What is the Most Effective Way to Explain Your Startup?

In Western countries like the US and UK, citizens watch an average of 5 hours of TV every single day. In these cultures, most people would rather watch a movie than read the book it is based on. Why do you think this is? Because we are visual learners and storytellers. It's no wonder that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, and that the video industry sector is worth around $500 billion. The internet has merged entertain broadcasting mediums like social media platforms, video games, film, TV and virtual reality all together. What makes the medium of video so different compared to written content?   

For one, it has led to the popularization of explainer videos. Explainer videos are a great way to communicate a startup company's value proposition and the vision the startup is pursuing, and given engagement trends around video, it proves to be a compelling way to capture the interest of an investor or a targeted customer. A great video can sum up and narrate the story of your product or service quickly and successfully, and it can even be used to convey messages cross-culturally for globally minded ventures. Thus, your video will be sharable with a large global audience from day one.

Video can be more compelling because it has the ability to engage us and touch our emotions. Sight, sound and motion create the feelings we know well from action, drama, or romance movies. These emotion equal remembrance. Remembrance associated with positive feelings equates to a power to persuade, engage and inspire action. In under 1 to 2 minutes you can use storytelling, visuals, music, data and even humor to get your message across effectively. A good video can lead to something called “conversational capital” which means that viewers start talking about it and sharing it.    

Your explainer video should answer these questions:

  • What makes you different from your competitors?

  • What problem does it solve?    

  • How does it help people?    

  • Who does your company serve?

  • Why should people trust your product or brand?

But First, for Inspiration - Watch Apple Break all the Rules


Everyone remembers Apple’s “Think Different” ad, but they have also made so many other clever iPhone video ads that demonstrate product features and convey emotion.

Many software and tech companies used to think that using animation in videos that often combine humor with tech speak to tell their product’s story was a good idea. One example is this video for a web analytics software startup company called Crazy Egg made by a company called DemoDuck.

Informative Isn't Enough


The issue is that if go to look at some of Demoducks videos that they made for other companies, they all kind look the same. They became popular, but they need to reinvent their formatting to stand out. If you see it for the first time it seems charming enough and does convey the product's message, but when you watch a few of them you kind get bored because they are all very similar. This novelty is important in order to hook into your viewers curiosity.

Live Action Humor & Differentiation


The hottest in live-action humor, the online video company Sandwich Video has worked with some of the hottest startups like Slack, Groupon, Square, Lyft and Airbnb. They have figured out a way to make interesting videos that explain why these companies products are useful, different and simple to use. If you watch the video created for Airbnb, you will see what I'm talking about.


Getting Creative and Building Brand


Dropbox just launched a new “creative freedom”campaign where they are hoping to change the perceptions of its product, from merely being a cloud storage company to being viewed as a facilitator and driver of the collaborative economy.     

So what does the future hold for online storytelling?   

Modern, edgy, captivating storytelling is the future in the attention economy. A storage company called Makespace has created a series of videos to explain their storage startup company in an edgy and modern way. Their latest one called the “the Sublet” is hilarious - give it a look. I think using smart scripted humorous videos to explain your startup’s product and the value, is the future of explainer videos.

Last, be Discoverable

You also can optimize videos to come up for things people might be searching for related to your product.  We optimized a high quality Gulfstream video to rank for a “buyers intent” a keyword phrase search like “Gulfstream G550 Rental” for a private charter client of ours.      

Conclusion

Some topics simply need more than words to be explained, but in today's world, even getting the chance to speak is the challenge. Explainer videos are becoming a new normal, grabbing attention at the same time they educate the consumer. Showing people how to use your product is another way to help people get past what is stopping someone from buying or using it, and video is one of the few ways to do it without the product in hand. But there's more: I don’t think startup explainer videos are only being used as a business to consumer marketing instrument, but also a business to business context. In more and more of our communication, simplicity and engagement will be key - and video is here to help.