October 17, 2022

Brand Films – What They Are and What They Can do to Help Promote Your Corporation

Corporations are using more creative means to promote their brands than ever before. Brand films, or “branded documentaries” as they’re also known, aim to entertain and inspire viewers with stories of aspirational lifestyles. At the same time, brand films subtly educate the audience on what makes your company special to widen your reach to your key demographics.

 

Subtly is the key. A successful corporate video strategy requires an agency that understands the marketing goals of your campaigns and how to “soft sell” that messaging inside cinematic and emotional storytelling. These two things, the marketing message and the storytelling are both tailored to each corporation’s needs – this way, you get greater engagement from existing and potential customers because they are taking something memorable away after watching.

 

As broadcast TV fades into history, corporate brand film producers are now pressured to craft engaging branded documentaries that reap tangible results. Video production partners who understand who you are and what your audience aspires to will create authentic messages of your company’s success, relatability, or revival.

 

As viewers’ attention spans continue to shrink in response to advertiser messaging, those same attention spans are expanding for entertainment. Brand films are perfectly poised to be delivered effectively across digital modes like streaming platforms or social media networks because they entertain, not sell.

 

It’s getting back to the basics of what viewers want. We don’t have to complicate things. Brands are striving to establish themselves as relevant on the internet through the Next Big Innovative Marketing Thing, but storytelling through video has proven itself as an effective method of connecting time and time again.

 

Whether it’s communicating your corporate social responsibility or leadership messaging, you don’t necessarily always have to push products simultaneously. In fact, it’s detrimental to this type of approach.

 

You want people to reach the end feeling happy about your brand. Your product is a side note.

 

While corporate brand films have been around for a while, they’ve recently risen in popularity.  This popularity spike is likely because the way we create corporate video content has evolved in many different and meaningful ways.

 

What to Include in Your Brand Film

There are a few key things to keep in mind when creating a corporate brand film. Here are a couple of general guidelines.

 

• First and foremost: the video must be entertaining and engaging. After all, you want people to watch the video and not just click away after a few seconds. This is about creating loyalty, which doesn’t happen in a 00:15-second spot.

 

• Second, the video should also be informative because it reflects what you stand for. It’s important to remember that your corporate brand film is an opportunity to show off what makes your company different. It’s not the time to list off your product benefits.

 

• Finally, make sure that the video is appropriately branded. This seems contradictory to the above points, but it’s about balance. The brand film shouldn’t have product placement in every scene, but it should be relevant to the storyline. It also means using a consistent brand voice throughout the video and including your company logo at some point to drive home your message. No matter how entertaining the story, you still want people to connect that back to your brand.

 

As for the creative approach, start with your “Why.” People care more than ever about the “why” behind what you do. The best brand films encourage viewers to identify with the company and its values.

 

The tone of voice should be on brand and filled with examples of someone living out that brand as a lifestyle. You should also include an emotional call-to-action so people can act on what resonates most about their experience watching your brand film.

 

After all, it’s essential to create not only compelling content but also an engaging experience where people feel connected. If there is no emotional connection, how will they care about what your business offers?

 

Because let’s face it, you will have an end goal in mind. Brand films can be created for a variety of business goals. A corporate brand film can be used as internal training or onboarding tool for new employees to learn about your culture and values. When it covers your company’s mission and purpose, it can also be used as an external marketing tool to appeal to potential customers.

 

If you’ve done your corporate video strategy right, it will focus on connecting with audiences and having audiences connect with each other on your platforms. You’ll be showing them you have shared interests in common. You are their tribe. You’ve created your own community.

 

What Makes a Brand Film the Best Corporate Branding Option?

The short answer: their reach and longevity.

 

With the ever-changing landscape of social media, your company brand films are best produced with the intention of living beyond just posting to your website or YouTube. You can break down or “atomize” your brand film into bite-size pieces, which offer multiple touchpoints with your target audience.

 

Viewers who may not at first think they have time for long-form content could be lured in with short-form content from your brand film and stick around to learn more.

This abundance of footage also provides enough visual assets to move quickly to any new social media platform.

 

For Fortune 500 corporations who wish to showcase their footprint across different countries while emphasizing growth across social media, a brand film campaign is an effective way of doing just that. You can take the content and either add new graphics, provide new transcription in the native language, or pull never-before-seen footage to use for a specific purpose in a new campaign… over and over again.

 

One way some corporate brand films go even further is by featuring the company’s employees and customers as the main characters.

 

These brand films can introduce your team impactfully, showing what it’s like to work for or with your company and helping to build a direct connection between the viewer and your business. You can essentially make your team (or even your clients) the “Hero” in your own story.

 

A corporate brand film should:

 

• Tell an engaging story.

 

• Feature high-quality, cinematic visuals

 

• Incorporate the essence of your brand, not necessarily your product

 

• Be somewhat ‘evergreen’

 

• Be long enough to resonate.

 

Ultimately, a brand film is a real commitment in terms of cost. But investing in a brand film can help thrust your company to its pinnacle of success. Brand films have the power of emotion as a driver.  They engage viewers with a story about what you do, what you stand for, and, thus, why anyone should care.

 

The best part? It’s truly your own movie! You own the intellectual property and reap the dividends of that emotional tie you created without worrying about copyright claims or unoriginal creativity. Everything was tailored by our team specifically for your brand and your audience. You can drive the conversation instead of just being placed inside it (like prior renditions of branded entertainment, where your content was forced into someone else’s narrative).

 

Crafting a Production Strategy to Hit a Homerun with Your Brand Film

You can’t reach the end successfully without laying out the plan for getting there.

 

First, prep work. Your video production partners at Scenic Road are adept at casting real people as talent and performing pre-interviews with current employees, brand advocates, or other brand representatives.

 

This process gives us an understanding of your audience, who is best suited to represent that audience on camera, and how we use this person as the lens through which we showcase your corporate values and how you put your values into practice.

 

Companies that connect their cause as part of their identity will succeed more than those overlooking this key component. Still, you must be sure that this connection is authentic and accurately portrayed without self-aggrandizing. Your audience doesn’t want to hear you brag about the good they do. They just want to know you do good for good’s sake.

 

Creative Solutions by Scenic Road for Corporate Brand Films

The Scenic Road team is committed to crafting videos seamlessly blending creative and emotional storytelling with high-quality cinematic production values.

 

We want our partners’ brand messages and stories told genuinely, so we put together brand films from interviews and not from a preapproved script. We seek out brand messaging from these interviews based on what’s most important for each client, and we make sure those messages are delivered in their own words, not corporate-speak.

 

We combine these aspirational messages with a music score that drives the story forward. The music dictates the mood and the pacing (and as a result, the audience’s emotion) throughout the piece.

 

The goal here isn’t simply to create any generic corporate brand film but one specifically crafted to captivate an audience with your brand’s story and messaging.

 

We understand that you want your company’s video to be as unique and authentic as you are, so our production style is about getting to know who we are working with.

 

We find the right strategy for your message by understanding what makes your business different from others to tell a story worth remembering.