Essential Storytelling Tips for Corporate Video Production

Provide Value By Focusing On Solutions

Keep it Personal

Too often, companies and organizations want to hammer on messaging about external problems. But really, this often zooms right over people’s heads. Don’t offer solutions or wax on about external factors; instead, showcase how your business or organization provides customers with solutions to their internal problems. 

For example, many banks create marketing materials around their long-standing history and their interest rates compared to other banks. Then, they wonder why they have difficulty differentiating themselves, without realizing that these offerings have nothing to do with their customers. Customers care about what money provides: a sense of security, the ability to travel, buy fancy gelato, the list goes on. In short, your message should explain how your brand will help your customer get where they want to be.

This is another time when your target personas will prove useful. Use your understanding and insights about your audiences to solve their personal problems. Ask yourself, “What does my customer desire?” “Where are they trying to go?”

Become a Trusted Guide with a Plan

As established above, your business or organization is not the hero of this storytelling journey; instead, you are Skywalker’s Yoda, Harry Potter’s Dumbledore, George Banks’ Mary Poppins, Frodo’s Gandalf (okay, I know you get the point). What we’re trying to say is that every hero needs a trusted guide, and that’s where you come in. Guides come in all shapes, sizes, and personalities, and that’s where your messaging can also become uniquely tailored to showcase who you are and what you have to offer. 

One key trait of a guide is to show empathy, to put yourself in the hero’s shoes, and help your hero forge a plan. Brands able to use empathetic marketing will always place their audience at the center of all of their marketing efforts.

Highlight A Dramatic Question

A good story should always contain some kind of drama. From before the amphitheaters of ancient Greece to Hollywood’s blockbuster industry of today, humans have always been drawn to emotional stories driven by an overarching dramatic question. You can use a dramatic question as an overarching thought in your video, that will hold your audience’s attention, such as:

Make Your Stories Newsworthy

We also like to remind businesses that their stories should also be newsworthy. Ask yourselves the following questions to determine newsworthiness:

Follow the Elements of Storytelling

Show, Don’t Tell What You Do

Too often, companies create videos that focus on what their business promises to do in the future, instead of showing how your business is impacting your customers today. By asking existing customers to be your advocate in a testimonial your stories will automatically be solution-focused, showcase what you do, and help you build credibility.

Provide Conflict Resolution

Emotion is a critical part of the storytelling process and a powerful way to engage with your customers and build a relationship. Entertaining, funny, contemplative, etc.—you need to understand how you want your audience to feel. Then, the second and equally important aspect is providing a resolution to the conflict that you have provided, to heighten the emotional experience.

Whether your onscreen character shares their personal grief from a lived experience, their disgust with inactivity on a social cause, or their insecurity with their place in the world, the audience empathizes and feels those feelings alongside them. As the story progresses, and grief turns to relief, disgust turns to hope, and insecurity to contentment, the audience shares in this journey as the dramatic question of the story is resolved.

Include Interesting Details

Consider, for example, adding staff profile videos, which work extremely well for professional services brands. In these businesses, your people are your most important asset—and video makes people real and creates connections even in the online world. Instead of just highlighting where so-and-so went to school, their degrees, and the trajectory of their careers, be sure to share memorable stories about that person—like about how they started teaching gymnastics at a local YWCA, traveled the country in a Volkswagen bus, or can name all the constellations in the Western Hemisphere? Those kinds of details will delight and capture your viewers.

Drive Results Strategically

Start With The End in Mind

As you are creating your video stories, make sure you think through how you’re planning to disseminate them, as that can impact how you edit and communicate the story. For example, a video you make for your website will be different from one you include in a blog, share on social media, or send via an email. The great thing about starting with the end goals in mind is that one full or half-day of video filming can often be used to create an entire library of video content.

Check out our pre-launch video checklist for ideas on how to distribute your video.

Challenge Your Audience to Act

Alright, so you’ve used all of the tips above to create your video—it’s compelling, it’s emotional, it focuses on the customer and provides them all the tools necessary on their journey, and now—what do you want them to do? 

If you don’t tell your customer what step they should take next, they won’t do anything. You’ve probably heard the term “call to action” (CTA) regarding other forms of marketing, and this concept holds true in video marketing, as well. When thinking through your video’s CTA, consider a three-pronged approach: you’ve identified the problem, evoked an emotion, and now, offer the solution.

Conclusion: The Best Storytellers are Truth-Tellers

A New Age of Corporate Video Storytelling

One of the notable qualities of this age of digital marketing and communications is the emphasis on truth and reality. The companies that are rising above the noise are those that share valuable stories that respond to the needs of their clients, customers, and communities. What's more, we as consumers care more about what's real than what is fake (ie. commercials). This is where real storytelling can play an increasingly important role in the marketing and communication of a business story.