Two Things to Think About When Using Video to Tell Your Story
Time and Movement.
Time
How long do you think you can captivate your audience to watch your video? That depemds on a few key factors.
How invested is the viewer on hearing your story. This depends on how interested they are in your offering. If it solves an unresolved problem or delivers a sought after relief ( yes relief can also be relief from the mundane, everyday life and lack of engagement so all you experience, hospitality and destination companies take heed) . People who don’t know what you offer, aren’t invested into what you are doing - yet - may not be as inclined to watch a long video so a video oriented toward a product uneducated audience should be short, intersting, quick cut and deliver excitement to capture engagement. Use a second or third video to tell more of the story. We will go into the “monkey paw” approach in a future blog. In fishing terms, the short 15 second video is the lure, the second 1 minute video is the reel-in and the third 1 minute video is the get em’ in the net video which is to turn browsers into actions.
What is the quality of the video. Yes, good video can be shot on your phone, but chances are the sound, lighting and motion will underperform in most cases. Good video is not always easy. To created great storytelling, different cameras, lenses, motion devices. drones, lighting effects and sound are critical to producing something of quality. Your first interaction with a viewer should be indicative of what your brand standards are. If you have low brand standards and maintaining conrol of look and feel are uninportant, you might not even use video or if you do, it is self produced and quality of less concern. If you are an elevated brand with high brand standards. the output quality of video is going to be much more important. Luxury brands agonize over delivering high quality brand messaging because in the end that is their product. So you are not a luxury brand, is branding still important? The answer to this is only if you want to put yourself at the front of the pack as the alpha brand that delivers higher quality in your market. Do you want to be LVMH or pookies knock off brand. Like the perception of a good restaurant, it starts with the quality of the wait staff.
Movement
Working with generational standards and brain engagment determines the idea outcome
Lock down camera shots are boring and uninteresting. It’s easy to do and as they say, great production value is not easy ( or cheap). Great video like a great timepiece is handmade and created by craftspeople who understand perception and depth. The reason we use motion in all our shots is to keep the brain engaged and interested in what it is seeing and interpreting, The motion video delivers kinestetic qualities that brain wants to interpret and interact with, it wants eye-candy and when you don’t deliver it is wants something else. When there is nothing else it goes into stasis and stops engaging. This is proven out by younger generations in the way they view social media, especially platforms like Tik Tok where low eye-brain interest have trained the user to simply move on to “fill the crave” for eye-candy. We want from generations that went from a 5 minute view time to the MTV generation that moved to a three minute time limit to milenials which had about 30-45 second time frames to the current generation which has about a 4-7 second interest rate and a 30 second average time limit on total watch time. We have to tell stories faster and hold more interest if we are trying to reach younger generations and if our audience is older we have more time depending on their generation. Younger audiences demand faster movement, older audiences allow for more controlled movement and longer storytelling. Knowing your audience and their behaviors is key to enagement, and if you are trying to reach a wide audience consider a process that delivers to each audience in way which best serves their sensabilities.