8 Types Of Video Storytelling That Can Help Your Brands Video Campaign.

Having a great product or service isn't enough for your business to thrive. You need to build customer rapport and attract them to your brand by building their trust. The best method to build this trust is brand storytelling, giving your audience an insight into what your brand is all about.

Brand storytelling lets your customers relate to your brand on a personal level. Sharing your company's story, values, purpose and how your product or service can benefit others. People then may realise they share the same beliefs and ambitions as your brand. By connecting with your audience on a more personal level, they become more invested in your brand and what products and services you offer - which can also help in building brand ambassadors who will help advocate for you.

Although brand storytelling can be created in many ways like blogs, photos and images - video is the most engaging and powerful form across all platforms. The mix of movement, visuals and sound in videos captivates the attention of your audience on a deeper level compared to static images or plain text.

What type of storytelling video will work for your brand? Continue reading this blog to explore different examples that may work for you.

What makes an effective brand story?

First of all, you need to look and see what aspects make an effective brand story, before you start creating. If you asked a person out in public ‘what is brand storytelling?’ they would probably guess you're talking about the history of the business. This is just one part of the story, there are many other aspects you can share with your audience from your team and culture to explainer videos. You need to have a clear message you want your brand to portray before knowing which type of video would be the most powerful. Here’s a list of 8 different types of brand storytelling videos and how they could fit with your brand.

1. Company History - Short Film

A lot of big-name companies create amazing videos explaining where their companies started and how they got to where they are now. This helps the audience relate to the brand and understand where the founders came from, how they thought of the business and the starting values they had. These types of videos are good for big companies as they can show how they started small and how they built up from sometimes a normal, everyday person like the majority of their audience. Using this emotive link can also help build a relationship with your audience.

You can create a short film from your story, ensure to use your brand guidelines in the film and typical phrases, logo/slogan or any editing filters you commonly use. For example, Lego created a short film around the conception of the brand, ‘The Lego Story’. They’ve animated the film so it stays in line with the brand. The story is told through a narrator, who we find out is a descendant of the characters in the video. This helps with the link of the family element, showing the brand can appeal to parents and children alike.

2. Explainer Videos

If you are selling a product or service it's good to have explainer videos and tutorials. No one enjoys reading an instruction manual - the plain text and basic diagrams can make it harder to work out. Whereas, if you create a video showing how to use the product or service you’re offering, your customer is more likely to engage with this. It’s not just helpful for your customers but it also gives them a glimpse into how exactly the business portrays its product/service. Tutorials or how-to videos make up 29.8% of online video consumption every week, showing that the audience enjoys this type of video - so why not do this for your business and showcase your products and services? This way you can steer the message in the video to be in line with your brand.

We’ve helped film and produce explainer/how-to videos for many different clients, an example of this is for Vistagreen. We produced a how-to video on how to assemble their product. This was a very visual representation with no voice over and the only text is to show measurements and simple instructions to make the process easy and simple to follow. Visual how-to guides are brilliant ways to help your customers use your product or service the way you intended them to be used.

3. Mission & Values

Every company will have a set mission and list of values and many of those businesses will use this in their marketing efforts. You can often find a company’s mission statement and values on their website, although some companies chose to show you what these are visually. This helps the audience understand as we relate better to visuals than we do text. Sharing these statements and showing the reasoning behind your business helps to create relatable relationships between the customer and the brand. This is because they may have similar values or at least understand why your company does what it does.

Ben & Jerry’s ‘Our Social Mission’ video was one of the best examples we found. They explain the aims of their three-part mission and how they are trying to create a linked success for everyone connected to their business from the suppliers right down to the customers. The video was made to show they are at one with the community and they are not only trying to make success for themselves but everyone involved, which makes you believe that they are interested in their morals and not just business. Showing your morals again helps the audience relate and like you on a deeper level than just a business with no faces or feelings.

