Over the course of the last two parts of this series, we’ve been digging into the elements that will be important for telling your story.

We looked at:
1. Your Goal;
2. Your Target Audience;
3. The Content or Stories That Appeal To That Audience;
4. What You Want Your Audience To Be Saying About You;
5. What Impressions Are Out There That You Want To Capitalize On, Challenge, Or Overcome; and
6. Defining The Brand Image Your Media Should Convey.

Now let’s talk backstory.  Is there any relevant background information on your company or brand that you want to incorporate?  For example, we did a series on Perkins + Will, a design firm steeped in a celebrated history of sustainable design.  So we made that tradition and vision a focus of the videos.  You can check one out here.

You can see how we use the background, the backstory, of Perkins + Will to show what they’re about today.  It is the history of P + W that guides them.  If you have a similar guiding backstory, or history, or tradition, embrace it and make it part of your story – possibly even the focus.

Lastly regarding backstory, do you have any market research that can help shape your story?  Or that can help you find your audience?  Or that can help you in any other aspect of your initiative?  For example, maybe you sell dalmatians and your target audience is firefighters (a small, ridiculous market and example, I grant you, but cute, right?).  You’ve commissioned research to find out what firefighters are into and found out they love Rescue Me (the Dennis Leary show on FX).  So, now you may consider running spots on FX or ads on the show’s website because you know one place that firefighters are already going.

Alright, backstory properly mined, we’ll continue next week with a look toward the future.

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This is Part 13 of an ongoing series. Barry Poltermann will post one part of this series each week, at your regularly scheduled time (ie Friday mornings). Next up is “Part 14 – Action”.

Our newest client is internationally acclaimed architecture firm Perkins+Will, who this year will celebrate their 75th anniversary.  The firm, founded in Chicago, has asked us to tell their story in six parts.

The first episode, which features Perkins+Will CEO Phil Harrison, launched this week.  We will be launching one video a month leading up to the firm’s anniversary celebration.

The strategy behind this project is courtesy of our friends at Chicago’s 50,000 Feet.

For more you can visit the Perkins+Will 75th anniversary section of their website.

Episode #1 | “Phil”. Architecture and design firm Perkins+Will was founded on innovation in 1935. Seventy-five years later, P+W is still at the forefront with its emphasis on green operations and sustainable design. Phil Harrison, P+W President and CEO, says, “It’s exciting to think that you can actually make a really big difference.”

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Episode #2 | “Ralph”. This Perkins+Will video gives us an inside look at Firm Wide Design Principal Ralph Johnson – his buildings, his philosophy, his style, and his passion for creating meaningful solutions, with style, in architecture.

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Episode #3 | “Crow Island School”. How can our storytelling tell the history of an organization and still make it compelling and informative? The story of Perkins+Will and Crow Island School is a great example. We combined old and new media and found a great story along the way.

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Episode #4 | “Peter”. This story comes from Vancouver. We profile Peter Busby, an expert in Sustainable Design with Perkins+Will. Peter looks at the evolution of sustainable design as an organic process and that it can be used as to nurture nature and the people who live in and around healthy buildings.

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Episode #5 | “Haworth” This Video video takes us into the award-winning headquarters of Haworth Office Supplies and into the design mindset Perkins+Will used to create the celebrated space. “To truly help us, they had to know Haworth and believe in our vision,” Haworth CEO Franco Bianchi says. “They made our business stronger.”

Episode #6 | “Creativity” This Perkins + Will video shows us design exposed in some of the most stunning spaces in all of New York City. Perkins + Will’s Eva Maddox says, “Now that it’s been exposed, I don’t think it will ever go back in the box.”

 We recently began working with internationally acclaimed architecture firm, Perkins+Will, who this year will celebrate their 75th anniversary. The firm has asked us to tell their story in six parts.

The first episode, which features Perkins+Will CEO Phil Harrison, launched recently. These stories will release once a month leading up to the firm’s anniversary celebration:

The unique assets, and ideas that differentiate your story to clients can risk ending up as a broad concept that gets lost when using traditional marketing conventions. The bottom line here: Corporate videos need to resonate, but most corporate videos come across as dull and lifeless.

So, what’s the solution? What’s the approach in avoiding just becoming another talking head?

Here’s how we approached telling the story of the largest office building in the world… Chicago’s Merchandise Mart:

Communicating your unique stories through people creates a genuine takeaway for a client in the considerations they make about your brand and the conversation they want to have with you.

Another example is this piece we did for the new product release of the Belleville Bike for TREK BIKES, which was part of our DOCUMENT series for Trek:

The TREK piece is a great example of taking a story that could have been boring (the launch of a new bike) and make it genuine and compelling by telling a human story that will relate to the target audience.

And here is another “hero” story that tells a larger overall brand message… one sample from our individual attorney profiles from San Francisco’s prestigious HOWARD RICE.

The trust and connection with their clients was achieved through new media tools using video profiles that emphatically defined their people, and company culture. You know what they say…
people remember 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, but 50% of what they both hear and see.