Brand films are commissioned more often than they are watched. The ones that work are specific: a real founder, a real customer, a real constraint overcome, told by someone who understands the business. The ones that do not are montages of stock situations over a voiceover of adjectives, and they cost the same to make.
The story has to be true and particular
Audiences discount anything that could have been said by any company in the category. What holds attention is the specific: the decision that was hard, the customer who nearly left, the thing you do differently and why it costs more. That material comes from interviews with people who were there, which is why the research stage is where a good film is actually made.
Decide where it will be seen before it is made
A film for a conference stage, a website header, a sales meeting and a social feed are four different edits with different lengths, aspect ratios and opening seconds. Commissioning one film and cutting it down afterwards usually produces four compromised versions. Name the placements in the brief and budget for the versions.
Where the budget goes
Roughly, the largest costs are crew days, people on camera, location and post production. Cutting the shoot to save money usually costs more in post, and cutting research costs the story. If the budget is tight, reduce ambition in production values rather than in the interviews, because a well told simple film beats a handsome empty one.
What to measure
Completion rate rather than views, and whether it is used: does sales send it, does it appear in pitches, does it reduce the explaining people have to do. A brand film that the company itself does not circulate has failed regardless of how it tested.
Questions people ask about brand storytelling video
How long should a brand film be?
As long as the story holds and no longer. Shorter cuts for feeds, a longer version where the audience has chosen to watch, such as a website or a meeting.
Should real customers or actors appear?
Real people are more persuasive and harder to schedule. Where actors are used in a way that could be taken as a real endorsement, that needs to be clear, because a dramatisation presented as testimony is misleading.
Who should write it?
Someone who conducts the interviews. Scripts written before the interviews tend to be the brief in sentences, and the interesting material is always in what people actually said.