Episode 60 // How Video Maximizes Your Remarkable Brand

Feb 3, 2023

Mike and Sam (David was out this time, again – slacker! P.s. – we miss you David please come back.) talk about marketing you can see and hear: video! They break down why video is so effective and how to use it in your branding and marketing efforts the right way. As a bonus – you can steal one of their improv Youtube video titles for your next brand video.

Contact: Mike Jones mike@resoundcreative.com

Discuss at https://www.linkedin.com/company/resoundagency

The show is recorded at the Resound offices in ever-sunny Tempe, Arizona (the 48th – and best state of them all).

Show Transcript

Sam Pagel:
… Video captures the senses. It captures your memory. But video more than any other mass media or medium can capture the authentic you. It can capture who you are in the most authentic way.

Intro:
You are listening to The Remarka Brand Podcast, where Authentic brands win. With our hosts, Mike Jones and David Cosand.

Mike Jones:
Hey everybody, it’s another episode. Thanks for everybody joining in today. It’s Mike Jones and David is not here.

Sam Pagel:
So even though we announced that he was here in the intro.

Mike Jones:
He’s not.

Sam Pagel:
I think we’re starting to see a trend here.

Mike Jones:
I think we are starting to see a trend. But Sam’s here and Sam is going to fill in quite nicely for David.

Sam Pagel:
Oh, thank you.

Mike Jones:
And today’s topic, I’m really excited about today’s topic. We’re going to be talking about video and how brands can leverage video to really reach people and tell their story. We talked a lot last time about your brand Anthem, and I think there’s a great tie in today for that, taking your anthem and really making that as effective as possible through video. But before we do that, Sam, I’m going to bet you’ve got, name 10 things lined up, don’t you?

Sam Pagel:
I do. And we talked about it last week, Mike, after the show that we’re going to commit to really mowing through these 10 things, really getting through them quick.

Mike Jones:
Mowing through them?

Sam Pagel:
Mowing through them.

Mike Jones:
Was that a preemptive pun?

Sam Pagel:
It could be. I think we’ll probably… That won’t be the last we hear of it.

Mike Jones:
All right. I’m excited.

Sam Pagel:
All right. So since we’re talking about video today, let’s get warmed up with 10 videos you’ve never seen on YouTube. Give us the title.

Mike Jones:
18 Ways to Pick Your Nose.

Sam Pagel:
I like that. The Grass Blades of Tomorrow. It’s a music video.

Mike Jones:
Sci-fi short called Robots Do Ridiculous Things, Season 18.

Sam Pagel:
Chicken Run Fan Film, and it’s actually filmed and edited by chickens. I’d watch that.

Mike Jones:
That’s like a live action version of Chicken Run.

Sam Pagel:
No Claymation. It’s all live action. It’s a fan film.

Mike Jones:
How to Disassemble Your Car Without Ruining The Warranty.

Sam Pagel:
Yes. Tutorial videos are very popular.

Mike Jones:
But in brackets it says, Disclaimer May Not Work.

Sam Pagel:
I’m going to go with, Siri The Untold Story. It’s a dark one.

Mike Jones:
War Stories. YouTube, Please Don’t Kick Us Off.

Sam Pagel:
I’m going to say, that was number seven I think, this is number eight, MarketingVid_Final_Final_FinalV9_FinalFinal

Mike Jones:
.mov

Sam Pagel:
.mov. That’s out there somewhere.

Mike Jones:
Oh, man. Asparagus. That’s it.

Sam Pagel:
That’s it.

Mike Jones:
It’s just Asparagus.

Sam Pagel:
That’s the one. And-

Mike Jones:
Three views.

Sam Pagel:
Oil Changes On Your Cat.

Mike Jones:
Oh man. We’re going to end on that one. I love it.

Sam Pagel:
It’s 10.

Mike Jones:
All right.

Sam Pagel:
That was nice. We did good a job.

Mike Jones:
We really did mow through those.

Speaker 2:
Find your frequency.

Mike Jones:
So Sam, you’ve got some experience in video.

Speaker 2:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
For those that don’t know, Sam’s been doing video production of some kind really since college.

Sam Pagel:
Nobody probably cares. But I went to school for broadcast journalism, and I remember actually before, well, was it college? It might have been late high school. The first video I ever made was on my flip phone, my LG flip phone, and I think it’s still on YouTube, some of my friends. And we were like, oh, let’s make a funny continuous video of us throwing a ball and then hitting it and then kicking it and always goes out of frame. And we acted like it would come to us in different parts of the yard or whatever. But anyways, that was the first video I ever put together. I don’t even remember how it edited that.

Mike Jones:
It feels like such a Snapchat, TikTok-

Sam Pagel:
Because that was-

Mike Jones:
… It’s like a TikTok video.

Sam Pagel:
The video files were living on probably the mini SD card on my flip phone.

