The Power of Well-Crafted Brand Videos

In this episode of The Small Business Show, our guest Mariana Henning, guides us through the evolving world of branding. In this episode we explore the art of building connections with audiences through emotionally riveting video content, the ways to overcome camera shyness and achieve an authentic on-screen presence, and the realistic expectations businesses should set for the impact of their brand videos.

Mariana explains the concept of 'narrative transportation' – transforming customers' objections around price into emotion and desire and explores the various marketing strategies to sustain the emotional connection with the audience beyond the brand video. Ultimately, captivating brand videos combine strategic marketing with narrative proficiency, ensuring lasting relationships with the audience, akin to a friend or a trusted advisor in a crowded marketplace.
 

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The Small Business Show is the official podcast for Garuda Promo and Branding Solutions. For more information visit

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Transcript

0:16

And growing a small business. The Small Business Show is the official podcast of Garuda promo and branding solutions. Hello, everyone. You're listening to the Small Business show. My name is Swayer Ho. You can also call me the Promo Guy. My guest today is Mariana Henning from Brand Magnetic. Marianne is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker with plus years of experience in major news organization like NBC, The Today Show, the New York Times, watch the Adrenal, Time magazines, Peacocks and more. She's passionate about helping entrepreneurs with visually compelling personal and intimate storytelling that create massive emotional connection. I have a lot of questions for Mariana, but before that, welcome to the show. Thanks, Wyatt. Great to be here. I'd love to find out more about the backstory behind Brand Magnetic from a filmmaker. How did you make the transition now to helping small business professionals to tell their own story? And what do you like most about it? Oh, my goodness. I probably could talk about that for an entire hour. Well, the transition, as you said, I'd been working as a documentary filmmaker for about 15 years, but really, I'd been kind of a closeted entrepreneur my whole life. I started my first business when I was six years old, asking my neighbor to empty out their garden shed and create a little school there for kindergartners who were getting ready to go to first grade, and I charged them $0.25 apiece, which was what I called the ultimate low ticket course. And then after that, I've kind of always been obsessed about having my own money and just sort of be in control of my own finances, although from a career perspective, I freelance for a while. But then I was at NBC for a long time and just kind of didn't think I had the chops, actually, although I had the desire and was always fascinated about marketing and sales. And so after such a long time at NBC and kind of such a long time in the industry, I knew I had kind of hit my salary ceiling, if you will, for folks that were in the field doing what I was doing. I really didn't have any peers who were making more money than I was. And I was like, okay, well, I think I don't want to manage people. I don't want to be like, a showrunner for a broadcast show in NBC. And I just thought, I'd gotten to the point in my life where if I don't do it now, will I ever do know? Will I ever just start my own business? And so when I left NBC, I didn't know I was going to form Brand Magnetic, but it was just a lot of soul searching, a lot of really thinking about myself and what aligned with what I love the most. And I realized, you know what? I love entrepreneurship, I love sales, I love marketing, and I love emotional, personal, intimate storytelling that I've been doing for so long. And when I look at the business world, I focus specifically on online businesses. But when I look at all of the business world, there are so few businesses that are really tapping into personal, intimate connection with video storytelling. So telling your story in a way that will really move audiences emotionally. Obviously, commercials do that, right? And there's also something called branded content, which a lot of big corporations kind of invest in, but those still tend to be very scripted, very cut and very cooked in the kitchen, if you will, like sentence by sentence, sometimes word by word. And I was like, you know what, there's so much beauty and power in documentary filmmaking that I don't see being used in the business world in a way that it could be. And so it kind of was the combination of these two amazing passions of mine. I was like, I'm going to bring what I know how to do really well, which I love doing, and apply all these principles of marketing and sales, like conversion principles, right? Connecting with your audience, what resonates with your audience, like really understanding what your core story is. So in documentary, we focus on what's the best story, if you will, or what's the story that's really going to grab people. And those elements are present too in a brand video, but it really is about understanding your audience. What are your business goals, how do you want your audience to feel after watching your brand video? So really taking that into account, that's the Holy grail, if you will, of a brand video. And I think I've answered what I love most about it too. Thank you for sharing. I think with your experiences in documentary filmmaking, it's very helpful because as we know, you will study a subject or you study something that happened in history, right? So it's really depending on your creativity to retell the story. It could be boring if you tell the wrong way or you can make it as interesting as possible. Nowadays, with the online distribution, with the online channels that we have, there are actually more subject based on the same person in a different perspective. It changes how I, for myself, look at a certain things and certain subject, right? So by telling the right story, it's