Nowadays, marketing teams are talking about “storytelling.” The word storytelling is self-explanatory. But just in case you don’t know this term, storytelling is about telling a story to engage with your audience, giving a message using different methods like photos, images, text, videos, or a combination of everything. You use a narrative to communicate a message. The idea is to engage the readers or viewers, so they feel inspired and persuade them to take action. In marketing terms, you need to write the story in a way you can achieve your communication goals.
How can you tell a brand’s story in 60 seconds or less?
First, you need to sit down and think about the purpose of the story you want to tell. What will be your target audience? what resources will you have available? and what platform will you be using to deploy the story?
One thing is to deploy a story on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, and another is to deploy it on TV or traditional press. But also, social media networks are different, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts are ideal for short videos, but YouTube and Facebook can be used to publish videos, text, and images.
If your communication goal is to create brand awareness and let people know more about your brand using Instagram or TikTok, you must be prepared to prepare a short 60 seconds video. Let’s do a quick exercise.
Imagine you will tell the story about your business, a small South Florida restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. An Italian Pizzeria, family-owned and operated with a tradition of more than 50 years. Founded by your grandfather, an Italian immigrant who came to the USA in the 60s. The restaurant started in 1970 and has been in the same place for more than 50 years. Your Grandfather Vittorio was from Napoles, Italy, arrived in New York in the 60s, worked in an Italian restaurant in Manhattan; he was in charge of making the pizzas, then in the 70s, came to South Florida and, with a partner, opened “Vittorio’s Pizzeria.”
We know the communication goal is brand awareness, and now we learn more about “Vittorio’s Pizzeria” we can determine the target audience. In this case, we can say that the primary audience is people who like Italian food, especially pizzas, who live in South Florida or visiting South Florida.
Now you can start your script. Write down the main points you want to mention based on your communication goal.
Key points of the story
- Napoles, Italy
- Manhattan, NY
- Ft. Lauderdale, Fl
- Italian Food
- Pizza
- 50 years Tradition
- Vittorio’s Pizzeria
Now you can elaborate more on your ideas
- An Italian Inmigrant came with a dream to America.
- Vittorio started working hard in an Italian Restaurant in Manhattan, making Pizzas, very traditional Italian pizzas.
- He moved to South Florida.
- For more than 50 years, he has been preparing the best pizzas in town.
- Vittorio’s is a reference, a tradition
- The pizza you love
- Vittorio’s
Create a Storyboard
To start sketching your ideas, you can prepare a storyboard. A storyboard is a graphic representation of how your video will develop, shot by shot. You start with your main ideas or what you want to communicate, the supporting content for each slide of the video, and then design cues or the flow of the video, hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. You can add a voiceover, background music, graphics, b-rolls, etc. to the storyboard.
You can use an electronic device and software like Paper to design your storyboard. The storyboard will help you visualize your story’s narrative and the different scenes throughout the entire project. It can help you keep your script organized.
Factors to take into consideration
The tone, style, voice, pitch, transitions in the video, supporting images, animations, etc. All of these are essential factors. Usually, TikTok and Instagram videos are informal, and people use to appear at the videos rather than animations or images passing by.
Here is a sample video posted on Instagram, related to Italian Food
Remember that storytelling is just explaining or telling a story. Have fun!
