How do you help brand communications professionals gear up to create their own brand story content? This is one of many original documents I developed and wrote to help walk creative professionals through the process of brand storytelling. It became the main theme of my video series, Brand Campfire, The Art & Science of Brand Storytelling.
I wanted a very unique, yet simple visual theme/hook that could be carried out for illustrating different concepts related to brand storytelling. What I developed was this concept of “connecting the dots.” It came to me that a story arc might be animated like some of the animations you might see in a video game to indicate a character’s life energy.
As I continued through production, I was amazed how well this visual hook lended itself to the animation in illustrating everything from the structure of a story arc to how people connect the dots about the events taking place around them (whether in real life or in film) to create their own inner narratives.
This simple form was actually the result of tons of hours of research I spent trying to get to the truth of what makes brand storytelling work. The documents were embedded as downloads with my brand storytelling video series.
I’ve worked on TV campaigns with production budgets up to $100K. This video, however, was one of nearly two hours’ worth of videos I created for my brand storytelling series, and was produced on a shoestring budget. In fact, there are probably shoe laces that cost more than this video production.
This is from my series of videos on the art and science of brand storytelling.
THE PRODUCT
A video series I created on the art and science of brand storytelling.
AUDIENCE
A wide range of brand communications professionals, targeted through Facebook by their occupation and also showing interest in “Learning.”
PROBLEM
To generate leads for my brand storytelling video series, I wanted to create an interactive game. Problem was, I had blown most of my creative budget on the pizza I had for lunch. Then it hit me. Why not mash up a few of the interactive technologies I tinker with, such as Squarespace and LeadQuizzes. And so I created what by far was my most successful lead generation campaign for this product. It’s a game unlike any you’ll see anywhere else.
SOLUTION
The game was presented as an experiment called, “Can You Trust Your Brain?” It helped demonstrate a key principle in brand storytelling related to how the human brain is always looking to make connections. It also leveraged the power of how addicting it can be to make connections, as was the case with the game. I created the game concept, purchased some stock images, and designed all the visuals.
RESULTS
This Facebook campaign produced leads at a 31.99% conversion rate after 672 impressions. Having hit my target number of leads for my email list of brand communications professionals, I paused the campaign and moved on to the email funnel optimization.
For each round of the experiment, a mystery riddle was posed. Then a series of clues was presented one by one, inside a media player embedded into the page. Players were to swipe through each image and decide which clues to accept and which clues to reject. This forced players to look for related concepts in the visual clues. And when they would make those connections in their brains, they actually experienced a light bulb moment inside the brain, releasing a nice little hit of dopamine. That little neuroboost gave players just enough of a charge to want to keep playing the game.
Something special happened on Christmas Eve 1968 that captured the world’s attention. This narrative I wrote highlights a special moment in the history of the organization with which I’m employed. Click here to visit the site to read. And if you feel led, you can even make a donation on the site as well.