very important. I want to ask you this question because with your background, obviously you have all the technology, you have the knowledge. So in your view, what would you consider a brand video? Right? So my bread and butter, my entire like, I live and breathe brand videos. So I think people might call them might see them differently. Some people call them brand films and different production companies. But what I work on is a two to four minute video that tells your story in a way that emotionally connects with your audience, makes them feel a certain way. But most importantly, the idea is you're killing a painfully long sales cycle. You're building trust faster, and you're ultimately selling more quickly. And so that's the conversion tool aspect of the brand video. And in terms of experience, it's something that's not a marketing video where you don't actually talk about your offer, you don't talk about the features of your offer. You're not presenting yourself like you would in many other videos, or you're not there providing value, which is I have a huge beef against this concept of always be providing value. I actually just released a reel on my Instagram about that. We hide behind this idea of providing value, of always wanting to be seen as the expert, right, for our expertise. And the brand video focuses on who you are, what are your values, what drives you to do what you do, what are the things that will make people really connect to this person behind the offer. I work a lot with coaches, so this is like a very easy to understand marketing tool for them. But honestly, think about how much more we buy nowadays based on our values and how much we support companies whose values we align with. How much more? So when you're a small business, can your audience connect with you once they get to know who you are, what you stand for, what drives you to do what you do? All of those things are the story that you tell in your brand video in two to four minutes. So it's like very crafted where there's an entire process that we go through to get to that perfect script that will be your brand video. Now, there are lots of different ways that we make it conversational. We make it not sound like you're reading a script. The beauty also comes in the edit. When we put that all together again, it doesn't feel like you're watching a marketing video like anything. It feels like you're watching somebody's story and you're like, whoa. Now I've gotten to know who Swire is and I understand what his business is. I'm attracted to his business because now I've known who he is and I resonate with him and I identify with his values. So many points, and I love this conversation because you are on a different perspective than what I've been used to hearing. I've learned from experts that you have to be the expert in your field, and then you got to be ready with all the questions that people throw at you. For example, when you're a politician, any question that they answer you, you will somehow deflect it, and then you go back to the statement that you are. Supposed to make anyway. Yeah, there are people like that in business, but you're saying we should actually tell more about who we are and find the story within us or within our brand so that we could connect with the audience that will feel like us. That kind of goes into we actually filtering people that we love to work with. We're actually filtering out people that don't want to work with us anyway. Because if you stand for a certain thing, then you might already eliminate a group of people that would not resonate with you. How does that work with your experience? How do you bring out that story from people? First of all, that's such a great point to make. Not only are you doing yourself a service by filtering out folks that wouldn't be a good fit for you, you're also doing your audience a service by self identifying with you or not, right? How awesome is it to know right away if you connect with someone or if you don't? And honestly, most times I'm guessing people will connect with you. They'll connect with you more by having gotten to know you. The path that we kind of take to find out what I call your core story, some folks kind of already know it. And these are people who have already told their story in some ways, or maybe they have a podcast. And the two questions that I ask my students, how do you want your audience to feel after watching a brand video? That's a really important question because we're going to choose which story to tell based on that feeling that we want to achieve. And that feeling, how you know what that feeling is, is by studying the audience that has just bought from you, right? The folks that have just purchased your offer, your product, whatever the case might be. What was that that convinced them? What was that feeling that really triggered that action to purchase? The second question I asked them is what do you know resonates with your audience about your story? Or what do you know about them that you know you have commonalities right? And that can be both things that have actually happened to you. Again, a lot. What if coaches, they coach people who are going through similar things that they have gone through, but what are the specific aspects that you know your audience is like, oh, I've been through that. I know what you're talking about. Oh, you're in my head. You're using my words. If you're getting those signals from your audience, hang on to them because those are gold. Those are really important touch points where you're making that connection with your audience. So the connection of emotion, we want to be in that field of emotion, what's called like narrative transportation, because it's in that space, it's in that sort of universe of your brain where you're not thinking about price, you're not thinking about do I have the time? Do I have the money? All these objections that we all have to buying things are basically dead once we make that emotional connection. Kind of fixate on the experience, the transformation. But I want to be sold into it's so funny because the word sales and being sold has such a negative connotation. But how