Clayton, Missouri – June 2021 – A St. Louis area start-up, StorySMART LLC, is helping businesses connect authentically with their customers through the power of video storytelling.

“If you are not digital today, your business could be in trouble,” said Ron Watermon , the Founder & CEO of StorySMART. “The pandemic has taught us a lesson about the power of video and the need for every business to be able to connect with their customers online.”

While the principle of good storytelling is as old as cave drawings and campfires, StorySMART is putting a new twist on the approach by using TV reporters to help brands tell their story with video.

In Watermon’s eyes, “The game changer is the journalist.”

StorySMART engages TV reporters with decades of experience to help their clients tell their stories honestly and professionally using brand journalism. Think search responsive TV news for the web.

“Every brand with a website is potentially an online media outlet capable of reaching an enormous audience,” Watermon says. “We help businesses take full advantage of their website and social media by providing them a professionally-told, high-quality video story that they own.”

StorySMART can help a company remain relevant in the digital age without being anchored down by huge advertising costs or the lack of an in-house digital team.

“We provide value and cost-certainty to our clients,” Watermon says. “Our clients pay as they go on a per story basis. They set the pace. And they own everything, copyright and all.”

StorySMART is disrupting the pricing model of traditional corporate video production while offering an effective alternative to traditional advertising.

The cost of a single StorySMART video is a fraction of the price of a typical scripted corporate video. The stories are also less than the monthly fee for a high-profile billboard in town or a small print ad in the daily newspaper.

While affordability is attractive to their clients, it is the authenticity of the StorySMART’s brand journalism approach that really makes their video storytelling service stand out.

“People want authentic,” says Julie Tristan , a multimedia journalist working with StorySMART. “We are telling, not selling.”

It is also telling when you hear what StorySMART clients have to say about the service.

“We are a small fish in here in town, but they make us feel like we are important,” says Dr. Arturo Taca, the Medical Director of INSynergy, a StorySMART client. “The process has been really easy for us. Effortless.”

“We have found that in telling our story, it has generated enormous amounts of credibility,” adds Brian Hall, Chief Marketing Officer for Explore St. Louis. “The opportunity to tell his or her story is an invaluable way to earn the respect and trust of an audience.”

That focus of connecting with a client’s target audience is what drives the video storytelling.

“It is really important for clients to have a story on their website that people will watch,” Tristan says. “Let’s be honest, how many commercials do you fast forward through? But if it's a good story you watch it and you think, ‘Oh wow!’”

The traditional sales-first advertising model doesn’t work well online today. You can’t always be selling when engaging with prospective customers that are finding you through online search.

“The traditional corporate video or commercial basically says, ‘This is who we are. This is where we're located. Come on out and buy, buy, buy,’” says George Sells, a StorySMART multimedia journalist. “And I don't really think that that is something that today's audience really cares to see.”

StorySMART’s brand journalism approach to storytelling is ideally designed for today’s discerning online audience. The audience that hits that Google search bar is - more often than not - just searching for useful information. They are simply looking for answers. And they demand honesty and authenticity.

A recent study by Forbes found that 80% of consumers find organic search results more credible than paid search results. In other words, people skip the ads. Scrolling through ads is a search’s version of fast forwarding past commercials on TV.

“Helping a business owner get out front with their personal mission is much more of a story than you can tell in a 30-second TV commercial,” Hall explains. “And the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter love video content. They love native video content.”

Research shows that eighty percent of all internet traffic is video. And a business is over fifty times more likely to come up on the front page of a search result if they use video.

“If you create great digital content, you can share it today, put it on YouTube, put it on your website,” Watermon says. “And it's going to continue to get traffic and an audience every single day”

Sells is quick to add, “The key is right there in the title: Story. Smart. Tell a smart story. You have got to be able to engage your audience.”

Watermon says that they work to strategically focus each client’s storytelling to convey important client messages in a relevant way to the client’s target audience. For him, that is what being “SMART” about your story is all about.

“At the end of the day, storytelling is about connecting with your audience. It is not about you, it's about your target audience. And it isn't just about telling a story. It's about being smart in telling your story.”