Capture Video – Pop Culture For Your Business

Pop Culture For Your Business

Storytelling is an art form as old as humanity. We have always told stories and we continue to tell stories because they resonate with us as people. Every culture has stories that everyone knows and understands and even a brief reference to them evokes a certain set of feelings, or actions, or memories.

In US culture, many of the stories that everyone knows and can resonate with are taken from popular media. A character will have a specific tag line, or a way of speaking that we can emulate and anyone who hears us will understand not only what we are saying with our words, but the cultural context that we’re bringing in by referencing that character.

This can be a very effective tool for internal corporate videos. I see this often in Real Estate, banking, and other kinds of business, where the management wants to motivate a large group en masse. By referencing popular TV show or commercials in a video, you can create an immediate response, by banking on the story the audience already knows. It can be done subtly or overtly with humor, but either way, the connections are made.

Humor can really open people up to change and new ideas. Some companies will do skits at live events using upper management. These are often wildly funny, partly by design, and partly because the skills that make an excellent account manager don’t necessarily make a brilliant actor.

This is a place where capturing things on video beforehand will let you make the most of the message you want your people to receive. Mistakes can be edited out, and it can take as long as it takes to get it right without pulling everyone in for rehearsal after rehearsal. Let your teams see management as ‘real people’ without the potential for something horribly embarrassing.

When you build on the stories that people already know, you’re making a short cut to persuading them to accept whatever new ideas that you’re presenting. And when you let your hair down, in an often goofy video production, you are letting your team know that you are with them all the way, wherever you need to lead them.