much do you love buying something that you love, right? Think about buying your favorite car or going on that vacation and paying a ton of money for it. How amazing is it to be able to purchase and buy the things that we want that are going to help create that feeling for us? And I'm not talking about the actual iPhone. I'm talking about connecting with our families through the iPhone, just as an example. Right. It's like the experience that we get behind that product. Those are the two questions that I ask. What do you want your audience to feel after watching a brand video? What are the things about your different stories? So in the beginning, we start with like let's list all the stories. This is if you kind of don't know if there isn't like a core story or a very clear, obvious story. What are the things that, you know, resonate with your audience in their experience, in their universe that we can capitalize on to make those connections? Yeah, I think that's interesting, but I don't know if you encountered that a lot. But thinking about that, I have some question of my own, right? So do I. Or we have to be on the camera. What if we don't feel right being in the camera? There are some of us, like me included, I could talk with you for a long time. We are on a podcast. You're on the camera right now. Yeah, but if you have me talk to a camera about, let's say you give me five minutes, even if you have the perfect script for me, if I read that to the camera, I will be like a robot. I will be stiff, I won't be talking like I'm doing moving my hands right now. I'm sure that there are a lot of us out there. So once we uncover the story and a lot of the conversation, I think people will tell you, I want them to buy from us after they watch the video. I want them to call us now. But sometimes does it take longer or what should we expect, right, to have that video to do? And what if we are kind of shy or never done a video in front of a camera before? Well, if you've never ever done video before and you're not doing a video podcast like you are, brand video is kind of an advanced it's a bit more of an advanced marketing tool. So I would recommend just start with showing up on Instagram, start on smaller things that are easier social media content that's a bit easier to get used to. A brand video is if you are not completely camera shy. Like you kind of have to have a little bit more experience for it to work out. It's going to be a bit more painful if you don't have that experience beforehand. But to answer your question. Wait, there was one question about what do you do if you're shy on camera? And then the other one, what should we expect? The video? Yeah. If I would have to invest my time and money and effort to do it, I want people to buy now, right away. Don't we all want that ROI? That immediate ROI, right? Well, as with everything, if you're launching an ad campaign, it takes a while to kind of learn what works, filter out the ads that don't work, kind of edit, copywriting, and kind of tweak and transform. So a brand video is not a magic wand that you wave, and then all of the sales are going to happen immediately thereafter. But the nice thing about the brand video is that it's going to make you stick. So a lot of times, we have competitors, right? I actually kind of don't have a competitor, so I never can use myself as an example. Not yet. I'm sure there'll be other brand video folks, but if you look at all your competitors, you're always competing against them in the sense that you need to stand out. You need to make your story be different than theirs. You need to have audiences remember you versus them when it comes time to buy. Right? And this is the power of the brand video. It helps you stand out. But that's kind of a generic way to put it. It helps you be remembered. It helps your audience know that the person behind this brand is this guy. And I actually really liked his story. And you know what? It doesn't mean that they'll buy immediately. There are other factors involved, like how big is their pain point, how big is their desire? But when it comes time to buy, that brand video is the one video that they watch, and afterwards, everything that they see from you. So all the effort that you put into your email marketing, into your social media campaigns, into everywhere that you're, into your podcast, into your lives, everything that you do is going to be seen through the lens of that brand video. Essentially, every time that person sees your name, sees your face, they're going to remember your story. And that's the power of the brand video. That means that it multiplies the impact that all of your efforts will have from here on out. Think about this. This is a very easy thing to illustrate. Think about the people that you follow online, the brands that advertise to you, the things that you are kind of exposed to. And then think about your friends when you see them online, when you see them on social, when you get an email from them. Think about how differently you react to getting something from a friend than you do from getting something from a brand, from, like, a company, a business right, that's trying to sell you something. The power of the brand video is that you are going to be so much closer to being seen as a friend. So that when people see your name, when people see your business name, when people get an ad from you, or when they see your social media content, it's not just that company. It's Swire. It's Rebecca. It's Jacob. I love that I have a friend, like, he likes to figure out gadgets, and he always buy gadgets from Costco, from a lot of different places. And I listen to him. So he already convinced me to buy a vacuum. It's a $1000 vacuum. He convinced me to buy a camera because he's just like, whenever I see him, right, when I go to his house, he always showed me all his newest gadgets. And because he's a friend, he doesn't sell those things, but he got me into it. So, like you're saying, so you're like a friend who recommend or have the know how in your own expertise, and basically you're guiding them, or maybe you don't have immediate call to action, right? I'm just showing you how