but not as important as why you do it.
The why is where the benefits lie. The why leads directly into the sale. The why…will be discussed more next time.
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