What makes a video inspiring? This may seem like a simple question, but when an employee or business owner is planning a video production, they are usually focused on the content. They think, “how will I jam all of these important statistics and faces into my project?” They focus on explaining what their company does. The problem is that for everyone, except perhaps the most calculating investor, what your audience really cares about is how your business relates to them.

Unless your company is entirely unique and no other company is in the same industry, explaining what you do is a lot less important than explaining why you do it. If you have an audience for your video, they are giving you something incredibly valuable: their time. If you are an auto manufacturer and you spend their time telling them that you build cars and they come in different colours and you build hatchbacks and convertibles, you've only really communicated that, like all of your competitors, you make cars. If someone sees something they like in that video, sure, they may go out and purchase it. But, they may also see another video a little later and see something else and go and purchase that. If you haven't inspired your audience to make that leap to find out more about your company (whether it is your products, or your safety standards, or your record as an employer) your video has only used up your audience's patience and your budget.

Simon Sinek, in his talk How Great Leaders Inspire Action, draws a division between two parts of the brain, the neo-cortex that controls linguistic, rational, and critical thought, and the limbic brain that dictates trust, loyalty, behaviour, decision making and “has no capacity for language.” He says, “people can understand vast amounts of complicated information like features and benefits and facts and figures, it just doesn't drive behaviour." When we talk about why, “we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behaviour. And then we allow people to rationalise it with the tangible things we say and do. This is where gut decisions come from."

If you can make your audience just “feel” like your company is the right company to deal with, to instinctively believe that your message important to them before they start looking at the statistics and information, this is a huge accomplishment. They are motivated to see your company's priorities aligned with their own objectives. To do this, you need to successfully communicate a message to your audience's limbic-brain. You must communicate those things that drive the behaviour of your company.
Why do you do what you do?

It can be a challenge to answer this question, especially if all of the communications in your company are focused on what is happening. You need to discover the answer, because as Sinek says,

if you don't know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then how will you ever get people to vote for you or buy something from you or more importantly, be loyal, and want to be a part of what you do. The goal is not just to sell people who need what you have. The goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe. The goal is not just to hire people who need a job, it's to hire people who believe what you believe. If you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe they work for you with blood and sweat and tears.

In my experience, smaller organisations tend to have more successful videos, because they are more interested in exploring the question of why they do what they do. They don't necessarily come to a production with a predetermined message in mind. They put their own employees and clients in front of the camera and explore why those individuals work with their organisation. They have no concerns about injecting individual values and aspirations into their video. They are also highly motivated to distinguish themselves from their larger (and usually older) competitors. If a start up company competes for clients only based on what they do, why would anyone choose them over an established performer in that industry? Knowing the answer to why is what makes new companies competitive. Knowing the answer to why is what makes large companies dominate their market. Communicating why in your video makes it memorable and inspires your audience to incorporate your story into their own.

We will be following up this idea later with some ideas about how to find the "why" in your organisation. In the mean time, I'll read Simon Sinek's book Start With Why, and I invite you to watch his talk at TEDxPugetSound here:

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