In the twelve years we’ve been making high-tech marketing videos, we’ve occasionally mediated disputes between marketers and product managers over the question of what makes a video “too technical.” We like featuring as many technology differentiators as possible — probably not more than three or four in a short video — because we believe that buyers are looking for insight. Who better than a technology buyer to appreciate your technology solution’s technical achievements?
The delightfully nerdy style
If your offering overcomes well-known technical problems, a “delightfully nerdy” style is effective. Quantum’s QXS hybrid storage addresses several well-known problems that often arise in virtual infrastructure, including the “blender effect.” In the video example here, we assume that many viewers will be familiar with the problem.
The animation depicts the effect with enough technical accuracy to be credible to viewers who are familiar the problem. For those who are not, the animation is just delightfully nerdy — something you can appreciate without fully getting on board.
Here’s how it works
I love this expression. Hearing it makes me happy that I’m about to learn something. Even if I don’t quite get it on first viewing I’ve learned something, I feel smarter, and I appreciate the effort.
Of course, I won’t be happy if I’m bored. But for most technical problems, engineers have already devised clever ways of explaining them that translate well to video animation.
That’s the hook for this video about the “slow drain device” problem in this example from Brocade. The real message of the video is that Brocade’s network switch can solve problems that are caused by devices attached to the network, not the network itself. But in order to communicate that message, it’s necessary first to show how the problems arise. This is done with a visual metaphor (a toll bridge) that lends itself nicely to explaining how “buffer credits” affect network performance.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
Monitoring solutions are all about “visibility.” The 2017 version of Ipswitch’s venerable WhatsUp Gold monitoring software provides IT teams with a different kind of visibility — interactive, intuitive and easily configurable. That being the case, the teaser video (30 seconds) we created for the product introduction simply shows the GUI in action. The idea is that viewers haven’t seen anything like this before — and they will want to see more.
