The Future of Brand Storytelling is Kenzo World and Volvo S90

So, for this week’s post, I had initially planned to write something else. I even had my research and notes ready. But then, with the assistance of few Facebook and LinkedIn friends, I came across two amazing branded videos that blew my mind and took my breath away. I love it when that happens!

Volvo S90 & Kenzo World

The first, a video for Volvo S90, is a beautiful, soft tale. Poetic. It imagines the American poet and journalist Walt Whitman if he were living here with us today. Actor Josh Brolin adds to the story as he recites lines from Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” The voiceover and the music in the background is uplifting, almost religious.

The second, a video for Kenzo World, is C-R-A-Z-Y. No other word or way to say how I felt after watching it. AdWeek described the Spike Jonze directed piece as “Ludicrous, High-Octane, Sci-Fi Fun.” I almost started to dance — and I don’t dance. I could not stop playing it again and again.

But I actually think that these two videos have more in common than meets the eye. Both represent the future of brand storytelling. And the future is long-form video stories that are designed to be highly personal: you and the story, just you and your screen. Whatever screen it is, whatever the size. Engaging stories are “responsive”by nature — that’s why they are so powerful. Because it is about the story, not the format.

Private Prime-Time

The Mad Women and Men that create such films don’t care about the screen size or length, they only care about the size of the attention they can earn from you and how deep they can get into your mind and heart.

For such one-on-one moments, you need a different prime-time. Not a Super Bowl or X-Factor type of prime-time, but a private, intimate screening that has nothing to do with a certain time of day. It’s all about the moment of interest.

Key Takeaways: Good Content Deserves to be Discovered

1. If you have a great video story you want to distribute, it is easy to work with us. Wherever your video sits, it deserves to be discovered. To get started on Outbrain Amplify, we just need the URL. YouTube is a well-known and trusted platform and it is mobile optimized by default, so it makes for a particularly good experience for the user.
2. One of Outbrain’s killer capabilities is the fact that we can pass interested audience data (i.e. the clicks to 3rd party content) on to you so you can “connect the dots” and re-market to that audience in other channels. For example, Google Adwords and/or Display and Facebook.
3. Lastly, even if your video is on a platform like YouTube rather than an owned platform, you can still track the impact it has on your website. If you embed our conversion tag on your end, you can see how many people visited your site as a result of discovering and watching your YouTube video, and how many of them took action on site. Then, you can optimize your content based on that data by changing your headlines or images in your campaign.

So, the future of brand storytelling is here. Long-form videos are changing the game — and so are discovery and amplification methods.