Here at Ydraw, we work with amazing people every day, from all over the world, to create awesome videos.
Our completely custom videos are perfect for companies, because we can create EXACTLY what they need. From the scripting, to the choice of art style, to your voiceover selection, to our custom music composer, everything is tailored to our customer’s needs.
Since each video is entirely unique, it requires both parties to be equally invested and provide timely feedback. COLLABORATION IS KEY! This can be both a blessing and a curse.
One of the biggest challenges we run into when creating videos is understanding each parties’ roles in the project. We rely on the client to provide the information needed for us to understand their product or service, and in return, ask our clients to trust us when it comes to creating the best content for them.
Sometimes clients will focus in on one minor detail that has little or no impact on the overall messaging of the video, and can eventually lead to an experience or end product that isn’t so spectacular.
For instance, have you ever looked at a word so many times that you convince yourself it’s spelled wrong? The more your stare at it, the weirder it looks… even though it was right from the beginning. This can happen when creating content.
When creating videos, we notice this problem in the artwork phase. For example, a client will get so hung up on the color of “Mary’s shirt”, and before you know it, they’ve convinced themselves that their ENTIRE video is a failure, because absolutely NO ONE is going to understand or even watch the video, if her shirt is red, and NOT blue…
Sounds dramatic… but we see examples like this happen with our clients often.
We completely understand that these projects, these videos, are as important as your first born child! You have a lot of pressure to produce an amazing product, but it’s imperative to remember to step back and focus on the overall message of your video.
So if the color of Mary’s shirt isn’t the most important part to creating a successful video… then what is?
The message!
First, you want to establish your message. Keep it clear and concise! Second, ensure that your content helps to portray that message.
Don’t know where to start? The good news is that Ydraw can do it all for you!
(and don’t worry.. if you want Mary’s shirt to be blue, we’ll make sure it’s the prettiest blue you’ve ever seen.)
Teddy Roosevelt has been quoted many a time, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” And this goes especially for Marketing to Your Audience!
You see, you CAN begin your marketing by sharing your giant Pedigree* of Success, your giant Rolodex* of clients that come at your every beck and call, and your impressive collection of Vintage Star Wars action figures, boxed in mint condition. BUT THEY DON’T CARE!
Okay…maybe the Star Wars figures, I mean especially if they have that one Rare Boba Fett*…
My point being, don’t make your first impression with your audience ABOUT YOU. In fact, you may consider, minimizing the mention of “you” to the smallest amount possible. Your marketing NEEDS to be about THEM.
FOR INSTANCE!
The Mom who is exhausted carrying around a giant purse that contains everything known on the periodic table of elements. She wants to know that you care about her and her plight, when you sell her your amazing, mega-organizational handbag.
Spend the time in your marketing, connecting with her. Show empathy for how hard it is to carry that overgrown purse. Use humor to help her have a chuckle about it because she knows how impossible it is to find that lip gloss when her chapped lips are screaming for moisture, and the kids are clawing their way to find a granola bar in there too. She will totally think to herself, “Been there done that!”
By doing this, you will establish a relationship with your audience, in this case the Moms of the world. Now, they’ll care to listen to YOU! You have their attention because you relate to each other, on an emotional level. You are selling a relationship BEFORE you sell a product or service. So now, proceed to show some of the cool features of this “Heavenly Handbag” and again relate those features to them.
On a side note, keep your features explanation brief. They don’t need to know the process of “cutting and stitching every nuanced detail” that you researched; they just want the HIGH LEVEL facts that relate to them. This will keep them EMOTIONALLY engaged in your marketing.
In the case that you do spend time talking about YOU, make sure it’s to show how you relate to them. The purpose of sharing this piece of you is to connect with them, and not to gloat about you or in any way make you seem superior. If you don’t connect with them, be on their level, share their emotions, they will see right through you and go elsewhere for a solution to their need.
So…QUICK 5 POINT RECAP
Marketing is about THEM
Show Empathy
Use Humor
Emotional Engagement
Sell a Relationship
NOW, get your groove on and practice that Electric Slide together! It’s all about the relationship, and your audience will respond to you once they know that you care about them.
*Pedigree – Pretty sure it’s some type of dog food.
*Rolodex – The Stone Age variety of a contact list on your smart phone. Geesh, writing all those cards sucked.
