As we shift from products to services, we are moving from a transactional to a relational interaction with customers.
Helping people to understand our products is vital, The Khan Academy promo film is a great example of this. And adverts that are interesting bits of content on their own, are essential in making them shareable.
It's not KHAN ACADEMY BRAND HEAVY - and It’s more powerful because of it. The more abstract film allows you to piggyback on emotional attachment to other things. Tapping in to wider human experience. Don’t teach basketball but that universal emotional connection is powerful, why shouldn’t we use it?
Other interesting things to look at include Buzzfeed's work in storytelling
I've never been tempted to share a dog food advert before
This video from the School of Life is worth watching, it's kind of an advert for a series of relationship workshops they have, but it's much more engaging than a typical advert, and much more shareable!
I worked on this series of short films to promote a Radio4 programme about social Psychology. Very much inspired by the Buzzfeed and School of Life films. They only had 2 days budget for me to work on them, but they didn't expect perfection and we were able to make something quick, innovative and that got great engagement. I think BMJ could definitely do something similar with Junior doctors acting out some interesting/funny scenarios. Engage with this demographic and then link to our great content that will help them! If you had your scenarios planned out you could film a bunch in one day.
Google are doing some interesting stuff I think the following two are great examples. Technically very simple to produce, they focussed incredibly hard on how to create a story that SHOWS, the product, how it fits into people's lives and emotionally engages you.
We should think about what our story is...
They make emails, and spreadsheet software! We save lives!!!
I really enjoyed this article about how these were designed, they really push how vital prototyping, poster and filmmaking skills are in the modern age. Google expects everyone to be able to make things like this (at least to a prototype level).