Purpose Driven Video Storytelling

St. Louis, MO – November 22, 2022 – You shouldn’t undertake any storytelling or communication without knowing your purpose first. It may sound like common sense, but you would be surprised by the number of brands that jump into communicating without having a clear purpose.

To do it well, you must have a strategic purpose behind your brand storytelling.

I believe fundamentally that you need to know two key things before engaging in any form of brand marketing or communications:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. What is the purpose of your communication?

That same intellectual discipline should be behind your storytelling.

Who is your story for? Who is the intended audience of the story?

Once you know your intended audience, as yourself what is the purpose of sharing the story with that audience ?

Do you hope to inform, entertain or educate them?

Is your purpose to build a deeper relationship with your audience?

Do you hope to sell more widgets to them?

Be clear about your purpose because that is an essential guidepost in framing your story. Your audience and purpose will help you develop the next important building block of a good story – a theme or message, as well as setting, characters etc..

Can you distill your story down to a single sentence?

The folks at the Moth talk about having a single sentence trailer for your story – like a movie trailer not a moving trailer. That single sentence becomes the lens you use to frame your story.

From a STORYSMART vantage point it really comes down to what is your strategic purpose?

Why does this story resonate or matter to you first?

Then ask yourself, why will the audience care?
While storytelling and all communication is really measured by the audience, it must first begin with you.

What is in for you as the storyteller?

When I was the VP of Communications for the St. Louis Cardinals, I insisted on knowing our purpose behind every social post and piece of communications. That might sound crazy, but we didn’t overthink it. We simply tracked it in excel using a drop down menu.

We literally got our “purposes” down to neat little list: inform, educate, entertain, sell, drive traffic to our website, engage.

I felt the need to do this because we were a business, and it was clear to me that selling was the name of our game. As the executive of the storytelling department, I wanted to be able to tell our story to the powers that be that ran the team.

I’ll never forget my reaction when I attended my first “direct reports” meeting. Every other executive had a spreadsheet with them. My colleagues were prepared to speak the language of the c-suite and tell their own story.

I wasn’t prepared.

I was the storyteller who didn’t come prepared to tell the story of our department using the language of my audience. You can take it to the bank that by the next meeting I came with my own spreadsheet.

Luckily it wasn’t hard for me to have a spreadsheet prepared since we already had a disciplined approach with all our communication and storytelling. And we had started our own internal tracking.

You should have that same level of discipline because it will improve your ability to tell a story that connects with your target audience.

Start by being purpose driven with all your video storytelling.


About STORYSMART

You have a story to tell, but don't have the time or resources to do it yourself. Telling your story well with video can be hard. And let’s be brutally honest. No app will turn you into a great filmmaker. Few are capable of producing a do-it-yourself (DIY) video or film we actually want to watch, much less remember.

To do justice to your story on screen, you need the right skills and equipment, not to mention time, money and talent.

That is why STORYSMART developed our premium video storytelling as a service. We help clients tell their story in the amazing way they deserve with a proprietary done-for-you video storytelling service unlike any other.

STORYSMART provides a nationwide premium video storytelling service that empowers individuals, families, celebrities, small businesses and other organizations to have their stories told professionally while still retaining their intellectual property rights.

STORYSMART provides clients an experienced television reporter or journalist filmmaker to help them tell their story following our proprietary high-integrity brand journalism system. Our transparently priced premium services for businesses and families ensures that each client gets an authentic, high-quality story they own the intellectual property rights on forever.

About Ron Watermon

Ron Watermon is the founder and CEO of STORYSMART, a premium video storytelling technology startup that empowers anyone to have their stories told professionally while ensuring they retain the intellectual property rights on their productions.

A creative and innovative communications leader with nearly three decades of experience, prior to founding STORYSMART to provide Storytelling for all, Ron Watermon was responsible for modernizing the St. Louis Cardinals communications by leading the team’s investment in video storytelling, brand journalism, fan engagement and social media.