*Rare Boba Fett – A Boba Fett figure that was designed exclusively as a cereal box mail-in item in 1979. It was advertised with a Rocket firing backpack, but the actual production firing rocket was made stationary, as it was deemed a “choking hazard.” This figure is still highly sought after by collectors and has fetched upwards of 20K at auction.
THAT, my friends, is the power and charm of simplified marketing.
2 words and your mind has been hijacked by a catchy jingle, an image of two bubbly tablets dropping into a glass of crystal clear H20 and possibly a pale faced, indigestion-plagued person sitting next to their half eaten deep dish pizza… about to toss their simmering seltzer salvation down their gullet.
Just 2 words and without thinking, you’ve recalled a problem that can be solved by the product. BRILLIANT.
So let’s take it wayyyyy back to marketing meetings of yesteryear.
It’s probable that at some point the indigestion big-wigs of this company met with the advertising crew and gave an hour long in-depth display of why these dissolvable tablets work. Charts, product testing, scientific results and guarantees were no doubt tossed around during a monumental data-packed discussion that would surely convince even the most discriminating consumer of its usefulness… so why didn’t Alka-Seltzer go with:
“Sodium bicarbonate can be used to treat heartburn, indigestion and acid reflux by reacting with and neutralizing excess stomach acid through effervescent tablets that contain three active ingredients, aspirin, sodium hydrogen carbonate and citric acid. Also, aspirin belongs to a group of medicines called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). It works by blocking the action of an enzyme in the body called cyclo-oxygenase and oh what a relief it is!” as their jingle???
Because they understood that ENTERTAINMENT can be more valuable than the over-stimulation of EDUCATING your audience to death.
Though this product is complex and scientifically proven, the message is simple.
Bottom line… if your stomach hurts, plop-fizz your way to relief.
Problem. Solution. That’s all they need to know.
Close your eyes… (wait, actually don’t because I still need you to read my words) IMAGINE that you’re taking your target-audience out on a blind date.
You put on your best suit, douse yourself with high-end cologne and drive to that fancy corner steakhouse, eager to meet your new muse.
Do you sit across the table from this beautiful stranger, rub your sweaty palms together and then begin reciting every mundane moment of your life so that she can fully appreciate each and every morsel of the man that you have been, currently are and ever hope to be???
(Good luck getting second date.)
But what if you tried courting your audience instead?
What does she need? Why did she agree to this date?
Dinner, companionship and connection… not the details of last week’s wart removal… so take a deep breath and give her just enough of what she needs to get her to agree to date #2.
So what’s the equivalent of a 2nd date in the world of marketing?
Google searches. Leads. Phone calls. Emails. Consultations.
You’ve gotta spark enough interest to get some action from your call to action and that’s done by making sure your message is simple, memorable and easily absorbed into the viewer’s mind.
The more you can narrow in on the meat & potatoes of your message or the sweet & simple essence of your service and stop trying to push your beloved information watermelons through human attention span-keyholes…
The more you’ll start seeing your efforts convert into genuine, profitable results.
Like these campaigns:
Got Milk? (Totally makes you thirsty.)
Maybe She’s Born With It? (Fake your natural beauty.)
Give Me A Break. (Who in their right mind would refuse a chocolate break or a piece of broken chocolate?)
The Breakfast of Champions. (Cereal box heroes.)
The Best A Man Can Get. (Smooth, manly jawlines.)
Melts In Your Mouth Not In Your Hand.
(This is a lie, but I still buy/eat them.)
I Want My BabyBack-BabyBack-BabyBack-BabyBack. (You just sang, again… didn’t ya?)
Double The Pleasure, Double The Fun. (Hot twins. Who cares what they’re selling.)
Dilly Dilly. (Nothing to do with beer. Sometimes simple & stupid = memorable.)
When done right, marketing with simple, clever videos can be powerful enough to make your message last a lifetime (just ask the plop-plop peeps)… and Ydraw can help you do just that, oh what relief it is!
Since I’ve started here at Ydraw we have put in place a simple Script Writing Formula that we like to call the The Made to Stick Formula. I’ve gotten familiar with the Made to Stick method, the formula that makes an idea remembered. It is categorized in 6 principles.
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
Each of these principles represents the methods to help stick your ideas in the heads of the consumers. Let’s look at each one individually.
Simple
What are the core elements of your message? There is a lot that goes into a company and a lot that goes into a product, but the audience doesn’t need all of that background knowledge. That’s the difficulty of having knowledge, thinking that everyone will be able to absorb what you know when they can’t. By adding too much information you can confuse the audience in what they are supposed to know. Find the core of your message and share that message with others. In doing so, you will motivate them to a decision.
