In the clutter of video creation and film production, it is getting more and more difficult for brands to stand out and reach the audience with their content and videos. It is essential to make your brand unique from your competitors and the plethora of content that has hijacked the end user. Promotional videos, brand documentaries and voice over based narratives are a great way and they seldom go wrong but are they enough?
What if you go that extra mile and
make your brand stand out from the rest?
As an audience it’s crucial for the end user to connect to the brand on an emotional level too in addition to information based content, that most likely 90% of your competitors are anyway doing. Afterall your target audience is human and they want to know your story to be able to put their trust in you. An effective way to do that is to bypass the traditional approach in favour of a fictional narrative.
Marketing commercial brands through fictional narratives is older than youtube. BMW did this phenomenally with their series called The Hire directed by David Fincher and a couple other directors. Apple too created a series called Misunderstood to market iphone and ipad. Mailchimp is one on this list as well.The sales of BMW went up to a whooping 12.5% the year after they premiered.
Are the brands I have mentioned rich?
Yes.
Do they have a crazy amount of marketing budget?
Yes.
Now that we are clear on that, let me tell you a little more about this. You don’t need to have marketing budgets like say a BMW or Apple to create these brand films. I have written about the packages we offer in my earlier blog and with these, you can surely think of making something that penetrates right through your audience. If you are producing work like this, it eventually still needs to do its job. Here’s what we believe works best for brand films with a narrative approach:
- The film should rise above the brand placement. Arbitrarily dropping the product or service into the film would only make it look cheesy and throw the audience off. However, cleverly making the product or service play a key role in your main character’s journey works best.
- Making sure the audience’s attention is grabbed right away. Start with something interesting which is a reason enough for the audience to stay and not just for this one episode but for all the 6 or 8 or 10 episodes you produce.
- Go for an emotion that is bang on. Connect with the audience on a deeper level. You can also do it with laughter. A little quirkiness goes a long way.
- A great script! That’s all. A GREAT SCRIPT!
A brand affinity doesn’t always have to feature the product in it. All you need to do is to make the right use of this video production tool. The role video production can play in your marketing mix is enormous and the results it can create for your brand is unimaginable. Use it strategically and creatively to make the most of it.
