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You are here: Home / Video Production Blog / The common elements of successful ‘storytelling’ videos

The common elements of successful ‘storytelling’ videos

April 24, 2017 By Matt Kuhn

Storytelling is as old as humanity. For millenia it was the primary way of passing along information from one generation to the next, long before the written word even existed. Often stories carried the secrets to survival of a community or culture. Wrapped within stories, these critical insights to survival and success were more likely to be understood and remembered.

For the same reasons, facts and marketing messages wrapped within storytelling videos have greater impact on target audiences.

Storytelling videos come in many forms, but there are a few common ingredients:

Evoke Emotion

What will your audience feel at the end of your story? It doesn’t matter if the emotions are positive or negative, but if you want your video to have impact there needs to be some feeling that is evoked. Showing emotion in your video increases trust and forms a bond between the speaker and the audience. If your video is simply facts-stated, one after another, most of us wouldn’t pay much attention or remember any of it.

Incase you are wondering, here are some of the most common emotions you can evoke in your video:

  • Joy
  • Sadness
  • Trust
  • Anticipation
  • Fear
  • Anger
  • Surprise
  • Disgust

By the way, if you’re looking for a great example of a emotional video, check out Supermarket giant EDEKA’s Xmas video. It covers pretty well all of the above, except ‘disgust’. Personally I think its a bit of an extreme move by the Grandfather, but it does score 55 million views on YouTube.

Focus on the Human Element

People relate best to other people. Not ‘things’.

So convert your message into a human story. The human element can be the person telling the story. Alternatively, the human element can be the protagonist in the story, or the person the story is following.

And, although great stories often require heros, keep in mind that we often admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

Maintain Context

Successful storytelling videos include “Context”. In other words, make sure your target audience can answer the question: “Why should I care”!

What’s important to your audience are their lives, their work, their goals, the challenges they face, and the solutions they’re looking for. It’s about the shared interests of your audiences and community.

Stories of struggles, failures and overcoming are excellent sources that help the story connect with the audience, since everyone has experienced these in life. This will compel the teller to appear more human, more like one of them.

Keep it Simple

Finally, don’t overcomplicate the storyline. Simplicity also aides in memorability, because the overall lesson is easy to grasp and retain. Simple stories are strong stories. Take out everything that doesn’t serve the narrative.

By the way, good editing also helps to keep it simple. Thai Life Insurance has a great video story (8.3 million views), but good editing below the 3 minute length would have made this awesome video even better.

Looking for great examples of successful storytelling videos?

There are many ways to tell a compelling story in a video about your products or organization. I’m going to detail some of the more popular approaches in upcoming posts, with great examples from some of the world’s leading brands. So stay tuned.

By the way, storytelling is a big part of what we do here at MK video productions. For example, take a look at the Amintro video we recently completed for one of our startup clients.

Until next time – Matt

 

Filed Under: Video Production Blog, Video Storytelling

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Superb Video!

I showed the video last night and today. One individual got shivers and emotional, and another started crying. When I asked her why it caused her to cry, she explained that she could relate to it for herself (50 years young) and for her mom who was widowed two years ago and struggles with loneliness. In my opinion, there’s no greater compliment and validation that your video is superb. So, hats off to you!

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