Video content has become one of the most powerful ways for brands to connect with their audiences. However, creating a video that doesn’t align with your brand’s identity can do more harm than good. A misaligned video may confuse your audience, dilute your messaging, or fail to deliver the desired emotional connection. Here’s how to ensure your videos consistently reflect your brand’s core identity.

Start with a Deep Understanding of Your Brand

Before diving into production, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of your brand’s core values, mission, and visual identity. Ask yourself:

• What does my brand stand for?
• How do I want my audience to perceive my brand?
• What emotions should the video evoke?

This foundational clarity ensures that every creative decision aligns with your brand’s DNA.

Leverage Visual Consistency

Visual elements are the building blocks of brand recognition. Start with your brand’s established color palette, fonts, and design style:

• Color Scheme: Use your brand’s colors strategically throughout the video, from the background to text overlays.
• Typography: Stick to your brand-approved fonts to maintain visual cohesion.
• Graphics: Ensure any animations or illustrations reflect your brand’s unique aesthetic.

When visual consistency is prioritized, it reinforces your brand’s identity and makes your content instantly recognizable.

Match the Brand’s Tone and Voice

The script and delivery should mirror your brand’s personality. Consider these scenarios:

• A formal and professional brand might use precise language, a polished voiceover, and sophisticated visuals.
• A casual and playful brand could lean into humor, conversational language, and vibrant, upbeat visuals.

Maintaining this alignment with brand videos ensures that your audience feels a cohesive connection with your brand, no matter the medium.

Align Content with Brand Values

Your brand’s values should guide the themes and messaging of your video. For instance:

A brand that emphasizes sustainability should highlight eco-friendly practices or products in its videos. A tech-forward brand might showcase innovation and future-ready solutions.
This alignment strengthens your credibility and resonates more deeply with your audience.

Use Storytelling and Sensory Elements to Enhance Connection

Videos are uniquely positioned to engage multiple senses—sight, sound, and even emotion. Use these to your advantage:

Music: Choose a soundtrack that reflects your brand’s personality—whether that’s calming, energizing, or playful. Imagery: Incorporate visuals that evoke the emotions you want your audience to associate with your brand. Storytelling: Craft a narrative that embodies your brand’s mission and connects on a deeper level. When all elements work in harmony, the video becomes a seamless extension of your brand.

Consistency Across Marketing Efforts

A brand video doesn’t exist in isolation—it should integrate seamlessly with your other marketing content. From social media to email campaigns, every touchpoint should feel part of a cohesive whole.

We were thrilled to collaborate with WildBear Entertainment, a globally recognized production company that creates award-winning content for broadcasters like ABC, National Geographic, PBS, and NBC. As part of a broadcast documentary, our role was to film green screen interviews that would form a vital component of the storytelling.

High-quality interview filming is essential for productions of this scale. Our team ensured that every frame met the rigorous standards required for international release, using state-of-the-art video production equipment and expert lighting setups. While we can only share a short clip, the full documentary is available on WildBear's website.

Why Documentaries Matter for Storytelling

Documentaries aren’t just for entertainment—they’re a powerful tool for brand storytelling and marketing strategies. Through thoughtful video content production, documentaries dive deep into topics, uncovering the heart of a story and engaging audiences emotionally.

For brands, this format allows a unique opportunity to:

• Highlight their mission or values.
• Build credibility through detailed exploration of a subject.
• Connect authentically with target audiences.

Whether for public release or corporate video campaigns, documentary-style videos provide a compelling way to convey your message and make an impact.

Haydn, Our Founder: “Working with WildBear Entertainment gave us the chance to contribute to a project that would captivate audiences around the globe. The green screen interview footage we filmed was a critical piece of the storytelling puzzle, and I’m incredibly proud of how our team delivered exceptional results. It’s a privilege to play a role in such meaningful projects, whether for global documentaries or brand-driven campaigns. We are looking forward to continuing the relationship and filming future interviews for the reputable and lovely to work with team of filmmakers.”

Whilst our work is predominately in producing videos for marketing efforts, we are also building a portfolio of original productions. Thus far, we have produced a short horror film, Control Room, which has won ‘Best Welsh Film’ (Narrative Film) at Focus Wales Film Festival, a BAFTA-accredited festival. Since the, we have had more success at festivals. We are looking to move into producing factual content to help causes in animal welfare soon, utilizing what we've learned from working with WildBear also.

Continuing The Black Swan Podcast with second first episode, we sat down with Alex Murphy, the former Marketing Director for the FTSE 100, Admiral Group, and currently the Co-Founder of Balance – The Financial Services Digital Marketing Agency, and discussed all things marketing and brand, with a focus on staying true to brands values, understanding audience behaviours and the impact of video production. 