Mike Jones:
Sometimes you could email those to your cellphone

Sam Pagel:
Maybe that’s what I did.

Mike Jones:
Or text it.

Sam Pagel:
I had my parents’ Windows machine and who knows? Mystery. But after that, I remember I got a Mac when I started college, and I actually started in architecture, but I remember I was in this group at the time and we did this dodge ball event and we were like, “Oh, let’s make a funny promo video for it.” I’m like, “Okay, great.” So I got my parents’ handy cam. We spent like four hours at my friend’s house filming this promo, and it was so stupid. But that night I couldn’t wait to get home and get the video on, I had to do the tape playback onto the computer, and I was up till like 4:00 AM editing this thing, putting it together, and it’s still really dumb. But it was a moment where I was like, “This is so fun. I love doing this.”
And fast-forward, I didn’t like journalism. You can imagine why I didn’t. But I loved the production side, and after college, everyone was going after their small town reporting jobs. And I was like, “Nope, I’m not going to do that.” And filed for an LLC, started filming weddings, and then eventually it turned into businesses, and then it was doing some pretty cool, pretty high profile video jobs. And I think I realized that it wasn’t just about the cool gear that you had. It wasn’t just about showing up with 10,000 or 20 or $30,000 camera, because that’s always the dream. It’s like, “Oh, I got to get the really nice stuff.”

Mike Jones:
It’s like the guy on the golf course with the giant new driver.

Sam Pagel:
He’s got the 5,000 clubs.

Mike Jones:
Doesn’t matter. He’s going to slice it into the rough.

Sam Pagel:
Because I had friends and acquaintances who went out and did that, and they got all the nice gear and it was always like, “Oh, he’s got a red camera. Wow.” But then you’d see their stuff and it’s like, “Well, that doesn’t look very good or it doesn’t do anything.”

Mike Jones:
The camera doesn’t make the camera person.

Sam Pagel:
No. And the camera person doesn’t even. It’s like how you see and craft the story. You could shoot things on a smartphone or a flip phone and still be effective if the story is being told the right way. And I think video, and we’re going to flesh this out right now, is a really powerful way to do that. I’m going to try to give us some talking points here because there’s a lot you can talk about with this. First I want to talk about what senses does video capture? Because I think that’s an important element of video when it comes to marketing and mass communication. And then within the branding and marketing… Because you talk to any marketing or SEO guy and they’re always like, “Oh, you’ve got some videos. Oh, we got to use videos. They’re the best. Everybody loves videos.” Why do they work?

Mike Jones:
Yes.

Sam Pagel:
Why are they so effective? And so I think, Mike, we should start with talking about the five senses.

Mike Jones:
Let’s talk about the five

Sam Pagel:
Or maybe there’s six senses depending-

Mike Jones:
Sixth sense.

Sam Pagel:
… On who you are.

Mike Jones:
It’s the bets one.

Sam Pagel:
If you’re Haley Joel Osment, but hopefully not. Hopefully you only have five.

Mike Jones:
Hopefully you’re not engaging ghosts in your videos. That probably is…

Sam Pagel:
A dead Bruce Willis. Spoiler alert.

Mike Jones:
… Less than effective marketing strategy. But you have five senses. We all do.

Sam Pagel:
What are the five senses, Mike?

Mike Jones:
I believe they are taste, touch, smell, hearing, and no, I said touch already.

Sam Pagel:
Taste, touch, smell, hearing and…

Mike Jones:
Seeing.

Sam Pagel:
Seeing with your eyes.

Mike Jones:
And we do a lot of seeing. I think that’s our most dominant sense.

Sam Pagel:
You think that’s like the top dog, is the sight. Which?-

Mike Jones:
I’m going to go with sight.

Sam Pagel:
Which one would you not want to… If you had to give up four, you would keep sight probably.

Mike Jones:
I’d probably keep sight, probably.

Sam Pagel:
That’s pretty important.

Mike Jones:
Man, I can’t touch anything.

Sam Pagel:
You can touch things. You just won’t feel it.

Mike Jones:
It’s true. You could touch it. You would be numb.

Sam Pagel:
You’d burn your hand on the stove.

Mike Jones:
But video has an interesting ability to capture or touch all those.

Sam Pagel:
Well, let me ask you what would be number two? If you could only keep two, which two would you keep?

Mike Jones:
I’d probably keep the hearing. It’d be hard.

Sam Pagel:
It’d be hard.

Mike Jones:
It’d be hard to not have, man, I think I’d want hearing. What would I do without all the podcasts that I listen to? I don’t think I could live.

Sam Pagel:
Well, you could still talk no matter what. That’s not a sense.

Mike Jones:
No, it’s not a sense. Thank goodness.

Sam Pagel:
So you can still talk all you want.

Mike Jones:
For me and that’s terrible for everyone else.

Sam Pagel:
So sight and hearing.

Mike Jones:
Me yelling at the top of my lungs because I can’t hear myself.

