Creative Bravery
Any content is meant to be consumed by an audience. The audience you want ideally. In order to move them to an outcome. Perhaps for them to share it or buy it or recommend it.
That’s the goal.
It’s why I feel a lot of AI content is a waste of time and resources. A lot of it is basically just content spam. Noise that is technically content and more for more sake but it doesn’t grab you or hold your interest -- just a visual novelty.
I recently saw two pieces of content that held my attention from start to finish. I’m not a buyer of the product but the content kept my attention and I’m now sharing it here.
These days, many brands seem to be focused on cheap same-same content which somehow seems to get approved and perhaps they feel more noise is safe and will work but it won’t. The thing that will work is creating content the audience wants to watch and that sticks with them afterward.
That means storytelling, great visuals, and something that sells the product or service or entertains the audience in some way.
I saw these two pieces from Anduril that I’d suggest you watch start to finish:
The product marketing video:
The storytelling animated film:
The reality is that most companies won’t do something like this. When pitched an idea like this, essentially what happens is a “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario and they either do nothing or default to a safe and generally boring piece of content.
From what I know, Palmer Luckey and the team at Anduril created these two pieces internally.
Here are the credits of the creative humans who made them:
Thunder — Product Launch Film
Brand: Anduril Industries
Production: Anduril Industries — In-House
Creative: Anduril Design
Design Leadership: Jen Darhy Bucci
Product Marketing: Brian Farrell
Maneuver Dominance: Shane Arnott
Series: Anduril Cinematic Universe — Chapter 3
Thunder — Animated Film
Brand: Anduril Industries
Production: Anduril Industries — In-House
Creative: Anduril Design
Design Leadership: Jen Darhy Bucci
Product Marketing: Brian Farrell
Maneuver Dominance: Shane Arnott
Series: Anduril Cinematic Universe — Chapter 3
Bureaucracy kills great ideas.
But if you want to sell your product and you want to get as many eyeballs as possible, create something you would actually want to watch. Something that would sell you or hold your attention or something you would share.
The content can do a lot of heavy lifting these days. That is essentially the number one sales vehicle these days as well because that’s what people pay attention to. That’s the way to reach people. But the difference between something that performs and something that doesn’t really comes down to how interesting the content is to the audience and how well it gets them excited or sold on the product.
Most of us aren’t buyers for Anduril, and they sell to the government so I find it all the more impressive that they invested this much creativity into their product. Looking at the views from when it was published 6 days ago, they already have collectively 2.6 million views on YouTube alone for these two videos. That’s a lot of eyeballs in a few short days.
But companies in many cases, are still nickel-and-diming over the price of content and focused on creating cheap AI spam that will garner very few views and most likely near zero impact or ROI.
Death by committee.
I’ve always said that often, the cheapest option is the most expensive.
Invest in talent and story. It’s worth it. It will help build the brand, build awareness, and become something that people actually want to watch start to finish.
You invest so much time and resources into the product or service that it makes very little sense to skimp on the content that will do a lot of the heavy lifting to sell it.
— Robert
Let’s make something that actually sells, reach out here
About Robert Cornish: Robert Cornish founded Richter in early 2008 to build an agency focused on communication strategies that support sales growth for business to business technology related companies. Bootstrapped with zero capital in the middle of the financial meltdown, Richter went on to make the Inc 5000 list comprised of the fastest growing companies in America five times. Richter made the Silicon Valley Fast 50 four times and the Entrepreneur360 award two times. Robert has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Selling Power Magazine, Inc Magazine and IDEA magazine. He’s been a guest speaker for ACG Los Angeles, IASA Summit, West Point and been interviewed for 33Voices, EnTRUEpreneurship Podcast and by Northwood University. In 2012 Wiley & Sons published his book, What Works, about the lessons he’s learned while growing his agency from start-up navigating his way to a multi-million dollar agency. Robert currently owns four companies.
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