Saturday, October 05, 2013

The science of story telling - where Business often fails with video



The wine is flowing, the foie grass was perfect. The convenor clinks her champagne flute. Time for the presentation... and this video here on shared values is ...

No one's watching.  What do you mean, that video was made by a professional company.

Yes, I said and they charged you a whack, and probably eat a full breakfast each morning while looking at the share price rise. { conversation with a friend staging a conference on shared values in London).

Ir's a terminal disease for Business. In the 80s and 90s when CEOs were finally being dragged to appear on business articles, the grammar was so impenetrable you needed a style guide to interpret what the CEO was trying to say.

With the, video-is-easy to make syndrome around us, even the best of the best are showing how little they understand the medium. The knowledge in this video is worthy. Teams will be pressed to watch it and no sagely.

Hey Diana, so what do you think?

Well put Dan!

Diana ( fictional person I have made up ) that wasn't the point. Tell me, if between spending your last 15 bucks on a meal because you're hungry and paying to watch this, you'd opt for the latter, then your point sticks.

Compelling video can do that to you, but it's not just about the content. Everything we negotiate is about style and some form of affective state, film can put us into.

The video is well lit. The topic important, the interviewees sanguine and the production values lifted from how-to-do-a-documentary book. The alchemy here is the equivalent of being at a function and being asked to watch this.

I choose obviously not to watch it, if I don't like it, But I happen to be a big HBR fan and this is painful.  Sell the best of business, surely that should mean understanding the business of communications

Redefining the value chain, positive social impact, .... I blame the producer