When you are creating video content to help in communicating your brand beliefs, you need to sell the idea rather than the brand or the product.
It needs to be a belief video as well as a brand video. This sounds crazy right? If you don’t tell people how amazing your brand is and how great your product is in comparison to everyone else, how will they know they want to buy it? Well, NEWSFLASH – they already know they want it; you need to tell them why they need it.
Let’s take Apple and Samsung as our examples. They are both equally qualified to make phones, they create a similar product, they have the same resources, and they have the same access to the market, they have the same access to digital content agencies and creative video agency. So why do people buy phones from Apple rather than from Samsung? The answer is simple really; Apple sells their idea, Samsung sells their product. People have already bought into the idea of an amazing new phone with all the latest features, so why are you selling something that has already been sold? Apple does something different in the way they communicate, and no one else does it.
The Golden Circle
Ted Talks explains what they do on an amazing video you can see here; they call it ‘The Golden Circle’. The golden circle explains how Apple communicates in comparison to others. Apple communicates from the inside of the circle to the outside of the circle. They start with ‘why’ they do what they are doing and finish with ‘what’ they are doing to achieve that. Other companies such as Samsung will start with what they are doing, then how they are doing it, but never really tell you why they are doing it. As a result you don’t connect with that brand, you don’t engage with their brand story and you don’t feel a strong desire to go out and buy their products.
This sounds like it’s a simple thing to do and an easy change to make, but it isn’t always. This is because figuring out why you are doing something can be really hard. The ‘why’ are the beliefs, the ideals and the visions of your company and if you can define this then you will engage your audience on a totally new level. Everyone knows what they do, and that’s the easiest thing to tell other people, but what makes the difference is humanizing the brand by communicating your brand beliefs.
The difference
So here is the difference you might see in their adverts:
Apple may tell you: they want to change the world > by changing the face of technology through innovation > and they will do this with their new phone with all of these features
Samsung may tell you: with their new phone with all these features > they are going to change the face of technology through innovation.
They are missing the bit that makes you believe them. They are missing the bit that inspires action. Telling people what you believe in, inspires those that believe in the same goals to buy your product. As a video production company we see hundreds of scripts every week and they can usually be divided into these two categories mentioned above. But what is amazing is that more and more brands are seeing that the ideas that are belief driven offer the most tangible foundation for engaging video content.
The ‘what’ is always going to be clearer than the ‘why’. It’s easier for a company to tell you the ‘what’ because it is clearer to them; the ‘why’ is much harder to define. People buy in to why you do something, not what you do. This is why people are comfortable buying Apple products. They trust that their beliefs and goals are aligned. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe; this is what inspires brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is when people will buy your products because you are who you are, not because your products are better than anyone else’s.
Look at what inspired the creation of you brand and your company in the first place. Maybe you need to realign your business with the original goals and beliefs of the company. Everything you are doing should go some way to achieving this goal and should be directly linked with your beliefs and ideals. When this line gets blurred internally, it is blurred externally, making it harder for your customers to fit their ideals with yours.
The brains behind the operation
You need to prompt action to be taken in a different way than simply telling people to buy your product; this is your ‘engagement’. To prompt an action your audience needs to feel an emotional connection with your brand. You want people to need your product, no just want it. Apple prompts an emotional connection that few other brands do. The golden circle diagram also represents different parts of your brain and how they work.
The ‘what’ is your neocortex. This is the part of the brain which controls rational and analytical thought and language.
The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ is your limbic brain. This is the part of the brain which controls trust and loyalty, human behaviour and decision making
Samsung appeal to your neocortex and Apple appeal to your limbic brain.
When we talk from the outside in, we are talking to the rational parts of our brains first and then trying to engage our feelings afterwards. But if we talk from the inside out, we engage our feelings and behaviours first and rationalise them afterwards. If you engage the part of the brain that makes decisions first, you will be much more successful.
So what?
If you can get in touch with why your company is doing what it is doing, you can inspire brand loyalty and brand love. Without telling people what your beliefs and ideals are as a company, you will never inspire them to be loyal to you in the way you want them to be. If you are only out to make money, another company which is out to make a change will overtake you. They will make more money than you; they will hold a bigger market share than you. Simply because they connect with people better than you do.
We at Beast Production Company UK, are storytellers, we follow a belief because we want to, not because we have to. A wise old producer once told me, “It doesn’t matter how long you spend working on something, what matters is how well you make it. If you are naturally gifted it probably won’t take that long and you can take the rest of the day off.” Well at Beast we like to go to the beach on our days off and when we don’t have a day off we like to take our work there…whenever possible. So for our production company UK we have one simple belief and that is to enjoy what you do, and do it as often and as well as you can. What you do is proof of what you believe. Your amazing product is the proof of your belief. So if you tell people what you believe in, they will see that your goals are aligned to theirs, they will buy your products. It’s as simple as that. Ha! I know it isn’t as simple as that, but that’s the basis of it. If you can sell your prospective customers your ‘idea’, the product will sell itself.