Unexpected.
If there’s nothing to grab your audience, why would they remember your video? Try and pique the interest of your audience by introducing a mystery that they can’t wait to figure out. Humans like to think in patterns and to keep their attention all you need to do is break these patterns.
Concrete.
The easiest (and most quoted) example of this is Aesop’s fables of the concept of “sour grapes.” The Fox cannot reach some grapes and decides that they must be sour anyway. He wasn’t bitter over not getting what he wanted. But the term ‘sour grapes’ is a lot easier to say than ‘don’t be bitter from not getting what you want.’ Something becomes concrete when it can be described by the human senses.
Credible.
How do you look credible? Base your idea on authorities – experts, if you will. If you can’t do that you can use 5 other methods. An anti-authority (the dying smoker), Details of about your product, Statistics, Using the ‘Sinatra Test’ (“If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere” – the one test case that proves what you can do) and Testable Credentials (allows consumers to test it themselves).
Emotional.
I’m not suggesting that you should make your audience cry or anything, I’m suggesting you get them to care. For people to take action, they have to care. To do that focus on the individual, as Stalin once pointed out, “a single death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic”. Association also works well by associating between something the audience doesn’t care about and something they do.
Stories.
What really makes an idea stick? Tell it as a story. Stories can reflect oneself in the minds of the audience and can go a long way to enter the long-term memory storage of an individual. There are three major types of stories to look for. The challenge plot (underdog, rags to riches), the connection plot (developing relationships that bridge the gap), and the creativity plot (somebody making a mental breakthrough or solving a long standing issue).
When following these six principles, your ideas can stick better in the brain of your target audience. But let’s see it in action, here’s a video we did for Atlas, an IT service management company.
How well did this video accomplish the 6 principles of ‘Made to Stick’?
Let’s go through them.
Simple. Atlas is the choice for your IT service management.
Unexpected. Using a monster truck as a metaphor for being stuck without knowing what to do with your IT services is something out of the blue and no one saw it coming.
Concrete. “We are your IT service management contact.” That is a concrete promise to the consumer. By using Atlas they won’t need to go any further to get their IT service management needs met.
Credible. At 1:15 the video talks about costumer satisfaction and shows a graph to show how they are improving on that concept. In the next scene they go over the benefits of using Atlas, cooperation through get together sessions, using webinar training and choosing ways to save money while increasing the user experience.
Emotional. There were a lot of emotions that are felt in that video. Worry and frustration, because the truck was stuck in the mud. The relief when Atlas came along and helped them out of the mess. Finally, gratitude, when they chose a better path and Atlas filled their gas tank and cleaned up their truck.
Story. If I worked in IT service management, I would certainly remember this story of how Atlas came to the aid and helped an ITSM company out of the mud and back on the right track.
There are so many great ideas out there that are just waiting for a story to tell the world about how amazing they are and how that idea can improve the lives and companies around the world.
I hope this little Made To Stick formula will help you create your next script. If you need a video, reach out to us. We would love to help craft the perfect script for you company.
Hey by the way, if you want to check out how to write a script the Made to Stick way, check out this guide on writing a script.
“The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.”
-Chip Health, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
We have been in search for the perfect scripting process since we started at Ydraw. We’re not there yet, but here are some tips to keep in mind when you start on your next script. These tips have helped Ydraw create whiteboard animation videos that are three times more engaging than the average internet video.
Begin with Your Core Message
What is the most simple, concise way you can paint the picture of your service? Let’s begin there, because the competition for an audience has become stiff. The average YouTube video loses half its audience (we call this video abandonment) within 15 seconds. That number is shocking, but it’s the climate that sites like YouTube and Vimeo have created with suggested videos. Something more enticing is always a click away. Your focus should be on creating a script that will engage an audience from the beginning and keep them on your video—so stop wasting their precious time and get to the point.
Be Unexpected
One of the most effective ways to break away from the norm is to use the “blindside effect.” Who was prepared for Mark to pop up in Don’s introduction? No one really expected it to happen, until he did it two or three times and established a pattern. Using something that catches the viewer off guard piques their interest once again. This causes the viewer to stick around longer than they intended. We incorporate this into all of our scripts in order to keep your viewers watching your full video.
As always, if you have any questions or comments for us here at Ydraw, let us know!
