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Tell your tech business video story with a diagram

A good way to come up with a story for a tech business video is to find the diagram that tells the story and extract what you need. By “the diagram” I mean the one that’s probably on Slide 9 of the sales deck or Page 6 of a white paper. Diagrams of solution architectures, processes, even the vision behind a strategy, make a great starting point for developing a video. These illustrations — whether professionally created graphics or napkin sketches — are the distillation of hard thinking by bright people who know the subject.


How you turn a diagram like the one shown here into a story depends on your storytelling purpose. In this case, the message about DevOps Style Automation is a key pillar of the messaging. But the technical details are not central to the story here. The video on the left below is based on the diagram, but it shows where the benefits of DevOps apply, without showing how it works.

In the second video example, the technology being discussed is so new that, at the time the video was in production, no simplified diagram existed. That became our job. The result is shown here. There is considerable technical detail crammed into this 30 seconds.

 

This excerpt from a tech marketing video about a router solution focuses on benefits, not technical details

This video excerpt is filled with technical detail about the solution architecture. In this case, the diagram (not shown) was sketched (and revised many times) to guide the animator.

It can be difficult to piece together how a system works based on a still diagram. But an animated diagram is easy to follow. Next time you page through a PowerPoint deck, look for a diagram that that could tell the story in 30 seconds — if it were animated.

Bruce McKenzie

A writer with a background in public broadcasting and corporate marketing communications, Bruce McKenzie pioneered the “2-Minute Explainer®” brand video for technology businesses in 2004. Customers have included numerous enterprise technology companies (Cisco, IBM, BMC, Brocade/Broadcom, Software AG, CA Technologies, CompuCom) as well as B2B startups. Rebranded “Technology Business Video” in 2017, the company today produces a variety of “tactical” videos to reach buying team members throughout the sales cycle. We take everything marketers want to say and transform it into short videos that communicate stuff buyers want to know. It’s basically what good writers do, made visual. Visit www.techbizvideo.com to learn more or set up a chat about tactical videos with the Technology Business Video professionals.

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