4. Testimonials

Testimonials can come as many different forms, for example, it could be a business talking about themselves whether it's the CEO or an employee or it could even be the customers giving their review of the company. As consumers, we all love to research the product, the company and their values and any reviews before we make purchases. If you make a video of current/past customers or the company employees and take their opinion and review of the product, service and brand then mash them all into a video you can promote this on your website and socials. This is brilliant for two reasons. Firstly, your possible customers don't have to research and read lots of information - you’ve put a video in front of them that they can watch and listen to easily. Secondly, creating content yourself around this allows you to focus on how you want the brand to be perceived.

We’ve created a few testimonial videos for a number of different clients. An example of this was a video for Vodafone UK. We produced this testimonial of an overview of the company and interviewed the CEO and employees for their input. The video gives you a feel of what the office life is like at Vodafone which gives the audience a good look into the culture of the brand - check out the video here.

5. Brand Culture - Team Videos

Another great storytelling video idea is to use your team and the office space to create content about the brand and what it is like to work there. These types of videos can help you show your audience what it is like behind the scenes in your brand's office space. A lot of companies use this type of video for recruitment as it's a good way to show possible employees what work life is like. Also, another purpose for this video is just to connect with your customers, showing them the people behind the brand allows them to connect and relate to the company more. You could also add in some humour to keep the video exciting and engaging to the audience.

A little while ago we worked with the TIpi group to film a culture video to showcase their office and show their work-life culture. Head over to our Instagram page here to see some behind-the-scenes footage from this project!

6. User Generated Content

People like to see other people, as humans we are nosey! Some of the best content for your brand could possibly be created by your customers. Lots of big brands use certain hashtags or create competitions to get their audience to post social posts with their product. This is also a great way to gain a following and get a bigger reach. A lot of UGC is a person's review or how-to videos on the product. This content is brilliant and relatable for your customers. Trying to push hashtags or your audience to create content to tag you in can be a little tricky though, the trick is to think outside the box and find a reason why your audience will want to get involved!

A good example of this across social media right now is Huel. A lot of their content is made by employees and customers using and making their product. Showing the simplicity of the product and their thoughts on the taste.

7. Day In The Life

There is a couple of ‘day in the life’ videos you can create for your brand. The first one is how your product or service can be used every day. The second is following what an employee at the brand does every day. Both of these are good to engage with your audience, if you’re a brand with many products that can help with everyday activities showing how the product fits into everyday scenarios can help convince your audience that they need to buy this item.

The day in the life of an employee helps put faces to the brand so allows your audience to connect on a stronger level. Audiences are nosey they like to keep up to date with trends and brands they shop or associate with. These videos help crush curiosity and can be made into a periodic series meaning they want to return to your page to see what happens next. Not only that but they can be quite fun for all the team to make as well!

8. Brand Ambassadors/Sponsors.

A lot of brands like to build up a bank of ambassadors or sponsors, these relationships help build trust and help people feel more invested in your company. Many big brands will use celebrity profiles to promote their products or services making the audience want to add this product or service into their lives as well. Although there is a downside to this that it can feel very scripted, you want to create a piece that feels legitimate and not someone you’ve paid to read from a script and promote your brand.

One of the most common companies to do this is Nike, they get big sporting names involved in their campaigns. They recently released a series called ‘what are you working on?’ each episode focused on someone different from athletes, artists, models and more. Instead of getting these individuals to promote Nike and their products, they focused on what each person was currently doing and their journey. By doing this it makes the audience feel more involved not only with the brand but the names in the video as well. Each video is structured the same but with each person's separate story following Nike’s branding. Take a look at their youtube playlist series here.

Can storytelling video benefit your brand?

Video campaigns can be a valuable asset for brands as it helps build engagement, trust and helps communication between you and your audience. As you can see there is a variety of video types you can use to help support your business's video campaigns, but finding what type of video fits your brand the best can be challenging. Here at Ideal, we have a bank of knowledge and many years of experience in all types of video production. We’d be more than happy to talk to you about what video could work for your brand and how we can assist in making these ideas come to life, fill in a contact form and one of our guys will contact you within 2 working hours. Alternatively, if you want to take a look through our portfolio of work to see many different examples we have worked on head over to our case studies portfolio here.