Storytelling Tips From Corporate Vid Producer

Corporate videos have a bad rep. Apparently, they’ve never moved on from their 1980s origins. Cheesy was a word used in a Maggs on Media segment this week. Cheesy music, message, and production values.

PR agent Waggener Edstrom’s Head of Broadcast, Nick Lawrence, seems on a mission to change this.

One of the early points that grabbed my attention was how the thinking and effort that goes into, say, tv ads, is never applied to the corporate video.

A stilted Chief Exec reading a shabbily constructed autocue should no longer be acceptable.

Storytelling is of utmost importance in solution selling. I myself have run successful workshops on this very skill.

His insight can be summed in two parts. Firstly,

people plot place

When challenged with how impossible it must surely be to make “a factory making liquid polymers” interesting, he replied by saying there are people in the factory, and those people must have stories. And he has his own ‘3 Ps’.

why do I care?

Then he insisted you must understand the audience. They are always asking why should they care, so you must bear that in mind.

Telling a story is not the majoring on logic, reason, numbers or stats. It’s bringing out the emotion, a journey, solving a mystery, battling the odds. Making the prospect care.