Most corporate videos end up in one of two drawers. Either the spec sheet — precise, useful, but cold. Or the emotional spot — music, slow motion, a tear — nice to watch and forgotten within the hour. In between there's a space almost no one uses, and that's the one I care about.
Neither spec sheet nor spot
A product, real or digital, can be told and explained in the same video. Art isn't the coating you put over information to make it digestible: it's how information becomes memorable. Showing how something works can be part of the story, not a dull pause inside it.
In practice: instead of choosing between «make them understand» and «make them feel», you build a video where understanding is the feeling. Where the technical detail carries narrative weight, and the story has a concrete function.
Mixing story and product
This holds for a physical product — a machine, an object, a food — as much as for a virtual one: a service, a place, an event. The question isn't «how do I make it look good», but «what's the story this product is already part of?». There almost always is one. It's found, not invented.
A concrete example: the treasure hunt
For years I've been making a personal web series, UNMATTAGĪTĀ: episodes that hide encrypted clues and a treasure hunt the viewer can actually follow. It isn't advertising, it's a work. But precisely because of how it's built, it can host the real world inside it.
The idea is simple and, to me, beautiful: if a piece of the hunt — a clue, a place, the treasure itself — sits inside a company, at an event, in a specific spot, then you can build an episode that leads there. The viewer doesn't watch an ad for that event: they reach it by solving the story. They arrive because they understood, not because they were told to go.
For the company or the organiser it means becoming part of a story that lives on its own, not a banner people skip. For the viewer it means a real reason to be there. For me it means doing my job — telling stories — without betraying its point.
When it makes sense
It isn't the answer to every brief. If you need a fifteen-second spot for a promotion, we'll make that, and rightly so. But if you have a product, a place or an event with a story inside it — and the wish not to shout to be noticed — this ground between art and explanation is where the things that last get made.
The advertising that works best is the kind people don't skip, because it has become a story they want to follow.