How to create an effective company story video 

A company, thus a brand, is first and foremost its identity and the values it projects around its image and products or services. Values where customers can reflect and recognize themselves. 

One of the best ways to bring out this identity and these values is to tell your story. To tell where you come from, to make it clear “who you are,” and where you want to go.  To do this in today’s digital world, there is no better medium than video. The reasons are many, they are intertwined, and they are mutually reinforcing.

Video allows a narrative, even a rather long one, to unravel while keeping the viewer interested, making sure that it stays engaging for the recipient.  Video is the medium that, more than any other, attracts attention online. It makes communication most understandable and memorable.  And, moreover, it records the best engagement rates—a decisive point when it comes to distributing content on social networks. 

(In this post, we collected the main data on the effectiveness of video for online marketing). That is why company story videos are a really central aspect in the marketing strategies of brands in any industry. 

What are we referring to? To videos that tell the story of a company or brand, starting from its origins, from the very birth, and going on to draw the arc of its development (the success arc), which takes us to the present day.

In other words: it’s all about brand awareness. And that’s where we start from before continuing the post by identifying the 4 main best practices for producing the best company story videos and sharing 3 successful examples. 

 

A matter of brand awareness  

First, let’s line up some data: 

• 59% of customers prefer to buy new products from brands they already know.
• 77% of people refer to certain products by their brand name.
• 82% of investors want the companies they invest in to have strong brand awareness. 
• 75% of companies say that building brand awareness is among their top priorities. (renderforest.com) 
• 46% of consumers say they are willing to pay more to make purchases with brands they trust (salsify.com). 
• 77% of consumers prefer to shop with brands that share their values (vivendi.com).

So, company story videos are directly related to the importance of brand awareness for today’s marketing strategies. 

And this importance is perfectly shown by the data above. 

What emerges can be summarized as follows: for the customer, the brand always comes before a product or service.

The desirability of a brand is played, first and foremost, on recognizability and the ability to stand out from the competition. After this step comes that of trust. Finally, it’s the customers themselves who turn into brand testimonials. This happens when the brand’s values resonate with customers, when they feel “something in common,” a sense of belonging. This leads to advocacy: one of the most important and ambitious goals that any marketing strategy can and should set. 

Now, telling one’s story is one of the most effective and interesting ways to trigger this whole mechanism. Storytelling brings the company closer to people, humanizing it, even for very large companies. 

It brings out one’s values in a natural way, not in a way that is “heavy-handed” or prescriptive, absorbing them into the narrative itself. It’s a great way to emphasize your success, to make it clear where the brand has started and how far one has come … without ending up in a self-congratulatory dynamic that could push your audience away.

Of course, it’s not enough to just create a company story video: you need to know how to do it well. Now, we’ll share the 4 best practices that are essential, before moving on to describe 3 successful examples. 

 

 

The 4 best practices for producing company story videos

 

1) Pay attention to channels!

The first best practice is actually an essential premise. An effective company story video must be made with great awareness of the channels through which it will be distributed. 

Will it be posted on the company website? On YouTube? On social networks? Here you have to be very clear: the winning perspective is always the omnichannel one; therefore, adapt your productions according to the platforms on which they will be conveyed.

Watch out for devices, too! Today, people are increasingly using their smartphones to watch videos. 

 2) Recognizability of style and tone of voice 

Of course, a company story video always mentions the brand at the center of the story: that’s a given. 

But not everything is about explicit tones. 

In fact, the brand must also be perfectly recognizable by its tone of voice and stylistic choices, starting with the graphic aspects.

The goal is to make people feel the presence of the brand even on a subliminal level, from the very beginning of the narrative. 

3) Script and storytelling to be taken care of in detail

It’s not enough to tell your story honestly to make it interesting. 

In fact, you have to carefully handle everything related to storytelling. This is especially the case when it comes to very long videos. Therefore, try to isolate the core narrative themes around which to build your script. Start with the objectives: what are the main aspects you want to highlight, starting with your story? What effect do you want to have on the recipients? Or, to put it another way, what do you want to remain in their memory once you reach the end of the video? 

When these goals are set, then you can proceed backwards: identifying the story line, which must be compelling and coherent. Choosing the format: an animation? A series of interviews? A mini movie? Or something else? There is no single way that is more effective than another. 

It all depends on your goals.

 

4) Be guided by data 

No single narrative that is more effective than another, in absolute terms.  

This truth is even more decisive when we look at the context and, above all, the target audience. 

So, concretely: 

• Before making your video, analyze the sentiment related to your brand. What do people expect from you? What is their perception of what you do and your values? With what imagery do they associate you?

This is a decisive point for evaluating the choices in terms of the format and any testimonials that may appear within the video. 

• Even more specifically: try to know the composition of your target audience in the most surgical way possible. Break it down into increasingly specific segments based on common characteristics (from age, to geography, to psycho-social). And keep track of the actual results of your communication, in terms of visibility, view completion rate, shares, and engagement triggered. 

Understanding what worked and what didn’t is the starting point for recalibrating and continuously improving your communication. 

Company story video – 3 successful examples 

As promised, we will conclude with a quick analysis of 3 examples of company story videos. We chose them because of their success, but also because of the diversity of their goals…thus of their realization.

Chanel 

Let’s start with one of the most well-known brands in the fashion world: Chanel. The style chosen is motion graphics. In short, the strength of the video is left to the images, supported by a very well built voice-over narration.

We want to focus attention on this aspect, which operates below the surface: the style of the animations (in black and white) is derived from the style of the Chanel logo, which in this way amplifies its power of attractiveness and memorability. 

 

Levi Strauss

With this example, we remain in the world of fashion, with a video style that is opposite to the previous one.

In this case, the video uses the classic documentary style.  The focus is on placing the story of the brand within the larger story of social change. And, not surprisingly, a historian is at the center of the narrative. Levi Strauss’ target audience is very different from Chanel’s: hence the differences in choices. 

 

 Lego 

Finally, a case that made history. We’re talking about a long form that is, in practice, a short film. 

Again, we have a video based on animations, but the style is very different from the Chanel example.  There is a real development of the events and the protagonists, which has the effect of deeply engaging the viewers. 

In short, it’s about the imagery that is projected around Lego, with the effect of dealing with something very “familiar,” which relates to the aspects of childhood that we would like to preserve in adulthood.

Again, this is a narrative that is perfectly consistent with the brand’s target audience. Here, even in practice, is the decisive importance of having an in-depth knowledge of your target audience.