Sam Pagel:
Oh, man. Talking about history and stuff. That would be rough.

Mike Jones:
Sam knows.

Sam Pagel:
I would not keep my hearing after that.

Mike Jones:
Sam has self-selected out of the hearing category.

Sam Pagel:
Hearing and sight. So I think probably most people would agree that those are the two most important senses that we have. And I think video uniquely captures both of those things. And when it’s done correctly, it really captures those. I tell people all the time, because again, going back to like, “Oh, he is got a red camera. Amazing.” If you have a red camera and you shoot stuff in 8K and even if you have the best lighting and everything, but you record the sound on a computer without a microphone, that’s a terrible video. And I’ve had friends that have done that, or people I know, I see. They put this whole production, they’ve got actors and they literally didn’t have a microphone on set. And it’s like, “This is terrible.”
I think more than 50% of a video’s effectiveness is actually the sound. Being able to hear someone speak typically, or choosing the right music track to go behind the visuals. Those things are super important because hearing is a big part of that experience. Now, the visual side is obviously important too. It’s not just about the audio. We’re not talking about radio shows here or podcasts.

Mike Jones:
Radio dramatizations.

Sam Pagel:
Yes, radio dramas.

Mike Jones:
Let’s bring those back from the twenties.

Sam Pagel:
Video is obviously the only kind of visually moving motion picture medium. And when you’re able to get both of those things right, the visuals and the audio portion, it is really powerful. And like I said, I’m going all over the place here, but when you’re able to do the, so I think there’s a trifecta here. It’s the two senses. It’s video, visual and audio. But then it’s the story part of that as well. And that’s probably the most important part.

Mike Jones:
It is, I would think.

Sam Pagel:
But the video elements of that, the audio and the video, the visual together are you’re able to amplify that so much more than if you just wrote a 1,000 word paper on whatever you’re trying to communicate. So anyways, the senses coming together with video, I think is a huge part of that. And telling that story in the right way, knowing how to say it, knowing how to show it is a super captivating form of communication.

Mike Jones:
It really is. If you think about the last 100 years of communication, video is the pinnacle of that communication. We still have written content and we have lots of audio content. Podcasts have been growing, but although it sounds like maybe they’re plateauing a bit, but video, if you look at how many videos are uploaded every day on YouTube, is just insane. We’re in this golden age of television shows that are not even being produced for televisions. They’re being produced to be streamed. And you have a screen almost anywhere you look. Our world is becoming more and more designed. I’m probably jumping the gun here on your next topic, but-

Sam Pagel:
No, go for it.

Mike Jones:
… Our world is more and more designed for video content. It is the primary means by which most people want to engage with content. You do a Google search now, and they’re going to offer you videos if there are any, on your topic almost before any websites. And you think about, this is a little bit anecdotal, so I can’t speak to if it’s true of every demographic, but I would say at least anyone under the age of 45 particularly, and certainly under the age of 35, when they go to want to learn something, they’re probably going to self-select to a video first. It’s just incredible. And the amount of content that you can learn, just dumb stuff. I’m not a carpenter by any means, I don’t woodwork, but I have a few tools and every once in a while I want to do something and there’s literally video after video of pretty much anything I could want to make out of wood. And it’s nearly step by step. It’s incredible.
And obviously I think there’s this other element to video that makes it so effective for storytelling, and it may not be the best point. This might not be a great value, but people’s attention spans are short and they’re increasingly short. And so written content, even audio content, really just doesn’t grab people as well. And for those reasons that you already mentioned, you have audio, you have video, you have visuals, and you have hearing, and you have a story all packaged together that is a really compelling package to quickly get someone’s attention and then keep them long enough to tell your story or your anthem, as we talked about in our last episode. I think for brands that those are so many reasons why video should probably be near the top or at the top of ways you need to communicate what you’re doing, how you do it, who you serve. What benefits you deliver for others at the end of that story. What’s the difference that you make in the world and for your customers and your clients?
And I think especially when you think about, a lot of the clients that we work with who are B2B service-based businesses, often in professional services that require a level of expertise. They’re being hired because of their knowledge. They are knowledge workers at the end of the day and they’re highly, highly skilled in that. Video allows you to not just be another piece or source of knowledge, but one that can deliver it with trust, with empathy, with relationship. You can do things in video. You just can’t do with written words as easily. You can bring the personality of your brand and the individual thought leaders within your firm to bear on the subjects that you need to be experts at. And I think all that much more so as we look at the future of AI and just mass-produced content that, we’re just scratching the surface of how insane it’s going to be in the next few years of the amount of content that’s going to get dumped onto the internet on every topic you can think of.
Your content cannot just be here are facts. It has to be content that really delivers a unique perspective and point of view with a unique personality, at least at the brand level, and then certainly also at the individual level. And those all have to work together, and video is a fantastic tool to deliver all that, as of yet. I’m sure at some point we’ll see it. There’ll be some crazy deep fake of actors or just AI generated actors who can spit out scripted stuff, this is insane, AI generated video with AI generated scripts, with AI generated music, with AI generated B roll.

