7 Approaches To Storytelling On YouTube
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This is a presentation I gave as part of H+K Strategies Demystifying Digital conference in December 2013. Speaker notes are included. The idea is that YouTube is more than just a broadcasting platform and that new platforms demand new modes of telling stories. In the same way that there are really only 7 jokes in the world, we can loosely bucket the different ways that brands are using YouTube to tell their story into these seven different approaches. Apologies as the fonts and a couple other things look funky from uploading this from PPT to Slideshare.
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7 Approaches To Storytelling On YouTube
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Editor's Notes
- My name is Reuben Halper, I work as part of a small creative agency-like team within Google known as the Zoo. We help brands and agencies realize and exploit the creative potential of Google products and platforms. And in the years that I've been working on YouTube I've come to believe that every brand has a story to tell, something interesting to say and perhaps most importantly someone interested in that story.
- The key thing to understand when thinking about YouTube is that it is not just a broadcasting platform. It's not an online version of TV and if you want to get the most out of it you shouldn't simply broadcast TV content on YouTube. Instead, we choose to think of YouTube a blank creative canvas for you to tell the story of your brand.In short, new platforms demand new modes of storytelling
- Here's an example that illustrates what I mean. Both of these videos are from Dyson showing off the Dyson air multiplier. One is an ad and one is a piece of content made by their engineers. Let's take a look.So you can see that the video with no V/O, low production value is something that people want to watch, share, etc. The fact is that the audience votes with their eyeballs
- It's exciting for me to see that Brands and agencies are recognizing the power of the platform to tell stories that break out of the 15/30/60 second mold. In fact, the three most awarded campaigns as Cannes this year were all long form video. Dumb ways to die, Intel The Beauty Inside, & Dove Sketches.
- It's exciting for me to see that Brands and agencies are recognizing the power of the platform to tell stories that break out of the 15/30/60 second mold. In fact, the three most awarded campaigns as Cannes this year were all long form video. Dumb ways to die, Intel The Beauty Inside, & Dove Sketches.
- It's exciting for me to see that Brands and agencies are recognizing the power of the platform to tell stories that break out of the 15/30/60 second mold. In fact, the three most awarded campaigns as Cannes this year were all long form video. Dumb ways to die, Intel The Beauty Inside, & Dove Sketches.
- But actually today I want to stay from the Red Bulls, the Dove sketches, because those are the easy wins and the easy things to talk about. Instead I'd like to talk about how other brands are telling their stories on YouTube and hopefully give you some food for thought in terms of how you might be able to take the principles in these examples and use them for your brands.
- In the same way that there are really only 7 jokes in the world, we can loosely bucket the different ways that brand are using YouTube to tell their story into these seven areas.
- There hero piece is the brand or campaign anthem. It's a piece of video that strongly communicates the principles of your brand packaged in a story that makes an emotional connection, is memorable and perhaps most importantly spreadable.Notice that I didn't say viral. Viral is a dirty word to us because viral by it's very nature is unpredictable and often doesn't strongly link back to the brand.
- The stories that Chipotle is telling is a great example of the hero piece. Last year they produced 'back to the start' a beautifully animated film which told a story of the perils of industrial farming set to the backdrop of Willie Nelson covering Coldplay's The Scientist. It’s all about communicating the values and ethos of the brand in terms of using natural ingredients, sustainable farming and produce from local sources.Millions of views, but more importantly communicated what Chipotle stands for in a compelling and entertaining way.
- In fact, just a couple days ago Chipotle released another epic animated video, this one darker and more dystopian that talks about the perils of genetically modified farming and the practices that go with it. This video makes us question more what we put in our body rather than talking about Chipotle itself. This is actually just a teaser to drive downloads for a Scarecrow app/game that they've spent a ton of money to create and is currently the number 3 game in the app store.
- I keep thinking that stunt videos are going to finally die off, but brands and agencies keep thinking of innovative stunts. The underlying principle being don't just tell me a story, give people a story to tell.
- The reason these work is that the internet loves the exceptional and fuck all else frankly.
- One of the most popular of these stunts was TNT's Push For Drama video from last year, but more and more brands are figuring out ways to really integrate the product into the stunt itself. Here's a couple recent examples from Volvo. But these can also come from the most unexpected of places. For example, B2B brands such as Volvo Trucks
- In these videos the product is the story and it just does to show that you can take the mundane features of a product and find an interesting way to talk about it.
- In these videos the product is the story and it just does to show that you can take the mundane features of a product and find an interesting way to talk about it.
- So in this case Farmers Insurance is positioning itself as a trusted guide and helpful neighbor in terms of providing useful tips. It's also interesting to see the media strategies around these as they are perfectly placed in terms of being useful in front of ‘how-to’ videos or other relevant content.
- One of the most fertile but also most difficult methods of storytelling is inviting the users to take part. These can be in heavyweight ways, such as inviting users to take part in a UGC competition or more lightweight in that they don't ask much on the part of the user.
