This question comes up often when folks contact us about producing an explainer video:
“We are definitely interested in the explainer, the only challenge is the site keeps changing and by the time we create the video, it will be outdated. Your thoughts?”
It’s a legitimate question, considering the time and expense involved with creating an effective video.
We like to reassure our clients that their video will be timeless.
Here’s how:
Timely videos focus on features, facts, and data. These things may build a good case for your product or service in the short term, but things like feature updates and new case studies can change how you do what you do and make the content of your video obsolete.
But here are three things that typically don’t change:
your audience
the problem you’re solving
why you’re solving it
The story of an underdog overcoming the bad guy is timeless. The story of conflict and resolution is timeless. The story of what motivates you to keep telling your story is timeless.
By focusing the content of your video on these timeless elements, your story will have longevity.
Have you seen Iron Man 3 yet? I didn’t make it to opening weekend, but I hear Pepper Potts kicked some ass. Can’t wait to see it.
We feel a special fondness toward Iron Man because he helps us answer this very common client question: Why can’t our brand be the hero of the story?
Here’s the dealio: When you brag about yourself, you sound like a rich white guy with a bunch of missiles to sell, and people will ignore you.
But by using story to explain how you solve someone’s problem, your brand is the special suit that gives people a certain — how shall I say? — confidence about handling that problem….
When the story you tell builds on someone else as the bad ass hero, it’s like you’ve given them a super suit to change the world around them.
That’s not something people quickly forget, and it’s much more likely that they’ll brag about your product or service as a result.
We had fun creating this video for Atlassian On Demand, and it’s a great example of letting “Dave” be the hero (with a nod to the great Voltron). Watch it below, or click here to view on our site.
Yesterday I watched the live stream of the Startup Battlefield Finals at Disrupt NY, which included a six minute presentation by each team followed by a Q & A from the panel of judges.
During one startup’s Q & A, Michael Arrington asked a question (starting at 8:14) about how they’re differentiated from other food delivery services.
The presenter started saying, “This is really a full experience where we’re giving people a — ”
“Yeah yeah yeah…” Arrington interrupted.
In that moment, Arrington demonstrated how we all feel about a pitchy tone: we don’t want to hear it! We don’t want to hear the generalities and vague-eries or the “full experience” you’re providing. We see and hear that jargon all day long in a million different sales messages.
I just want to know how you can make me a superhero.
The power of story kills the pitchy tone of your content marketing.
Every great story has a setting, conflict, climax, and resolution. The setting is the world your target audience lives in, and the climax is the problem or inconvenience they’re facing. Sometimes people know this problem and are frustrated, and other times they don’t even know there’s a better way.
But through story, you can speak to people in a very human way and give them tools to conquer the conflict they’re facing.
And like we’ve said before, when the story you tell builds on someone else as the bad ass hero, it’s like you’ve given them super powers to change the world around them.
That’s not something people quickly forget, and it’s much more likely that they’ll brag about your product or service as a result.
Back to Arrington’s Q & A.
Through some questioning, the presenting team eventually took the focus off what they do and started focusing on their story.
Here’s the setting, conflict, climax, and resolution as I understand it: When health-conscious people want to eat out or order in, their service does all the work of presenting healthy options so you don’t have to think so hard about eating right.
A statement like that inspires people, don’t you think?
Story matters.
Recently this inquiry came to us from a potential client:
I’ve looked at about a hundred explainer videos and shortlisted you guys because I feel you’re not in the animated sales pitch business but craft stories that are genuine in tone.
Many things contributed to their success, obviously, but from the beginning Enigma held a strong belief that story matters, and when you believe that story matters, you find your voice and win the day.
Congratulations, Team Enigma!
Watch their video below or click here to view it on our site. You can also read an article about them on TechCrunch.
Late last year, Metro Trains in Melbourne launched a public service campaign with this wildly successful and hilarious music video called Dumb Ways to Die:
Here are three elements that I suspect contributed to its viral success:
It has a distinct voice. People are drawn to stories with a distinct voice and unique perspective. Public praise for the video included comments like, “darkly cute,” “adorably morbid,” and “mixing cute with horrifying.” It catches your attention immediately with a head caught on fire, and it keeps your attention for three full minutes because you want to know all the other dumb ways they’ve thought of to die!
It’s very simple. The music is catchy in a can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head kinda way (my kids were singing this for days). The characters are simple, the setting is simple, and the visual details are kept to only what drives the story forward. The animation style shows a brilliant restraint in this respect.