Sam Pagel:
You type in show a mid-level accounting firm video in 60 seconds or less with happy customers. And it spits out this almost real looking video with music and everything.

Mike Jones:
But it won’t be you.

Sam Pagel:
Won’t be you.

Mike Jones:
It won’t be you.

Sam Pagel:
And I think there’s a level of trust that comes with that. And so I have three things now, Mike, I have three points to try to frame this up. So we just talked about how powerful video is because it captures the two most important senses sight and hearing. So I think it also, number two, captures the memory of the viewer. What I mean by that is because a good video is going to draw you in, it’s going to capture your eyes and your ears and it’s going to evoke emotion. When you call someone you can hear inflection that you can’t hear over a text message when you do a video chat versus just a call. There’s just different things. You can see their face. You can see just subtleties.
Video captures the memory. It’s memorable because it’s emotional. It evokes this emotion when you watch it, whether there’s a funny nature to the video or there’s a powerful nature. Maybe it makes you sad, maybe it makes you happy. I think there’s just a very powerful emotional draw that video brings that whatever it is you’re communicating makes that thing more memorable in the viewer’s eyes, ears, and mind.

Mike Jones:
Our memories are embedded by emotions. Our emotions are how they’re deep-seated in us. You can create that same depth of memory also through repetition. But if you only have a few seconds and you’re only going to be able to show someone once or maybe twice some content, some kind of story that you need to tell, if you can link that to senses and emotions, you’re much more likely to embed that in their memory. If you think about what are the memories that you most remember in your life, they’re probably highly emotionally charged memories, either really good or really bad. And I don’t recommend brands go for the bad emotions, but our emotions are really what drive home those memories and make them really stick. So if you’re trying to put your brand in front of people and say, remember us, don’t forget about us. Because more likely than not, the first time they see your video is not the time that they pick up the phone or fill in the lead gen form.

Sam Pagel:
Nope. More especially in the B2B industries that we tend to work with, a lot of times in B2B businesses, there’s not this instant purchase thing. You’re trying to nurture people and you’re trying to build your brand and your expertise, and you’re trying to let people know what you do, so that in 18 months when they need a plot of land remediated, they remember, “Oh yeah, that company. I saw that video, or I saw that image,” or whatever it is, and they remember. So I think another part of the memory aspect is video is just so much more engaging. I don’t know the stats, they’re probably changing every day, but video is just so much more engaging. If you look at an analytics dashboard, a page with a video on it is going to have a higher length of time engagement than one without. Because people will click on a video and they’ll watch it. And if it’s interesting to them, they’ll continue to sit there and watch. Mike, you brought up the tutorial videos, right?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
A lot of times you see, maybe it’s a local plumber, right?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
And he’s got a YouTube channel where he probably just sets up a camera on each job and says, “Hey, this is how to change the O-ring on your toilet.” And he’s doing that probably not just out of the goodness of his heart.

Mike Jones:
Probably not.

Sam Pagel:
But to build presence and build expertise so that when you get to something you can’t do, you’re going to call Mike the plumber who you found on YouTube who happens to be in your neighborhood, whatever. There are just more ways like that with video where you can keep people engaged longer so that they’ll listen to your story longer. Whereas they probably wouldn’t sit through a novel about why you’re so good at accounting or plumbing.

Mike Jones:
And this is slightly tangential, but you do enough of those. You could probably package them into E-course or something. Whether or not that’s actually paid or not. Maybe it’s just another lead gen opportunity or a way to package your marketing in a new way. Or even for talent acquisition, if you think about how many how-to videos might actually be attracting potential employees and packaging that up and saying, “Hey, we’ll teach it all to you in a course or in our own branded university kind of experience.” And now all of a sudden you’ve got another line of revenue, you’ve got some new marketing opportunities, maybe even some market expansion.

Sam Pagel:
Well, and again, I don’t know if this fits under the memory column, but I think it does, and it’s more of a tool. Video is kind of the top of the pyramid when it comes to, I need to create content, I don’t really know how to do it or what to do or what to talk about. Set up a camera, talk into your webcam or whatever. Create a five-minute video. And in this day and age, that becomes a podcast. It becomes a YouTube video. It becomes written content because you transcribe it, and then you have all of these pieces of marketing that you didn’t have five minutes ago. And so you’re able to use video because it has the visual, it has the audio, it has the story, contains all these pieces that you can start to break apart and use in different ways. And it’s such a powerful, kind of top of that pyramid when it’s like, I know we need content, but I don’t know how. Just film yourself talking about something for five minutes.

Mike Jones:
You can get so many media types out of that one little project.

