I don’t really know how to storyboard a product video, but this is what I’m trying to do over the next few days.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking on YouTube, Kickstarter, and other random corners of the internet to see what sort of video we’d like to make for the launch of our new sock. The issue I’m finding is that the videos are either too cringe, lean too far into humour, or have extraordinarily high production quality that would be difficult to replicate given our time constraints.
I think I’ve settled on a style that could be best described as a product documentary, rather than a product ad.
What this means is first, finding a deep, authentic, human truth that may not be immediately obvious. I haven’t quite nailed this down yet, but I think it’s that players obsess over boots because they’re visible. But the thing they actually feel every second is the contact between the foot <> sock <> boot. Or, perhaps it’s that the tiny things nobody sees are often what actually decides the game (surprise, the sock is one of these tiny things).
Second, the video needs to have an enemy. This doesn’t have to be a person. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be a person. Things like doubt, excuses, softness, fear, pressure, limits, old thinking, the ordinary standard, were enemies that I was toying with. But I think the enshitification of (grip) socks is the enemy. Or maybe it’s the false believe that boots alone create control. I want to be careful to not make our competitors the enemy because that’s not our brand. We blow our competitors so far out of the water they don’t even deserve our comparison.
Third, the shots need to be carefully selected to reflected how much we care. Most people who create video ads will do anything to just go viral. You have brands like Dollar Shave Club, who have done a remarkable job of bringing attention to their product out of nowhere, but it required an approach that really does not align with Apex. The TikTokification of video content also means that you get these very high paced, neurotic styles of video editing that again just scream “short term appeal” rather than serious long term brand. So, I want our video to lean into the exact opposite styles. Slower pacing. Close up product shots. Muted colours. Careful pacing. The Oura ring trailer did a reasonable job of this if you want to check out one example that I took inspiration from (although, slightly too high production with all their motion graphics and 3D product renders).
The plan right now is to go into Figma and half script the thing with images/sketches of shots we want to show on screen at the same time. So, that’s my next step.
I’m constantly asking if the thing I’m doing will actually help move the business forward, and in this instance I’m not totally sure. It’s just a shot (pardon the pun) I want to take. It won’t take too long to put together alongside everything else, plus can easily be recycled into different paid and organic content on social media. It could also boost waitlist conversion rates, so there are lots of positive downstream effects of making the video that gives me reasonable confidence it’s the right thing to spend time on.
We’ll see how I get on tomorrow.
Three Things That Happened Today
- Loyalty Scheme – We want to launch a loyalty scheme for Apex customers when we launch the new sock at the end of this quarter. I spent a lot of my day today reviewing different loyalty schemes from other companies and compiling a stack of notes on the aspects I believe we should take some inspiration from.
- Drone Roof Shot – One room of the house is leaking when it rains, so I took my drone up to the roof of the house to see if any of the tiles were damaged. I hadn’t taken the drone out for a good couple of years so it was fun to give that a go, and managed to avoid crashing. Not sure if I know why the roof is leaking though…
- Gym – I’d hoped to do a leg session today after a couple of upper body focused sessions over the last couple of days. But my calf was still sore after tweaking it following an 8km run on Friday. So today’s session was a bit of a mixed bag. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the gym was impossibly busy. So kept the session short then did a stretching session to finish things off.
