“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. “
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The art of attracting and keeping your audience comes from being a creative storyteller. A creative storyteller uses their imagination or an original idea to tell a story that will capture the imagination of their audience.
When creating a video a brand needs to become a visually creative storyteller. They need to tell their story in a way that will excite, delight and exceed their audience’s expectations. Gone are the days when a mediocre brand advertorial will suffice. Given almost infinite choice of video content online a brands audience has become very fussy about what they will watch.
There is no magic formulae for creating creative video content, there are however ways to become a creative storyteller. They are based on what I call my 3 E’s which are fundamental principals of creating video content people will want to watch.
Educate Your Audience
The first principal is that you need to give your audience a fresh insight. Show and tell them something they do not know. Make sure it is something they will be interested in and want to know. It needs to matter to them and make a difference.
Keep your point simple and easy to understand, value their time it is the only finite resource we have that cannot be added to. Tell the story in a way that your audience will easily relate to.
Entertain Your Audience
It is not enough to educate your audience, in an age where brands have become part of the online publishers they must also entertain their audience. Combining education and entertainment will ensure your storytelling moves to the next level.
Think about how your story will benefit from humor, drama and a brand journey your audience can relate to. It is no different when we share stories with each other on a daily basis we make them entertaining so we don’t loose our audience. Brand stories are no different to keep your audience they also need to entertain them.
Enrich Your Audience
This is the most important element of being a creative storyteller. It is not enough to educate and entertain your audience; you also need to enrich them. After they hear your story they need to feel the experience has added something valuable to their life. They need to feel better about themselves and have gotten something from your storytelling that they would not have gotten elsewhere.
For every video you are thinking of publishing you need to ask yourself, how did that enrich my audiences life. If the answer is that it did not enrich your audience in anyway you need to redo it.
The Heart Of Creative Storytelling
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. “
Leonardo da Vinci
The best brand videos are not complicated masterpieces of cinematography; they are however sharing stories with us that make us feel better for hearing them. Great brand stories challenge us to solve and deal with problems that we need to solve. They work because they educate and entertain us, leaving us feeling our lives have been enriched having heard them.