Sam Pagel:
And that’s playing the marketing game these days, what you have to do. But that’s a really easy way to do it. Well, we talk about accounting a lot. Maybe you work at accounting firm and you know that you have to write content because you want SEO and you want to be an expert in this field or whatever. Film one of the partners of your firm for five minutes talking about his specialty. He’s the tax guy, she’s the audit person, woman, girl. I don’t know, the audit queen. That’s what I was going to say.

Mike Jones:
I like audit queen.

Sam Pagel:
She’s the audit queen of the firm.

Mike Jones:
The queen of audits.

Sam Pagel:
She will talk about audits for an hour, maybe you film her for an hour and there’s like a year’s worth of audit content for you.

Mike Jones:
And while you’re at it, make a deck of cards. And there’s

Sam Pagel:
She’s the queen of audits.

Mike Jones:
The queen of audits.

Sam Pagel:
There you go.

Mike Jones:
That’s a little snapshot inside our brains and they’re off doing something else. Reel it back in.

Sam Pagel:
Reel it back in.

Mike Jones:
I was going to say, so there’s all these really good strategic reasons. One, this can really tell your story in a short, memorable, impactful way. It’s a lot of creativity. It’s very engaging. It obviously speaks to what I think a lot of people, how they want to engage with content right now in the world that we live in, short attention spans. Again, people want engagement. They want something where I can quickly get to information but not have to read a whole lot. Let’s be honest, people don’t want to read. But I think there’s this other interesting phenomenon going on, and that is that the places where people are, are becoming more and more video centric. It’s probably for all these reasons, it’s also technology is enabled it.
It’s really easy to shoot video, create video. Everyone has a smartphone and can make a video in couple seconds and put it online on some platform. And then obviously people want it in that kind of format. It fits these screens that we have in all of our pockets and on all of our walls and all of our desks. But what’s also interesting is all these platforms are moving in that direction. If you think about how people are engaging with television, more and more are going straight to streaming platforms. And in particular, what’s really interesting to me is that YouTube has just become this giant vacuum just sucking people’s attention and time, and it’s becoming really the source for almost any kind of video content, outside of maybe really high production value. You can go to TikTok and get some quick hit videos, but even YouTube’s starting to do that kind of stuff.
And obviously if you want to spend 10 minutes learning about any topic, the first and probably only place most people go is YouTube now. And to me, that’s really interesting that so much of our attention is moving more and more to those kind of platforms and YouTube in particular, which means that you’re incentivized at some level as a brand to create video content because that’s where your audience is going to be spending time. Those are the platforms they’re comfortable with. It’s where they’re going to be making lists of things they want to go back and check out. It’s where they’re going to discover new things. And obviously there’s an advertising component to that as well that you need to consider is, “Hey, can we put our ads on there and get in front of people who are watching certain kinds of videos that kind of match the target that we’re trying to hit with our brand.” But from every direction you have to be making video, there’s really not an option anymore.

Sam Pagel:
Is it the websites of 10 to 15 years ago where it was maybe half of businesses were like, “We don’t have one yet, but we know we need one”?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
30 years ago it was, “Well, we’re not in Yellow Pages yet, but we’re going to get there.”

Mike Jones:
Now it’s, “Where’s your YouTube channel?”

Sam Pagel:
And we’re going to name our company AAA Plumbing to get to the front.

Mike Jones:
And it’s really not expensive. It used to be, even 10 years ago, it was-

Sam Pagel:
Oh, that’s so true.

Mike Jones:
… Oh, we’re going to do video. Oh, where are we going to host it? And oh, that’s going to cost a lot of money. And how are we going to manage all those videos?

Sam Pagel:
We got to buy a camera. We have to buy a really nice camera.

Mike Jones:
And all those issues are really off the table anymore. It’s like the hosting one, we get this still from, clients are like, “Oh, are we going to have to host these on our website and pay for a lot of extra hosting fees and stuff?” We’re like, “No, just put them on YouTube.”

Sam Pagel:
YouTube.

Mike Jones:
And there’s a bonus there. Once it’s on YouTube, it’s now indexed by Google. Because Google owns YouTube, so it helps your SEO, total marketing the little strategy there. And you can shoot it with your iPhone. You can edit stuff with really basic free programs now.

Sam Pagel:
You can do it all on your phone.

Mike Jones:
I know Sam rolls his eye every time I say I’m booting up QuickTime or I don’t know what my latest one is.

Sam Pagel:
It’s funny, Mike, because I don’t do a lot of home videos, but when I do, I just do it on my phone. I’m shooting it all on my phone at home.

Mike Jones:
And just edit it right there

Sam Pagel:
And I just pop it into iMovie or whatever else there is there, and I just put it together real quick and upload it straight to YouTube for later, for 10 years from now, and I want to watch my two-year-old falling off a slide or something.

Mike Jones:
I love it.

Sam Pagel:
So the barrier to entry there, it’s a good point, is very low now. And anyone with a smartphone can make a pretty good video.

