Tag Archives: Porsche

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You don’t need a spoken audio track to make an effective marketing video, but you do need good storytelling. An American Airlines video remains my favorite example, and since seeing it I love highlighting similar videos.

The best of the best are often high on style but still manage to tell a good story. The not-so-best of the best… just high on style. Case in point… Porsche.

I saw a friend post something on Facebook yesterday about the Porsche 918 Spyder. I love cars, so I Googled the car and found a video of its lap around the Nurburgring.

High on style

The German Nurburgring… much to the chagrin of the BBC Top Gear guys… is the benchmark track where many cars are tested. The video starts well… music, the car being prepped. It moves on to the track with lots of cameras tracking the car’s run. It finishes with the lap time and a celebration. No spoken audio traffic, and almost a good story. Almost.

Here’s the problem, why is everyone celebrating? Clearly, it must have been a good time. I then did another Google search and found out that it’s the first time a street-legal car has broken the 7-minute mark.

Storytelling lesson

It’s important to keep in mind that everyone who watches your video might not know what you know. The produces for Porsche all knew this was a record-setting run, but they didn’t take into account certain audience members (cough, cough… me) might not. That’s a good lesson.

You know your business inside-out. Sometimes that can cloud the information you put in a story, or how you even go about telling the story. Watch the Porsche video. Now imagine starting it with an aerial of the track, some music and an on-screen graphic… Nurburgring, Germany: a production car has never completed a lap in less than 7:00.

The video takes on a whole new meaning. Even if the audience already knew that fact, all it does is add to the anticipation that we’re about to see something special.

The things you think might be obvious about your business, might actually be the key to driving interest.

–Tony Gnau

Tony Gnau is a three-time Emmy-winning journalist. He is also the founder and chief storytelling officer at T60 Productions. T60 has won 11 Telly Awards for its work over the last eight years.