to use your camera. I'm just showing you how to use your fill in the blanks strategy. So when you're ready, when you're at that point, then you want to work with your friend. I think that's a really good strategy, but it takes a while, right? So for small business professionals who come to you say, miranda, I need something quick. I need to be out there. So what would you tell them? How long a process and how far along we should nurture our oh, that's. Really just to kind of finalize on that story about your friend with the gadgets. So his brand video would probably really dive deep into his love of gadgets and his love of taking things apart. And how amazing is that? We love people who are passionate about things and think about how we read reviews on Amazon before we buy some. These are complete strangers. We have no idea. But we care about the opinion of someone who's not the business selling us this. So it's almost it's a little bit like that in the sense that once we connect with you, we're not just connecting with the business that's trying to sell me something. But yeah. So to answer your question, it's not an overnight thing, but there are a couple of different ways to approach it. You could have your brand video done in as little as a week. It depends on kind of how far along you are into understanding your messaging, understanding who your audience is. What are those things that resonate with them? Are you somebody that kind of thinks visually already? Because that's one of the sort of chapters of the process, is like, thinking about how to illustrate this visually. And of course, I have a billion examples and so does that come easily to you? Do you need a little bit more help with that? In my program, my sort of core program is I'm helping you with all these steps, and then I hire a vetted cinematographer to come to you and film you for a day. And then after that, my team takes on the edit. And editing is a little bit like building a house where you could build something quickly, and it probably not look that great. So editing takes a little bit of time. We usually budget about like, three weeks or so, and then you get a little bit of edits. Normally the edits that I get from my students are very minimal. I really try to give them something that's like, awesome right off the bat. But then I also have Brand Video Academy, which is a course where you do this all on your own. I show you how to film with an iPhone very easily and also edit with your iPhone. So it really is how much time are you willing to dedicate to what's your availability? Can we knock this out in one week? Yes. Obviously not full time a week, but just kind of piecing out the different tasks so you're not doing everything in one day. You could I just recommend you give yourself a little bit of time to think about your story. That's the part that takes if you don't know right off the bat what your story is. And most people have a good idea, or maybe they don't know at all. So sometimes it just takes kind of digesting it, leaving it in your mind for a little bit, and then obviously getting feedback, which is really important. But yeah, I would say anywhere from like a week in a very short time frame to about six weeks or so. Want to ask you this question. For example, connecting with the audience. When us who are not in the industry think about why people buy from us because we're cheap, we're local, our food tastes good, or our product is just awesome. So once we find the connection with the audience, what is the process that you could bring out the right message? Because it could be very standard message, but if you have the right team, the right PR, and in your case, a documentary background so you can bring out the best, even if the answer to you is ordinary, how do you bring out and make that point shine and ultimately connecting with the audience? I think it goes back to the idea of understanding your audience in and out. Most businesses at least try to sort of be niched and speak to one person. If you don't speak to one person, you're speaking to no people speak to somebody, or else you're going to speak to nobody. So if you really understand that person in and out, you kind of identify what the parts of your story that will resonate with them are. And that's how you make that connection. Again, it's that feeling of like, you want the person watching this brand video at the end of it to be like, wow, he really gets me or I get him. There's a connection there. That's what that means, right? What does it mean to connect with your audience? It means that they're walking away knowing something about you that actually kind of changed something inside or made them feel something. Which depending on how you craft your marketing message, at the end of the day, a marketing message is still a marketing message. So there's probably going to be some sort of filter of like, I know I'm being sold to, I know that they want money from me. But your brand video is purely we're connecting on a human level. We're talking about emotions. I'm taking on you on this journey with me to understand because I understand how you feel and I know that you'll resonate with how I feel. Then do you think we'll go into a niche that may be too tight, for example, using me example, right? So I feel like the audience that normally buy from us because we're in the promotional product space, a lot of them who are tech savvy already gone to a supplier who have online shopping carts and all the online experience, I found that the people come to us want to speak to a human being. And when you online company, sometimes you don't talk to nobody, right? They are somehow on a rush. They're somehow unique and they feel like they want to speak to someone. So I know that people order from us normally with that. So if I have a video that really cater to them, am I eliminating all the online, which in our industry is big? So do you suggest we have multiple branded video or this is what we are and then we're sticking with that? It kind of depends on your story, but I guess you have to wonder what kind of clients would be repelled by having a human behind the brand and whether