Mike Jones:
I will say you made a really, really good point. This is a very tactical point at the very beginning. I think for anyone listening who is doing video in-house, maybe you’re trying to keep it low budget, which is great. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. You’re maybe shooting on an iPhone or maybe you’ve got a DSLR or something, something not too expensive and you’re doing your own editing and all that stuff. That’s great. That’s awesome. I think there’s one place that everyone should consider investing in equipment, and that is in audio.

Sam Pagel:
Yes. 100%

Mike Jones:
You made that point earlier and I’m just like, “That’s true. Yeah, that makes sense.” And then the more I thought about it, I’m like, “How many videos have I watched where it’s shot on an iPhone where the video component was fine and the audio was terrible?” Because they just used the iPhone audio. At least put some Air Pods in your head or something, and even those are not great.

Sam Pagel:
The air conditioning sound is so loud. Or they shoot it outside on a busy street and it’s almost unwatchable because the audio portion is, that’s why you’re there. In a video like that, let’s say a tutorial video to be really basic. A lot of tutorial videos are very basic. They’re not using a microphone, but if you can’t hear what they’re saying or if the audio is just so terrible where you’re like, “I can’t listen to this anymore,” that video becomes useless. Whereas if the video’s maybe a little grainy or a little blurry, but the audio’s super clear.

Mike Jones:
We’ll all forgive you.

Sam Pagel:
Absolutely.

Mike Jones:
We all don’t care.

Sam Pagel:
Absolutely.

Mike Jones:
But if the audio’s great, oh man, it makes that video. I’m sure you’ve got other points we want to get to, but I was thinking about maybe talking a little bit more about… So we understand now that video really helps tell your brand’s story. It becomes that packaged anthem that you can put out in the world. You can put it on your website, you can put it on YouTube, you can share it in social media, you can send it out in email blast, and it becomes this vehicle to tell your story as a brand. We call that a brand anthem. I think there’s some other ways that video is really powerful as a brand tool. You talk about what are elements of branding, what things do you need to put in front of people over and over to reinforce your brand? I think video does some really interesting things that are harder to get with other media. One of which is you can add a dimension to your logo that you can’t have when it’s static.
So whether it’s printed or it’s even on your website, might be able to add some dimension to it. But it’s hard, and it’s costly a little bit in terms of development time, but on a video, if you just animate it a little bit, it doesn’t have to be crazy. It doesn’t have to be over the top. You don’t need to chrome it out. You don’t need to do giant 3D render of your logo. You just need to add a little bit of motion, and now all of a sudden you have another element to your brand beyond just the shape and color of your logo. You have a way of, this is how it gets introduced. And you can think of ways that all sorts of big brands who are really good at branding and spend a lot of time and money on it because it’s so powerful for them, how they use those wipes or those introductions to their logo.

Sam Pagel:
It’s usually subtle.

Mike Jones:
It’s usually very subtle.

Sam Pagel:
You usually don’t think, “Oh wow, what an amazing animation.” You just see it. And if it’s a TV commercial, you’ve seen it for the 12th time, you’re like, “Oh yeah, Toyota, whatever.” But it’s ways that they’re subtly building their brand and building that memorable brand experience.

Mike Jones:
I think another one that is huge for me when I look at video is taglines. Adding not only another opportunity to put your tagline, this really core message to your brand in front of people, but also adding another dimension of sense to it. Now I can say it can be spoken or sung and it can now have another level of memorability.

Sam Pagel:
Emotion. You’re going to see, I think, here in Arizona I’m not sure how it is nationwide, but Dignity Health, they’ve got more of that emotional, not really, I wouldn’t call it sad emotion, but it’s this powerful emotion and they’re trying to evoke that, “Hey, you’ve probably been to the hospital before and you’ll probably have to go someday. Or we’re here.” I think it’s something human kindness or something. And so there’s not a comedic element to it. It’s not this happy, joyful thing.

Mike Jones:
No, it’s pretty serious.

Sam Pagel:
Pretty serious. Whereas, you take probably a more mainstream brand like a Toyota or a Wendy’s, and there’s probably some more lightheartedness there because they’re trying to make you happy. They want you to be joyful when you think about their brand, they want it to evoke good, joyful emotions.

Mike Jones:
How much easier to evoke those emotions in a video than in static content? Oh my goodness.

Sam Pagel:
Think about, I don’t know why, but Toyota-

Mike Jones:
Unless you want to make your website play music, you do that.

Sam Pagel:
That’s another podcast, Mike.

Mike Jones:
You like that? You like that one, Sam?

Sam Pagel:
That’s another podcast. Where’s the mute button?

Mike Jones:
Sam and I on the record officially hate websites that play music.

Sam Pagel:
Don’t put any sounds on your website that people don’t have to click on to access.

Mike Jones:
Sorry.

