This piece is about The King, Mr. King and improving your videos.
The King is Elvis. 37 Years after his death nothing’s changed about his royalty.
In fact, 600,000 people each year make the pilgrimage to Graceland to experience the wonder of the mansion and the life that was lived within.
Take the Graceland tour and you learn more than a few fascinating facts.
Elvis was turned down flat in 1954, when he auditioned for a gospel quartet, The Songfellows.
His manager was Col. Tom Parker, a personality famous for being able to sell anything.
Before meeting Elvis it’s said he captured sparrows, painted them yellow and sold then as canaries. Well, maybe …
If Graceland gets a lot of visitors, double that number head to Indianola, Mississippi to see a museum dedicated to Mr. King.
That’s the bluesman, BB King.
The BB King Museum is all about music and the rich cultural life of the Mississippi Delta.
You can experience it with nine short videos. http://www.bbkingmuseum.org/web-films
They background BB King’s life as a sharecropper, tractor driver and guitar player who fronted gigs like a 16th birthday party for a dirt farmer’s daughter.
These videos give you a first-hand view of race relations and social history in the Deep South.
With that they’re an involving experience of a different world that’s not immediately recognizable to us here today.
You get a moving take on the birth of the Blues from those who were there.
You have the story of how BB King made his first ‘guitar’ with a single piece of wire used to bind straw into a broom.
Equally, you’ll hear an engaging rendition of a blues number, ‘If I Was A Catfish’.
If I was a catfish
swimmin’ in the deep blue sea
I’d have all you good lookin’ women
fishin’ after me.
It all comes across with humor and storytelling know-how we can learn from.
These clips are a reminder that engaging ideas and an unexpected narrative can make your videos better.
The scripting represents the difference between ‘one-way communication’ and a presentation that’s involving.
It’s the opposite of ’empty noise’ when it comes to emotion.
Importantly, nine videos will hopefully stop you trying to pack all the information you have into one extended video.
That merely betrays the fact you’ve been charged to load in everything you can.
Here, with ‘nine chapters’ of around two minutes each, you’re more likely to ask yourself, ‘what’s next?’ and eagerly move on to a new spot.
There’s discovery at each turn.
Admittedly, the subject matter and BB King’s personality are magnetic. You could listen to him all day.
So yes, it’s tough to make a CEOs speech, your factory tour or product information stack up to the bluesman.
But why should that stop you.
It just takes smarter scripting to showcase your story so it’s not viewed as an intrusion.
Nobody needs a fidgety audience, right?
To get people to engage with you, start by ensuring your agency’s brightest creative people are on the case.
Go further than the givens of category thinking.
Avoid corpspeak and the kind of thinking your competitors’ use.
Direct your energies to developing engaging visuals that demonstrate and enlarge your point of view — after all, this is a kinetic medium.
Inject charm, wit and a level of storytelling that erases all that’s drab, wearisome and inert.
Think about it …
Be the prize catfish in your category with better videos.
Get all those customers and prospects fishin’ after you.
Share with us. How are you and your agency improving your videos? How are you causing ripples in the marketplace? Scroll all the way down and leave your comment in the box below. Thanks, Steve Ulin