How to Make the Perfect Brand Film

“I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” Remember that? If not, don’t fret; it came out in 1971 and many of you weren’t born yet. 

But the world remembers it.

A good piece of branding—especially in video form—is like an old movie that lives in our bones. The idea that this soft drink was somehow plugged into the peace-and-love movement made Coca-Cola’s brand feel like more than a soft drink. It felt like a global presence. 

That’s what a perfect brand film can do for your brand, too. It can lift you from obscurity and move you into the important real estate of your customers’ minds. It can make your products appear more vivid, it can make your positioning clear, and it can drive buzz until you have more inquiries and customers than you know what to do with. 

There’s just one element missing: knowing how to do it.

‍Step One: Define Your Brand’s Voice and Positioning

To go back to the Coca-Cola example, the company had a clear image of how it wanted to position itself. It wanted to tap into a common sense of humanity—that we could resolve our problems if we could just talk them out over a bottle of Coke. Silly? Naive? Maybe. But at least the brand knew what it was about.

That’s why your first step shouldn’t be to think about where to shoot, or even what happens on Page One in your script.

Your first step should be to ask: what do we stand for? What does our brand “sound” like? Do we have a personality? A take on the world? What problem do we solve to our customers, and when we solve it, what kind of taste does that leave in their mouths?

You’ll want your brand film to leave that same taste in their mouths. That’s exactly what Coke did.

‍Step Two: Meet Your Audience Where They Are

A great copywriter once said that the key to good sales copy is to “join the conversation already happening in your customer’s head.”

The same applies to your script. In step one, you gathered what your audience wants to experience. Now it’s time to start telling a story that fits into that experience.

A great example of this? Dollar Shave Club. The company knew it was advertising to men. So their early advertising featured their CEO as he made witty, pithy statements about how much it sucked to find good shaving solutions. He not only sounded like one of his customers; he answered questions the customer didn’t even know they had yet.

A man in search of a good daily shave could watch that brand video and start nodding right along.

‍Step Three: Use a Problem-Solution Approach

Your film is telling a story in the most basic sense: there is a problem, and your brand is the solution. 

Ideally, you don’t have to verbalize this. A good brand film can visualize this. An example is Volvo: they wanted to show the quality and stability of their trucks. So they hired Jean Claude Van Damme to do the splits between two of them—while they were running on the road.

Volvo didn’t come out and say: “Look how precise and consistent our trucks are.” They simply created a film concept that told the story in an unforgettable image.

Once you have an idea of what your brand stands for, you can use this same “show, don’t tell” approach. You can use visual storytelling—the way Volvo did—or you can have fun with the words—the way Dollar Shave Club did.

Either way, one thing has to stand out. You have to be telling a compelling story about what it is that your brand does to help people.

‍Step Four: Work with a Video Agency

You shouldn’t expect to do everything yourself.

The brands we highlighted above are no strangers to video and ad agencies. They work in tandem with them. They pitch ideas and they allow themselves to be pitched. They try to get creative with their brand films so they stand out from the crowd of other brand films and advertisements.

Working with a video agency is, of course, a mini-skill in and of itself. So here are a few recommendations if you haven’t done it before:

‍Remember it’s a collaboration. Video agencies bring specific skills—storytelling and technical prowess—that you might not possess yourself. Sure, you should have input. And sure, you should tell your video agency all about what you need the brand film to achieve. But remember the reason you’re hiring them is to make use of their talents, too.

‍Be open to outside-the-box thinking. You might have a specific vision for your brand film. And what the digital agency suggests may not initially line up with it. But try to look at the idea from a ground-up level. Are they taking your brand’s voice and needs into account? Are they considering what kind of story they’re telling your potential customers? If so, try to be open to the approach they suggest. It might click with your audience in a way you never imagined.

‍Don’t be afraid to be the underdog. Good brands often start out as underdog upstarts. There’s nothing wrong with that. Your brand will seem stronger if it’s fighting against something much bigger. In fact, many of the world’s largest brands—like Nike—were initially the Davids against the corporate Goliaths. So if you have to be the underdog for a while, building an unconventional brand film that challenges that status quo, maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world. It could help you stand out.

And don’t be afraid to admit when you need ideas. That’s why people reach out to agencies like Kyro Digital—to help build perfect brand films they wouldn’t have filmed themselves.

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