Your Title Impacts Video Storytelling
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An important part of video storytelling is focus. Not keeping the camera focused… keeping your story focused.Northwestern football provides us with a great teaching opportunity. Fitting, right? Great school… alma mater to website consultant extraordinaire Brian Bender at Net Elevation (plug, ding!).
Anyway, NU produces a terrific web series called, “The Hunt,” which details the team’s quest to return to the Rose Bowl. A side note… the last time the Wildcats played in Pasadena, T60 client Jeremy Hogue of Sovereign Healthcare (double plug blog post!… ding, ding!) was leading USC to a victory over the Wildcats.
Learning from Northwestern
Okay… so… Northwestern does a great job of taking us behind the scenes. We get some flavor of campus life, as well as action on the field. It’s good stuff. It’s professional and well-produced.
Having said that, we can always find some room for improvement, and this lesson is great for business, PR and marketing leaders to note. NU’s latest video is titled, “The Student Athlete.” Like all the videos in the series, it looks great… the problem here is the storytelling.
If you watched the video without reading the title, you’d think it was a recap of the team’s game against Maine. Read the title again though… “The Student Athlete.” It isn’t until the end of the video when we get a mini-feature on one of the ‘Cats players talking about what he does in the classroom.
Actually, it kind of feels like a throwaway piece because we don’t really learn anything significant, and that’s a shame because highlighting how hard these athletes work in the classroom could be a GREAT story.
Video storytelling takeaway
The lesson is simple. Keep your video storytelling focused. If your title promises viewers something, you better tell that story. If what you deliver isn’t what the audience is expecting, how likely do you think it is they’ll watch your next video?
Focus your storytelling and deliver on promises.
–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.