you really want them, your customers. I think for the most part you try to target the folks that you want to target, right? And unless you have really extreme views, you're probably not going to actually really repel anyone. They're just going to get to know you better. And again, to that point we made earlier, make that decision for themselves, whether you're a good fit for them or not, whether you're the person they want to work with and it's okay if you're not. And I think the beauty of business is accepting that we're not for everyone and we can serve our audience the best when they see us as the best and we're focused on them. And so I really believe that we can only grow and there's only a lot that we can gain from focusing on the people that we truly want to serve. And obviously if the folks don't fit that mold specifically and they still want to connect with us, they still want to buy from us, great. But at the end of the day, just to kind of be speaking to that audience that we want to target is incredibly powerful. And again, unless you have like, a really intense opinion about people like that. Some people like that, some people like exactly craziness. And there are all kinds of personality now. There's absolutely and I think it's been proven. I mean, we had a president in power who proved this for all to see that it's important to own your truth and you're going to attract those that you attract and you're going to repel those that you're going to repel. But just kind of stand on your own 2ft and don't try to please everyone. I would say don't have multiple brand videos. Have one. Have one that really speaks the message that you want to speak. Can you share an example? And I understand don't give out all the details if you don't want to. Like that. Brand video had helped a company. Oh, yeah. So we're in the process of us studying the ripple effects of brand video in different businesses. So far, what we've seen is like a spike in sales. We've seen glowing reviews. Those are kind of public for folks to see. It's a lot of, wow, I never knew this about you. Wow, this is beautiful. This is amazing. Folks that had smaller audience, folks that had bigger audiences. We have not had a single negative comment from a brand video, which I'm sure will come, but that's okay. And so, honestly, the positivity has been a lot in sort of the engagement that we've had around the brand videos once they're published. It's a little bit like tracking. It's not like an ad where unfortunately, we can't track the lifetime of the ad or of the brand video until the person actually clicks on a purchase button. I'd actually love to develop that technology where if we can track the person who's seen the brand video and how long does it take for them to actually purchase, I'd love to one day have that data. I don't have it quite yet, but it's a little bit what I imagine, like putting an ad on TV might be where you're like, I'm hoping people will see that you base it on metrics, but ultimately, when is that person actually going to buy the Coca Cola or whatever they saw the ad for? It's a little bit better than that because we actually see the engagement on social, but to actually track the purchasing, we're not quite there yet, but I'd love to get there. Yeah. I could think about all the most frequently asked question or people sometimes assume a certain industry or product if you go on a camera and maybe address some of it already. So people already can make the decision. Because if you browse online on Google after Five website, they. All look the same. But if you have a video somewhere that explains who you are, what kind of business that you're in, and what do you stand for, so you can actually convert people who are just randomly going through website and don't really care what their company does after a while. So I think that is a good fire. That's an amazing point. You've we're we live in the era of templates and websites kind of all look the like everything just sort of blends in after a while. There's a fellow by the name of Colin Boyd. He also talks about crafting your story, your own story more for speakers. And he talked I love this sort of metaphor that he uses, which is like, it's blender gray. If you put a bunch of things in a blender and blend them all, they all look like blender gray. And that to me, is what a lot of professionals look like. A lot of businesses look like. They all have similar messaging. They all kind of look the same. So your story is the thing that makes you stand out in the fastest stickiest way. Ultimately, your offer is not going to be exactly like somebody else's offer. Hopefully, it's not exactly like somebody else's offer where you're probably then competing just on price. But the idea of connecting with your audience through your story, that is the thing they're going to remember. That is the thing that's going to make you memorable. It's going to make you stick out. It's going to make you stand out from everyone else. So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So, Mariana, for audience who want to reach out and talk to you more about the story that they want to tell, what would be the best way to reach out to you? Yeah, sure. So I have the brand video starter guide on Brandmagnetic.com, and then you can always find me on Instagram. There you go. You've got the link handy Dandy, right there, which is just brand magnetic. Yeah. And I'd love to hear from folks. I'm kind of new on Instagram for now, so engagement still visibility is still a little low at this point, but very happy to connect. And again on brandmagnetic.com. I have the brand video starter guide. So if you want to get started on thinking about your story and what would this look like and how would I actually put this together, that's a great place to start. Thank you so much for coming on to the show today. I learned a lot. Thanks, Wire. It was awesome having you. You had me. Take care. Thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends or colleagues who might benefit from the conversation. Any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you.

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