The Problem With Making Every Brand Film Feel Important

There is a certain kind of brand film we have all seen.

Slow motion.

Big music.

A dramatic voiceover.

Someone looking thoughtfully out a window.

A line about purpose.

Another line about the future.

And by the end of it, a company that makes something fairly ordinary has somehow been presented like it just put a man on the moon.

I understand why it happens.

Everyone wants the work to feel meaningful. Clients want to feel proud of what they are putting into the world. Agencies want the piece to have weight. Filmmakers want to make something beautiful.

None of that is wrong.

The problem starts when importance becomes the default tone.

Not every story needs to feel monumental.

Sometimes a company is interesting because of the people who work there.

Sometimes the product is genuinely useful.

Sometimes something is funny.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is explain something clearly.

Sometimes a brand has personality, and the worst thing we can do is sand all of that off and replace it with cinematic seriousness.

I have sat through plenty of creative conversations where everyone is trying to make the work feel bigger.

More emotional.

More dramatic.

More inspiring.

But bigger is not always better.

Sometimes bigger just creates distance.

If the audience can feel us trying too hard to convince them that something matters, they start noticing the effort instead of the story.

That is usually a warning sign.

I would rather find the tone that actually belongs to the brand.

Maybe that is emotional.

Maybe it is quiet.

Maybe it is confident.

Maybe it is weird.

Maybe it is funny.

Maybe it is just honest.

The job is not to make every company look important.

The job is to find what is actually interesting about them and make that worth watching.

There is a difference.

And I think the work gets much better when we remember it.