Sam Pagel:
I think about, just to pick this apart a little bit. As an example, I don’t know why I’m thinking of Toyota. I don’t drive a Toyota, but I hear Toyota on the radio and I see their ads on TV. They’ve always got this cheerful music going on. It’s not an Infinity or a Lincoln ad where it’s these really, “Oh, it’s intense.” And it’s like you’re in this dark tunnel with lights flashing over Matthew McConaughey’s face and he’s saying something that you don’t understand. No, Toyota is like this happy, it’s got this-

Mike Jones:
Let’s go places.

Sam Pagel:
… Jingle belly kind of thing going on. And then they’ve always got either the funny guy, what’s his name? I don’t know what his name on the commercials is, but he’s the funny dad who really loves his Toyota and he will do anything for his Toyota. It’s funny, you chuckle at it. Maybe it’s cheesy. That’s their brand. That’s the emotion they’re going for, and you can’t really get that. You could maybe do a small part of that in a blog post or a picture, or you even just something like a banner ad, whatever it is, they pay good money for good reasons to get those ads on TV and on the radio.

Mike Jones:
They really do. There’s just a couple more things too, I think just to help people really, probably already know these things, but you think about what can video do for your brand. Another aspect is just adding sound elements to your brand. You can think of the intel inside kind of motif, that little sound logo essentially.

Sam Pagel:
It’s memorable.

Mike Jones:
[inaudible 00:39:02]

Sam Pagel:
We all cringe at the cheesy jingles on the radio, and

Mike Jones:
They don’t have to be cheesy.

Sam Pagel:
No, they don’t. But they do that for a reason because you’ve heard it a 100 times and you know exactly what it says.

Mike Jones:
But you can add another layer to your brand identity. It can be the way that it sounds, the way that the music you pick and the sound motifs within that music if you do custom stuff. But even if you’re just picking stock music, think through is this our brand from a music standpoint? And video allows you to start to play with that and put that part of your brand out into the world that you just can’t have on most other media.

Sam Pagel:
And I think that that is a great segue into point number three, which I think is actually the most important part of this. And it wraps all of this up, and it’s no surprise because we like branding stuff, but video captures the senses, it captures your memory, but video more than any other mass media or medium can capture the authentic you, can capture who you are in the most authentic way. And there’s just a couple of things here that I want to unpack. So I think there’s, we’ve mentioned it, a layer of trust here when, for example, let’s say you have a construction company and you can tell people for gears on end that you have a great fleet and a great team, and you do great work and we’re safe and we do all the right things. But until somebody sees it, maybe they trust you, but when they-

Mike Jones:
If I see all those words on the side of a truck, I go…

Sam Pagel:
Sure.

Mike Jones:
… Okay, I guess so.

Sam Pagel:
Whatever.

Mike Jones:
But if I drive by the building that you just built, you still got that under construction sign with your logo on it’s like, “Oh no, they’re legit.”

Sam Pagel:
Or you drive by the job site and you see all the machinery and all that stuff. When you’re able to show someone, instead of just telling them there is a level of authenticity there that really can’t be beaten. You could go pick somebody up, a potential client and take them to that job site and say, “Hey, look here, we’re working on this.” And that’s great. But even then you can’t in that moment, if you’re doing that in person which a lot of times I think you probably do, you can’t tell them or show them everything you want to show. They’re not in a helicopter looking down on all these pieces of machinery.
You can’t transport them 50, 100, 5,000 miles away to your other job site across the country. There are just really unique things that you can show people in a really short amount of time, to show them who you are authentically. And I think you have to look at it a little bit backwards when it comes to authenticity. You know what you do, you know how you do it, you know that you do it really well. Now, if you want to show someone in video form, you have to decide how hard are we going to work to get out of our own way with this, right?

Mike Jones:
Yes.

Sam Pagel:
When you put a video together, you start with this baseline of distractions. If you go and do it yourself… You’re going to get caught in all the details of what you did. So you watch a video, maybe it’s an amateur video, and immediately, there’s the distraction of bad video, wrong music choice, terrible acting, bad editing. You left five minutes of black space at the end of the video. There’s just all of these things that are, it sounds simple, but it actually takes a lot of work to craft that in a way to where it’s not distracting.
So you might have the right things to say, but how many of these elements are you going to say, “Ah, we really want to do that the right way. We want to do that the right way so that all of these potential distractions aren’t getting in the way of who we are, what story we want to tell.” And I think that’s just a decision you have to make. Are we going to have our secretary go shoot this real quick in the office, or are we going to spend some money or are we going to invest in this to have somebody who knows what they’re doing with the camera, they have a microphone, all these things?

