As regular readers of our blogs will know, a captivating story is without doubt the best way to pause thumb scrolling, hook a viewer and draw them in. However good your visuals and sound and however creative you are with the content, without the story, the heart of the video, there will always be something missing. You need the story to weave everything together and, in order to make that vital connection with the viewer, this story must create an emotional response.
It’s easy to illustrate the reason this works – you’ve only got to look at the massed ranks of the major retailers’ Christmas adverts. Eagerly awaited every year for the heartwarming feelgood factor they get across, they keep their particular offerings well to the forefront of your Christmas food, drink and present lists. They’re often a masterclass in perfectly-pitched emotional manipulation.
So how can you follow in their footsteps and get your business out there? Let’s take a look at how it can be done.
Why is an emotional response so important?
Where to start? It’s a long list. To begin with, it puts your message across much more effectively. If you can communicate the passion behind your brand, which can’t be done by a dry list of facts, viewers will want to find out more. An emotional response, whether it’s happy, sad or enthused, is far more likely to be remembered and acted on. Content which arouses emotions also tends to be more persuasive and more likely to be shared, meaning your reach expands considerably. A good video should linger in viewers’ minds long after they’re watched it and have the potential to turn them from casual scrolling to active engagement.
How does this response to your story help boost your brand?
If you were looking to join a golf club, would its promotional video win you over with a few shots of the beautiful greens? It could certainly help, but the chances are you’d be more likely to join if you could see and understand how this club can improve your game and subsequently your morale and mood, help your wellbeing with all the fresh air and exercise or meet new like-minded friends.
If you’re wanting to get the word out with a video about your legal business, you can focus on your hotshot team and your success rate in advising on commercial employment litigation or matrimonial settlements. Of course viewers want to know the people they’re intending to use are good at what they do. But any company making a video is going to say how good they are – that’s not going to stick in the mind. What’s much more likely to deliver a punch is demonstrating how your team can give back confidence to a panicked employee who has been unfairly dismissed, or provided kind and empathetic advice to someone left devastated by an acrimonious relationship split. We’ve been there, or we know someone who has, and we can identify with and get behind that message. Your product or service should fix a problem and make life easier.
A video which can achieve this emotional feelgood factor, as opposed to a purely logical response, will make the brand relatable, creating mental connections which ensure it stays in the memory. Feelings make memories, and although Mr Spock probably wouldn’t agree, logic doesn’t.
How do you go about creating this response?
OK, it’s clearly essential to ensure viewers are emotionally invested in your story. But how do you go about getting them there?
To start with, you need drama – some kind of conflict or issue which your business is perfectly placed to resolve. To arouse emotion, it needs to be a problem viewers can identify and empathise with; they need to be able to imagine themselves in that predicament and wonder how they would react to it.
Getting the right pace is vital, and skilful editing will enable this. You can put an emotion across in a second with the right gesture – a glance, a tear, a raised eyebrow. Appropriate music and lighting will also make a big difference – do you want to create tension, relief, suspense, joy? An injection of humour can make your business seem friendly and approachable, but it has to be done the right way, and with humour there are plenty of wrong ways . . .
Imagine a scene for a video promoting a vet’s practice. An owner has brought a dog in (top tip – animals will always provoke an emotional response) and it’s not looking too promising. But a rapid rollercoaster of despairing owner, sad music, adorable but lethargic dog, a vision of what life would be without it – segueing into a dynamic modern surgery with an expert and reassuring vet who will clearly leave no stone unturned to make sure the dog pulls through. Optimistic music, the dog perks up and does something naughty but funny to show it’s on the mend, the owner is overjoyed, and viewers of the video, who have stopped scrolling because of a lump in their throat at the sight of the comatose dog, will feel confident that if their beloved pet falls ill they too will be treated kindly and attentively if they go to this surgery.
There’s no one magic solution to conjure up an emotional response. But the combination of methods you use has to be exactly the right one.
Can this work for my company?
As we’ve often mentioned in these blogs, anyone with a phone can shoot a video, but there’s a lot more than meets the eye to getting it right from a commercial point of view. Creating the emotional response which will be exactly right for what you do and what you want to achieve is a lot harder than it looks. Your business is a professional outfit – you need a professional video production company.