By now you know how important video is in the business world. Every company needs a social media presence, a sales tool, and a way for customers to connect with their brand—and today, video is the uncontested most effective way to do all of that.
But it’s not enough just to have any old video.You need to capture the hearts and minds of your audience. Video is most powerful when it is original, authentic, and impactful. So how do you tell your story in a way that moves the viewer? Here are ten different ways to approach video that just may strike exactly the right chords.
1. Testimonials
Whether you’re trying to introduce the world to your employees or exhibit the true stories of happy clients you’ve already helped, on-camera testimonials often help show off your company’s story through the most authentic way possible—the words of real people.
2. Documentary
Using the story of one person or one process to dive deeply into a topic is an incredibly effective way to show your viewers the true heart of what you do. Combining on-screen testimonials , interesting or informative visuals, and sometimes even a narrator can help bring a story to life.
3. Kinetic Typography/Infographics
Sometimes what you’re trying to convey may be difficult to show in a visual way. For example, if your company provides complex solutions that are invisible because they are performed within a computer or during a client conversation, you may struggle to find something to put on screen. Kinetic typography is a term we use to describe an animation technique where we mix motion, icons, and text—rather than video footage—to convey a particular idea or evoke a particular emotion. Using abstract visuals, moving text, and an engaging narrator is a sure-fire way to explain even the most obscure of ideas in an enthralling way.
4. Graphics Explainer
Have statistics you’d like to communicate? Want to add some excitement to an otherwise tedious topic? Perhaps you want to show off something that hasn’t yet been invented. Whatever the reason, combining 2D or 3D animation, icons, graphics, textures, colors, video elements, and sometimes even cartoons can help you communicate just about anything you want, and with much more visual pizzazz than a powerpoint. Graphics videos, when done right, tend to withstand the test of time, continue to engage audiences, and often provide considerably more bang for your buck.
5. Narration and Imagery
This one may seem rather self-explanatory, but that makes it no less powerful. Combining beautiful footage with well-written narration and music that evokes just the right emotion is sometimes the absolute best way to approach a video. Especially if you have people, processes, or other aspects of your message that you’d like to showcase in a visual way. Quality and artistry are important when it comes to pulling this off well, but if you do, your audience can be deeply affected.
6. Product Video
If you have a physical product or service that a camera can see, consider creating a product video. We’ve all seen car or cologne commercials, and that’s exactly what a product video is. Show your product in all its glory by featuring it in the video. And the cool thing is you can get as creative as you want when it comes to how you want to show off your product. Maybe add some 3D animation in there to show the components. Maybe film the product in a studio with flashing lights. Anything to make sure your viewers know they absolutely must useyour product.
7. Narrative Sequence
Tell a story. That’s the basic idea here; use actors or characters in a situation that serves as an example of what you’re trying to communicate. If you’re trying to show off a new product, you could make a short narrative video featuring a scenario in which the product solves your characters’ problem. Or reenact the invention of a product or the history of your company in a dramatic way. The narrative sequence is much more like a movie, and there are oh so many ways to make a movie entertaining. Bonus points if you can work dinosaurs into it. Everyone loves dinosaurs.
8. Movie Trailer
Loud horns and explosions! Fast-paced action! Heart-pumping suspense! Make your brand look thrilling by using some of the stylistic elements or even the full form of a movie trailer. You can use trailer techniques in subtle, serious ways to build drama and grab audiences, or you can really have fun, go over the top and make a full-fledged Hollywood epic. At its very core, a ‘movie trailer’ style is a music video that pulls the audience in and whets their appetite for whatever product, service, or brand they’re supposed to be interacting with. How exciting you want to make it is up to you.
9. Tour/Day in the Life
Focus your message on your facilities and capabilities by providing a tour of that facility. Follow the oldest rule in the book: show don’t tell.Impress your audience with beautiful imagery that guides them from start to finish through any area or process you’d like them to understand. Alternately, rather than follow a path through your facility, you can follow an employee, manager, or customer as you allow the audience a rare glimpse “behind the scenes” at what that person does every day. This can be an inventive and entertaining way to exemplify—through the lens of one person—the care, quality, and hard work you put into your product or service every single day. It also helps humanize a brand by forming an emotional connection between the audience and the person they’re following on screen.
10. Traditional Commercial
We’ve all seen television commercials. They’re ubiquitous, diverse, and obviously incredibly effective—that’s why you see them so often! No matter what your brand, product, or service is, you can produce something that is creative, attention-grabbing, and effective in a commercial format. It could be straight-forward, it could be salesy, it could be artistic and obscure, it could be comical. The options are limitless. The most effective commercials focus on one single idea or theme and build around that. If you have one clear call to action or one specific product you need to get in front of a broad audience, creating a commercial may be the way to go. Often brands don’t consider commercials as an option because they don’t have television time, or believe they need outrageous budgets, or think their target audience is too narrow or their process too specific for 30 seconds. And sometimes that may be true, but there are so many ways to use a commercial, or a commercial style, that are effective and affordable, that this stigma should be extinct by now. Today, even affordable distribution has limitless breadth, such as social media presence, paid placement ads, or even local television markets or closed-circuit television.
These are only a few of the multitude of options you have when imagining how you want to tell your story. You can mix and match all of these options, or even try to combine them with new technology, such as 360-video, 3D, or Virtual Reality. In the end, try something new, and trust your creative video team to work with you in creating the best video content for what you need.