How Brands Can Tell Long-form Visual Stories?

A long-form video, according to Google, is any video that is longer than 10 minutes. 

Due to the rising communication noise, there is a misconception among marketers that your visual stories need to be short and catchy in order to capture people’s attention fast.

This is especially true if your goal is to drive brand awareness at the top of the funnel where the common understanding is that audiences’ attention span is super short.

And indeed, marketers bought into this, and according to a study, around 80% of videos were under five minutes in length. However, these short videos drove less than a third of the overall engagement of video content compared to 15-minute or longer videos that resulted in 50% engagement, the study found.

To be clear, short-videos have their time, place, and purpose. The focus here is on the untapped impact of long-form visual stories.

This state of affairs results in two outcomes: marketers that conform and focus on short visual stories to align with ad requirements or creative long-form stories that lack a proper viewing platform and because of their length are organically distributed. Yet, with subpar results.

You can find these creative long-form stories brands heavily invested in on social platforms that break brand safety and suitability by interrupting great storytelling with competing pre-roll ads and display ads. They also lack an optimal viewing experience as algorithms have their own exposure agenda.

So, unfortunately, they left to languish on the brand’s Website and YouTube channel as a merely archiving tactic.

Hi, my name is Nina Jacobsen, I am the CEO, Co-founder of Biites – a streaming service for branded entertainment and documentaries revolutionizes branded long-form films by providing a free and undisturbed platform for brands and users to connect around great storytelling. 

You may think of Biites as the Netflix for branded visual stories offering high-quality visual storytelling without any ad interruption and in an optimal cinematic experience.

In this podcast episode, I am joined with my partner, Helle Jabiri, Co-founder, and CCO at Biites where we demonstrate how brands can effectively tell innovative long-form visual stories as well as drive business results.

You see, we believe that brands are experts in their fields and so much can be learned from listening to their stories!

Some of the questions we talked about:

• What is our definition of effective visual storytelling?
• Why Biites believes an increased focus on quality in the distribution of brand films will help increase your engagement time with an audience?
• How long-form branded entertainment formats are on the rise?
• Why do we believe that brands have a crucial role to play in the education of society and consumers within their respective industries?
• What are the various types of visual stories we are featuring on Biites and our curation criteria?
  
• How long-form visual stories can drive top and lower funnel impact?
• We’ll also share 2 examples of successful visual stories
• What are our top 3 tips for creating compelling long-form visual stories to support a larger brand narrative?
• And much more!

Watch the full video recording of this interview:

Need a screen break?
You can also listen to the audio podcast of this episode.
Subscribe to the Visual Storytelling Today podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, and all other podcast networks.

Going back to the misconception I opened up with, my big message to you the marketer, tasked with finding effective ways to bring to life your larger brand narrative – is simple.

Sometimes when everybody zigs, you want to zag.

By all means, use short videos for triggering curiosity such as sales pitches, product or event announcements to meet short-term goals.

However, also consider long-form videos – at the top, middle, and bottom of your funnel – to allow you more room to educate your audience and build a human connection. Such an emotional connection matters more than customer satisfaction when it comes to building brand loyalty, a Harvard Business Review found.