Mike Jones:
I think there’s a way to do both well. So I think part of it is understanding what is the point of this video that we’re about to produce? Is this just a quick hit social media fodder? We’re going to tell a little piece of our story real quick, maybe have a little human element. Maybe the low production actually benefits you when you’re trying to say, “Hey, this is us and I’m just giving you a little taste of a project we’re working on,” or something that happened within the staff just highlighting, “Hey, we’re a fun place, or we’re really serious here.” How do you know that? Well, you got to show us that. But if it’s a cornerstone piece, maybe it’s 30 or 60 second introduction to your brand right on your homepage of your website, or maybe it’s the cornerstone piece that sits on your YouTube channel as like this is the video you watch first before anything else.

Sam Pagel:
The who we are video.

Mike Jones:
Or even in your social media. Maybe you pin it to the top as this is who we are. We want to tell that story really well. That’s where I think I’d invest in that video. Spend some time on it. Find the right partners who can help you produce it. If you don’t have those resources in-house, definitely hire professionals to shoot that, to edit it. And most probably importantly, beyond just the tactics of putting a good video together, it has to have a really good story and script to go with it.

Sam Pagel:
And I think let’s go a layer deeper than just like, “Hey, make sure your video and audio quality is really good.” You’ve got to know what your authentic self is before you can communicate it, right?

Mike Jones:
Yes.

Sam Pagel:
So if you say, “Video, great, we need video. Let’s start doing video.” And you start putting all these videos together, or you start putting your really nice video together and you’ve got this daycare sounding song in the background, but you’re this more serious brand, it’s not going to be authentic. Or let’s say you’re watching TV and you’re like, “Oh, wow, that was a really great commercial. Man, we should do that for our own stuff.” And you go and copy someone else, but it’s just not who you are as a brand. You’re starting with the wrong foundation there. And again, we got to go back to the foundation. We got to go back to the brand. That’s why taking a brand anthem, that brand story, the story of who you are at the core and translating that into this video script is such a powerful tool because you’re able to take the core elements of your brand and then not only tell people about those, but show them. A good example of this recently we have this dairy co-op, this dairy, oh, I don’t even know what you’d call it.

Mike Jones:
They’re like production.

Sam Pagel:
It’s like a production-

Mike Jones:
Processor.

Sam Pagel:
… Big production processor, and they’re trying to go global. And so we did our whole branding workshop with them. We helped them discover, this is who you are, this want to be, this is your story. We have a brand story. And we translated that into their brand Anthem video, and we were able to go show giant shipping routes in, whatever the Atlantic or whatever, ships coming into Port. We’re showing people what they’re telling people. They deliver trusted dairy worldwide. And so having the imagery of the ship coming into port and we got a really cool voiceover guy to do the voiceover, this powerful voice, trustworthy voice to tell that story. And we have this great music track behind it. So it’s like, “Man, I never knew dairy could be so emotional, but man, it’s powerful because it’s them.” It’s not some cheap like, hey, we copied this from somebody else because it looked and sounded cool. No, this is authentic. It’s different.
You put time into this, you’re telling people, and there’s just a really amazing ironclad level of trust that that brings because you’re showing people, you’re telling people, and there’s a lot of ways it could be fake, obviously, but you’re putting in the time and effort to tell that story in such an effective way that goes beyond, oh, cool shot, 4K video. No, there’s a story behind it. And the video and the audio are really these auxiliary elements to that. But man-

Mike Jones:
But they tie it together.

Sam Pagel:
… They tie it together, and it just amplifies it so much more than putting a set of values on your homepage or listing out, here’s everything that we do. It’s so powerful because if you do it right, it’s you, it’s authentically you. And a lot of time we tell people too, outside of the high level who we are, depending on your business, we didn’t have anyone from the dairy co-op team in that video. It was a lot of B-roll, but a lot of times service business, maybe it’s an accounting firm, you’re going to have your real people in those videos.

Mike Jones:
Because those relationships are really critical relationships.

Sam Pagel:
It’s relationships. And you’re able to show people who you are. It’s almost like they’re meeting you before they ever talk to you, and you’re able to show them. That’s why as a side tangent, we always say, you should use your own people rather than finding these cheesy stock video clips. Because people know inherently, they know.

Mike Jones:
They can see it, they can feel it.

Sam Pagel:
So authenticity, it has to be there. Otherwise it’s just another, and Mike, you said it like there’s a billion and a half videos out there now. If you’re going to do it, you should do it the right way. And it doesn’t have to be a 20, 30, $40,000 video, but you start small.

Mike Jones:
Give yourself a chance to cut through.

Sam Pagel:
And cut through to the right people. And I think if you understand who you are at the core, and you have this framework of, this is how we tell people and communicate with people about our authentic brand, our company, what we do, why we do it, how we do, it’s just going to be so much easier to tell that story in an authentic way.

Outro:
The Remarkabrand podcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with host Mike Jones and David Cosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. To contact the show, find out more about the Remarkable Brand Podcast or to join our newsletter list. To make sure you never miss another episode, check out our website at remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media, LLC 2022.

 

AZ Brandcast - Subscribe on iTunes

Archives