The big payoff is at the end. I love how they confidently massage this story for three full minutes, trusting me to stick around for the Big Idea they communicate at the very end: be safe around trains. They trust this simple little story to communicate their message with very little hand-holding, and early results indicate success: Metro claims the campaign contributed to a 30% reduction in “near-miss” accidents during the first three months of the campaign.
(wow.)
It takes a courageous client to produce content like this, one who is willing to hold their story with an open hand and let it go where it needs to go.
When I was a kid, all the neighborhood boys wanted me to play the helpless princess trapped in a tower so they could rescue me. I would sit in the neighbor’s weeping willow tree forever, waiting for those stupid boys to slay the dog dragon and free me from my captors.
Meanwhile I really wanted to be Princess Leia, who I thought was badass for leading a rebellion despite making a poor hairstyle choice.
When our clients come to us, sometimes they act like those stupid boys who fall over themselves to be the hero (no offense to boys or clients), but it’s our job to woo them into making their audience the hero.
Here’s why:
When you rescue someone, they become your fan. But when you make them the hero, they become your champion.
When the story you tell builds on someone else as the bad ass hero, it’s like you’ve given them super powers to change the world around them.
That’s not something people quickly forget, and it’s much more likely that they’ll brag about your product or service as a result.
A few months ago I found myself backstage with a best selling author and all-around genuinely nice guy in California.
In the 3 minutes he had before his presentation, he offered a simple acronym I still pass along to most first-timers I meet at networking events — and the occasional folks plagued with I-Don’t-Have-Anything-To-Talk-About-But-Me.
“SPEAK,” he said, “S.P.E.A.K. Story, Passion, Encourage, Assist, Knowledge.”
Hear their Story. “What’s your story?” They came from somewhere; they’re going somewhere. Find out more!
Listen to their Passions: “What are you passionate about?” We’re all opinionated about something. Find out what makes them tick.
Encourage them: “Now that I’ve heard your story and your passions, it sounds like you’d be good at ____.” Exercise your listening skills. If you’ve been paying attention this will either make them cry “Aha!” or “Exactly!” (That’s the part we’re especially fond of.)
Offer to Assist: Do you know someone they should meet? Do you have an awesome new app that would solve all their problems? Offer your help. Don’t be stingy. You always have something you can give back.
Have them share some Knowledge: “What’s the best advice you would share with the world from your experience?”
Guess what people find most relevant? Themselves. Everyone can talk about themselves.
Content marketing is all the rage now, but it’s important to understand what that means before you get caught up in sharing talking cat photos on your corporate twitter feed.
On the contrary, she says these are the main ingredients needed for effective content marketing:
Is it relevant?
Is it clearly defined?
Is it discoverable?
Well we just so happen to be in the business of creating content for your product or service that targets all three of these points.
There is a growing misconception out there regarding what we do. Many people think all we do is make videos, and when you think we just make videos, you’re pretty sure you can find a video on a shorter timeline at a lower cost.
And you can, if all you want is a video.
But what we actually do is consult you on the relevancy of your content, clearly define it according to your intended goals, and make sure it answers the question people are asking.
And at the end of the process we just so happen to produce a video.
(Do you see what I did there?)
For a free consultation on how we can produce relevant content for you, contact us here or subscribe to our newsletter.
When explaining how your product or service works, we like to keep it simple so your audience doesn’t get lost in the weeds. This means we may not hit every detail of your web interface, login process, or whathaveyou.
Our goal is to tease your audience with the basic workflow they’ll experience when using your product or service to solve their problem.
Some examples we designed below:
Searching, but never finding.
Rather than showing a web interface of the search process, we used characters who react in frustration to their current search experience.
Simple login page.
Here we designed a simple login page that will transcend any site redesign Retail Universe does down the road.
I recently attended a local meetup organized by the folks at Distilled.
(Really smart people, by the way.)
During her awesome presentation called, “Making Cool Shit Isn’t Content Marketing,” Adria Saracino shared some interesting use case data around the effectiveness of video.
ShoreTel Sky – a medium sized B2B company – focused their content around specific brand messaging to improve the quality of their leads. After researching the market, they realized there wasn’t much content that explained the basics of what a phone system does in general, so they created an explainer video.
As you can see from Adria’s slide above, results included…
Source: The Internet
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