Leave your audience wanting to find out more.
Your design may be beautiful. Your music choice may be inspired. You may have forked out millions to have a Hollywood star take the lead role in your corporate explainer. But if your script is wooden, overly complex, or just plain bad, your corporate video will fall flat. Your script is your voice. It’s the essence of who you are and the reason why people should listen to (or ignore) your video. What’s more, it’s something that far too many corporate videos overlook, relying instead on a Frankenstein’s monster of text from internal documents. We’re here to say that scripts matter. So, how can you make sure your next corporate script hits the mark?
Understand Your Goals
What do you want your audience to do when they see your video? It’s a simple question but one that is often left unanswered. You need to understand the why behind your script. Why are you making this video? What do you want to achieve? What do you want the people who are watching to get up and do? By providing clear answers to these questions before you type a single word, you can add focus and intention to your script. Creating a video brief is a great way to ensure you understand your goals before you get started.
Less is Always More
The number one hurdle we come up against when editing and rewriting corporate scripts is length. Human attention spans are short. This is (usually) not the place for your company’s origin story or a chance to share every single success from the last decade. A good script is clean and concise – less is always more. When you read your first draft, ask yourself what each word and each line really add to the whole. Be ruthless. If it’s not contributing to your goals, be prepared to cut it. We recommend that most corporate videos stay under 2 minutes.
Choose a Tone (And Stick With It)
An inconsistent tone can be incredibly jarring to a viewer or listener. If you open your video with contractions and slang before sliding into an academic monologue, it will feel disjointed and strange. What’s worse, an inconsistent tone is likely to reduce the trust an audience feels in your brand and message. The tone you choose is heavily dependent on your audience. You need to think hard about how they speak, and how they like to be spoken to. Most of the time, simple, conversational, and clean will win out. But whatever tone you choose, keep it consistent.
Speak Like a Human
This may sound obvious, but it’s not always simple. Aside from consistency of voice, you must remember that a script is written to be heard, not read. This means that some of the rules that apply to business writing won’t apply here, even if you’re talking to a B2B audience. You can incorporate pauses, repetition, contractions, or even slang if they feel appropriate for your message and tone. One of the best pieces of advice for scriptwriters is to read their work aloud. This makes it much easier to pick up on anything that feels clunky or unnatural.
Tell a Story
You may think that there isn’t a huge amount of story in your video about a new software release. There is. Humans are hardwired to find stories and to seek resolutions in the narratives they hear. This means that if they connect with your story in the first few seconds, they are likely to continue watching. Plot out a simple beginning, middle, and end to your message – create a problem, offer a solution, and guide the reader through to a compelling CTA.
Create a Strong CTA
Your CTA (call to action) is perhaps the most important part of the whole video. This is where you tell your audience what they should do next. And if you have got the viewer here, you want to make it stick. It might be as simple as a ‘get in touch’ or ‘find out more’ but take the time to consider how to make your CTA meaningful to your target audience. Do you want to inspire a sense of urgency? Create a feeling of empathy? Remove a barrier to change? A great call to action should be short, simple, and leave an impact.
Ready to create your next corporate video? DFC can help! Drop us a line to connect with our amazing team of creatives.