- Perhaps the most amazing example of inviting users to take part is a initiative that YouTube undertook with Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald to attempt to document a single day on earth by inviting users from around the world to submit clips of themselves on a single day. Let's take a look at the trailer.
- The trailer still gives me the chills it's so well done as is the movie. So we had over 87,000 submissions on that and obviously it was a massive undertaking. Most UGC competitions won't have that level of submission, but the most important thing is to calibrate the ask from the user with the reward.
- A year or so ago Perrier was trying position themselves are relevant among a younger audience particularly around social occasions, a place that they didn't necessarily have the right to play. They created perrier le club which was a video that evolved with the number of views. The more people who watched, the hotter the party got. Let's take a look
- I find it a bit awkward to talk about YouTube as a storytelling platform because the reality is that great work spans multiple platforms. With digital working to complement traditional, Twitter and Facebook helping to amplify Youtube and vice versa. The best campaigns these days are ones that span multiple platforms. Perhaps my favorite is this recent campaign from the telecom 3. Now remember they're working in a vertical that's relatively undifferentiated and they had an awareness problem. The main message that they wanted to communicate was that silly stuff matters while building affection and love for the brand. Let's start by taking a look at the TV creative.
- So the film was an absolute hit and was fantastic in terms of generating broad awareness. But it's important that there are no digital dead ends. For the subset of users who want deeper engagement, you need to provide a means to do so.
- In this case they created the Pony mixer which allowed users to select from different ponies and different songs to create a bespoke pony video for themselves which became a digital artifact that they could share around the web. In fact over a million of those pony mixes were created.But my favorite part of this campaign was the fact that they kept the momentum up by herring people who'd created their own pony mixes and shared them on Twitter by creating and turning around custom TV spots in 24 hours.
- So the entire campaign created this virtuous cycle with TV feeding into YouTube, YouTube feeding into Twitter and Twitter feeding back into YouTube.
- So going from the moonwalking pony to the more mundane, I'd like to talk about content and stories that meet demand. Oftentimes telling the best story is simply being the best answer to someone's questions this is what we call hygiene content.The challenge is for a brand to be the best answer to the question in a space or about a subject where the brand is credible.
- The number one guiding principle at Google is focus on the user and all else will follow. So why don't we look at what users are doing as a way to determine what content we should be making and what stories we should be telling. We often say that Google is a database of intent with our users essentially declaring their interesting billions of times per day.In short, why would we guess what the audience wants to see when they’re telling us each and every day (coincidentally this is a big factor in how Netflix is determining what original series they develop/commission.)
- Unilever owned Toni & Guy recognized this and created low-budget content that meets demands in a series called hair meets wardrobe. For them it represented a huge shift in their production model since they're accustomed to making 30 second spots, not 18 films for less than 100k.
- It goes to show that content doesn't need to be expensive to connect with an audience while still looking professional.
- Perhaps my favorite example of this is what McDonald's Canada created. The idea is you have a question and we have an answer and part of an initiative around radical transparency.
- So far, more than 16,000 questions have been asked (they are getting 350 to 450 per day), and nearly 10,000 have been answered.Joel Yashinsky CMO McDonald's Canada: ‘If you have a good story to tell, tell it. But you have to do it in a way that’s authentic, and you have to have that conversation with the customer. You can’t just preach to the consumer these things that you know are true. You have to engage them, so that they can come to learn it and believe it and build that trust with you.’Rather than just answer the questions, they took what they thought were the most interesting and turned those into videos.
- Again, this is a really nice effort to actually engage in meaningful dialogue with customers in a completely transparent manner. This is increasingly important in light of the recent customer satisfaction index that ranked McDonald's last in satisfaction amongst fast food chains (though those results may just be for the US). Then again McDonald's was just named the most effective global brand for the second year running at the Effie awards.I think this is really an underserved area. Imagine if healthcare brands created content that met demand in terms of the best ways to do things like treat a cold, overall wellness and well being, etc. Brands already have the authority and expertise to help they just need to recognize the opportunity.
- Last but not least is a recent and growing trend of using YouTube partners/creators to tell your story. Let's take a look at how VW used a beauty guru in the UK.
- Way more effective than your standard public service announcement and perfectly targeted to the audience who's most likely to be applying makeup while driving.
- So just to recap, there's the hero piece, the stunt, snackable stories, invite viewers to take part, stories that span platforms, content that meets demand and using partners to tell your story.
- One final but important point, for every brand or advertiser doing something on YouTube there's a YouTube creator doing it bigger and better. So what I showed you was how brands are currently telling their stories, but really we should be looking to the YouTube creators to find ways to reach and captivate your audience. These are the guys who are making their living from the platform, so they are constantly experimenting and finding new ways to connect with their viewers while also growing their audience in organic ways.What do they do in common,They are regular and reliableThey are relevantThey don’t expect engagement, they ask for itThey’re social in terms of interacting with their audience as well as collaborating with other creators.