Video storytelling can be a powerful way for a business or organization to communicate. Video can bring people inside your organization. It can introduce them to your people, show them what you do and help them understand why your work matters. A good story can make something that feels distant or unfamiliar suddenly feel personal.
But before deciding what kind of video to make, there’s a more important question: What story should you tell?
That’s usually where I like to start. Before we talk about cameras, locations or how long the finished video should be, I want to understand who we’re talking to and what we want them to understand, feel or do. Whether you’re a business, nonprofit, healthcare organization or manufacturer, finding the right story gives the video a purpose.
Here are seven types of stories that can help you figure out where to begin.
The Origin Story: Tell People How Your Business Began
Every organization started somewhere. Maybe someone saw a problem that needed solving. Maybe there was an opportunity nobody else was pursuing. Or maybe a personal experience led someone to start the organization in the first place.
A good Origin Story isn’t simply a company history or a timeline of important dates. It finds the moment that started everything and helps people understand why it mattered. When there’s a meaningful story behind how an organization began, video can help bring that story to life.
The Values Story: Show What Your Organization Stands For
It’s easy for a business to say what it believes. A story can show it. Instead of simply telling people your organization values service, innovation, quality or community, look for a real example where those values influenced a decision or changed what someone did.
A Values Story makes something abstract feel real. Your audience gets to see your values being lived out through actual people and situations. That can be far more believable than simply putting a list of company values on the screen.
The Why Story: Explain Why Your Work Matters
What keeps you doing what you do? A Why Story gets underneath the products, services and day-to-day work of an organization and looks at why the work matters in the first place.
That story might come from a founder, an employee, a customer or someone whose life has been affected by the work. The strongest Why Stories help an audience understand the purpose behind an organization and give people a reason to care about what it does.
The Vision Story: Show People Where You’re Going
An Origin Story looks backward. A Vision Story looks forward. Where is your organization going? What are you trying to build, change or make possible?
A strong Vision Story helps people picture that future and understand the role they might play in it. This kind of video storytelling can be particularly useful when you’re asking employees, customers, donors or other stakeholders to come along with you.
The Teaching Story: Help Your Audience Understand
Sometimes the goal isn’t to sell something. It’s to help someone understand. A Teaching Story can take an idea that is complicated, unfamiliar or difficult to explain and make it easier to grasp through a real person, situation or experience.
Instead of simply giving the audience information, you’re giving that information context. Facts are important, but a good story can make those facts easier to understand and remember. That makes Teaching Stories useful for training, education and awareness as well as marketing.
The Impact Story: Show the Difference You Make
Organizations often communicate impact using numbers: how many people they helped, how much they grew or what they accomplished. Those numbers can be important, but they’re not always the story.
An Impact Story shows us what those numbers actually mean by finding the people affected by the work. It allows an audience to see the change through someone’s experience rather than simply reading a statistic.
Don’t just tell me you made a difference. Show me the difference.
The Objections Story: Address Concerns Through Storytelling
Sometimes your audience already has a reason to say no. They may misunderstand what you do, question whether something will work or simply see the problem differently. You can argue against that objection, or you can tell a story.
Find someone who once had the same concern. What changed their mind? What did they experience? What do they believe now? An Objections Story can address skepticism or misconceptions through someone else’s experience without making the video feel like an argument.
What Story Should Your Business Tell?
You don’t necessarily need seven videos. You need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish, who you’re trying to reach and which story gives you the best opportunity to connect with them. These story types aren’t limited to one kind of organization. A corporation, nonprofit, hospital, manufacturer, school or small business can all have an Origin Story, Impact Story, Why Story or any of the others.
At Orange House Media, our approach to video production in Winnipeg starts with finding the story. The cameras come later. If you’re considering a video but aren’t quite sure what story you should be telling, that’s a good place for us to start a conversation.
