A Compelling story

Now, the tricky bit: quality. There is a general assumption that quality means expensive. Just look at the big advertising video campaigns: surely they must have cost millions! That is why people are so impressed with viral videos: they are mostly home-made, hence cheap, and yet they can reach the same amount of people of a costly TV ad. Well, while of course I would not say that it is cheap to produce a good video, it doesn't need to be super expensive either.

In my opinion, a good quality video can be described in one simple sentence:

A COMPELLING STORY, WELL TOLD, PREFERABLY IN A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME.

I say preferably (and I will come back to the rest of the sentence later) but not necessarily. One example: TED (www.ted.com). The reason TED is so successfull is because you are listening to great story tellers that inspire you or at least make you think. Some of the most viewed talks on TED are around 20 minutes long and that is a LONG time for an online video. But frankly who cares? On top of this, you are actually watching a video of someone talking, that is it, no visual effects. But still, a compelling story, well told in as many minutes it takes!

Let me give you a couple of my favourites:










So, well told, compelling stories. The question now is to decide what is a story, way before assessing whether it is compelling. When I was working in a PR agency, we were often asked by clients to generate media coverage. Reasonable enough request. So, the obvious question: what is your story? You would be surprised to hear some of the answers (never mind the fact that to generate media you need to have a story that is NEWS, but that is a whole other problem!). There was also the assumption that we, as a PR agency, would have to be the ones 'creating' the story for the client. Well, no. You see, my idea is that you tell me your story and we can make it compelling and well told, pitch it - and generate coverage. If you don't know the story you want to tell, maybe there is no story to tell...then forget a good video.
What compelling and well told mean for a video....coming up next!