AMA Philadelphia recently spoke to Kevin Hackenberg, a Producer and Director at GK.video in Philadelphia. Kevin started his career learning storytelling under M. Night Shyamalan and Jonathan Demme on feature films like The Sixth Sense and Beloved.
In 2003, he started the story-focused film and video production company, Get-Kinetic serving clients in the Philadelphia and New York City markets. He’s worked with companies like Pfizer, Maaco, and Armani Exchange, as well as actor Neil Patrick Harris.
Kevin is one of our panelists for our next Executive Circle on Wednesday, September 25 from 8:30 to 10:30 am. Meet Kevin, our other panelists, and the moderator to learn more about the Secrets of Video Storytelling. Get your tickets here!
Q: Why are you interested in video marketing?
Kevin: A picture tells 1,000 words. From my beginnings in fine art photography, I found that just one image could tell a whole story. The same is true of motion picture images. They tell stories and those stories are powerful communication tools.
Stories are what sets us apart as humans. We love a good beginning, middle, end, and a resolution. In marketing, we are telling stories about brands and what they can do for the customer. Our task as storytellers is to describe an authentic story with a happy ending for a user.
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Q: What is video storytelling?
Kevin: If you put two images back to back, or three images back to back, you get a story. If it’s cohesive, that story starts coming off the screen from only a few images, maybe even from just one frame of video or a thumbnail.
And so when I think of what is video storytelling? It’s just using video for storytelling purposes. To connect with that story-desire in all audiences.
Someone said, to tell a good story, if you have to, use words. Video storytelling is telling a good story with or without words. Look at Charlie Chapman’s silent films. They were super entertaining, visually engaging and stimulating for every audience. Now that we’re coming into a time when we are taking in content from our phones with their sound on or sound off. It’s really important to make sure the images we create are doing that storytelling, drawing the audience to turn the sound on and ideally replay our video, our client’s story, from the beginning.
Q: Why is video storytelling so successful for your clients?
Kevin: Video storytelling should perform like a good salesman, right? A good salesman is going to let the audience forget about the sale and let them dream a little. There’s a little charm and a little magic to it. Sometimes he or she whispers and makes the listener feel special: “Can I tell you a secret?” A good video is going to hook an audience, and let them come to their own conclusion. It’s like the film Inception.
Video storytelling is successful when the clients sit back and let the video tell their story. The client and the video aren’t pushing the viewer, they are just letting the story speak for itself.
Q: When developing a video story, how do you think of potential customers and their needs?
Kevin: One place to start in finding a good story is with the characters. Every good story has interesting characters. The same is true when we’re producing a marketing video. One of the characters is obviously our client and the product they represent, but the customer and perhaps the family of the customer need to be characters also. The audience becomes more engaged when there are characters they can relate to.
Crafting a good story takes time and takes research. Audiences are inspired by a well-crafted story and it stays with them and connects everyone together.
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It takes time to understand the depth of a story, not just of the client and what they’re offering, but to really understand their customer. We strive to find, create, and tell an impactful story around the brand so that everybody feels like they come away inspired and with hope.
Q: What’s one trend you see in video marketing right now?
Kevin: To be honest, there’s a lot of people putting a lot of time into getting content out there on social media. Content and quantity seem to be getting the focus right now. There is a missed opportunity at the moment to create the magic of a great story. There’s so much emphasis on data, and there should be, but I personally feel like I’m being marketed to through that data. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of brands right now that just want to sit back and tell me a good story and let that magic of storytelling draw me organically to them.
Look at the insurance industry. We know we are being entertained by these brands and yet we don’t mind. There’s an symbiotic exchange of time between the audience and the brand. We’ll listen to their brand message as long as they tell us a good story. And they do. We find so much value in what they’ve created and give us while marketing to us, that when see that ad on later, we might even stop a deep conversation with a friend to make that friend watch an insurance ad so they too can get the same free entertainment value. That’s magic.
Good stories get passed along, and good marketing gets passed along if it has good depth of storytelling or if it’s entertaining. The tragedy of today is that we’re trying to filling social media channels with Reels or TikToks we need to put out, and we might not be taking enough time planning yo engage in a way the audience is going to really appreciate.
Q: What is one of the biggest mistakes marketers make when they prepare to meet or work with visual marketing professionals?
Kevin: A lot of times as video marketing professionals, we show up and it’s all laid out for us. Internally they’ve done a lot of homework. That homework on the part of the client is hugely important, but at the same time, the story is being generated internally. By our very nature as storytellers, as video directors, we are curious people. We want to explore a little, dig deeper and find something authentic and relatable. Before we tell a story, your story, we want to make sure it resonates with an audience. Every storyteller wants to get a reaction. I can’t speak for other video storytellers but I want to make some magic. I love working with brands that say: “Here’s our message. How do you think we should tell that story for the most impact?”
Looking for the opportunity to meet and mingle with other marketing professionals? Join us for an evening of drinks, nibbles, and networking!
This is your chance to connect with fellow marketing minds in a relaxed and fun setting. Come expand your network, share ideas, and make some new connections!