PA - Magnus Creative

Why you should tell your story with video

Your business has a story to tell. Something that will make your customers’ lives better. Bad news: if your customers are anything like ours, they’re human.

Human brains are wired to take shortcuts, avoiding work that’s not necessary for survival. As a result, complex analysis of information is not everyone’s favorite task. (Surprise, surprise.) When it comes to digesting information, the brain is a bit of a picky eater.

It’s for the same reason that we process images so much faster than words. We are hungry for information, but prefer not to work for it. Video is one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways for your customers to process information. In fact, WireBuzz found that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when they read it in text. Text is fine, but video is much tastier!

We saw that. You’re skimming. Gotcha!

How we help with storytelling

Using video is only part of the equation. For us, telling a story with video is like cooking a well-balanced meal. The goal is to present pieces of information, the “ingredients,” in a way that makes them easier to digest. Using video will make your story delicious, and good storytelling will make your video nutritious! Humans have been conditioned to understand and tell stories from a young age; it’s a celebrated part of our culture. A story offers a familiar shortcut for our brains.

Our storytelling framework is essentially a recipe for breaking down and arranging information into a digestible story. That’s right: we’re giving away our own carefully crafted secret family recipe. Our framework is based on the ageless, classic, and time-tested Hero’s Journey.

The Hero’s Journey is a classic story arc, with elements found in stories of all genres, over millennia. Typically, it involves a character, (our “hero”), who is called to fulfill a need, meets a mentor, and ultimately returns transformed.

Almost every story ever told arguably follows a version of this arc, and that’s actually great news for us. Why? Because your customers’ brains already have the shortcuts in place to understand this structure. It’s a recipe the “picky eater” in all of us has already tried—and liked!

There’s a lot at stake here. If your customers aren’t absolutely fixated on your communication, you’ll lose them in seconds. But with better storytelling, you can break through the noise, sending your customers forward on their own journey, written by you!