Click here to listen to the audio alternative of this episode on Spotify. For context, Black Swan Productions produces branded content, including creating thought leadership content similar to this podcast. We hope you find this episode enjoyable, and feel free to reach out if you're interested in joining the podcast or for any other reasons at contact@blackswanproductions.co.uk

0-0:48: Introduction

0:48-1:33: Who is Alex and his current job.

1:33-:2:20: Alex's career journey.

2:20-3:35: Core values and how they impact his marketing and leadership.

3:35-5:07: Becoming Head of Marketing at Admiral.

5:07-8:38: Proudest career movement so far.

8:38-10:08: How to ensure a financial services brand has a distinctive voice.

10:08-11:43: Evolving a brands identity whilst staying true to their core values.

11:43-13:02: Emotive campaign that landed and the importance of building trust.

13:02- 14:20: What the best emotive campaigns do right.

14:20-18:52: Measuring customer loyalty and customer return preference.

18:52-23:55: Overcoming challenges financial services companies face.

23:55-26:32: The importance of video production and building trust with an audience.

26:32-27:53: Key campaigns with video production.

27:53-29:15: Importance of data in marketing.

29:15-30:40: Practice tips for utilizing data.

We were delighted to have Alex on The Black Swan Podcast and we enjoyed discussing thought leadership content and financial services content. At Black Swan Productions, we have produced a variety of projects in both of these categories. Firstly, we've produced many educational projects, but with thought leadership, we've done lots of work with Sinclair's Law in Cardiff. In particular, evolving their video podcast, where a live podcast on Facebook hit almost 7,000 viewers. Overall, increasing viewership and leading to increased inquiries. We produced a brand video for V12 Retail Finance, a fantastic financial services organization based in Cardiff. Instead of doing the cliché talking head interviews to promote their cycle financing, we decided to produce a brand story that is engaging and authentic. 

We entered Focus Wales Film Festival and their Welsh and international short film competition with our first independent horror short film, Control Room. For the first time this year, all selected films were eligible for a BAFTA Cymru nomination. We were delighted for Control Room to win the 'Best Welsh Film, Narrative Film' award. Since its inception, Focus Wales Film Festival has been held in Wrexham, the home of the well-known Football club since it's takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Link: https://focuswales.com/film/

“WE WON!!! FOCUS Wales Film Festivals Best Welsh Film, Narrative Film is officially Control Room, our first independent film and festival submission at Black Swan Productions. So proud of the cast and crew involved for their hard work in bringing this together. I self-funded Control Room around the pandemic with a chunk of my savings, and although life and business have constantly tried getting in the way of finishing it off, we're super excited about how it's come together and what's next to come.”

Pictured: Haydn Wakeling 🎬 (Producer/Editor), Jacob Hodges (Writer/Director), Glyn Rhys-James and Ellis Walker (Music, Post Audio)

Control Room has a unique story which is as follows: Singer/songwriter Eli Fretter’s manager, Gill, has booked him into a state of the art studio space, in an attempt to encourage him to leave his traditional sensibilities and penchant for acoustic music and analog recording techniques behind, instead taking his place in the digital landscape of modern, electronic, music. The night before his booking, Eli finds himself stranded in the studio with the strange receptionist, who insists that, with nowhere else to go, he spend the night in one of their live-rooms. Things take a surreal and nightmarish turn for Eli as reality appears to bend and distort, transporting him to-and-fro from the studio to a mysterious music venue and eventually to a dungeon, followed by a monstrous cloaked figure. Able to trust neither the eerie receptionist nor his controlling manager Gill, Eli discovers an otherworldly connection between his rapidly mutating body and the studio’s electronic equipment, which builds into a shocking climax that goes out with a flash.

“Twenty nine exciting new businesses from a range of sectors have been recognised at the 2024 Wales StartUp Awards. As part of the UK StartUp Awards programme established to highlight the success of startups across ten nations and regions, the Wales StartUp Awards recognises the achievements of those amazing individuals who have had a great idea, spotted the opportunity and taken the risks to launch a new product or service.

As well as being recognised as the best in their sector in Wales, all the winners will now progress to the inaugural national UK StartUp Awards final where they will be competing against category winners from the rest of the UK. This will not only give them the opportunity to be crowned the best in their sector nationally but also to become the UK StartUp of the Year.”

Link: https://startupawards.uk/2024/05/the-best-startups-in-wales-revealed/

Haydn, Our Founder: “Black Swan Productions won! Such a proud moment for myself and the team to win at the fantastic StartUp Awards. Entrepreneurship is a strange, scary and stressful line of work, but moments like this make it unmatched.

Can't wait for what's to come and looking forward to the finals in London. Congratulations to everyone else involved and some close mutuals winners in Validient, de Novo Solutions, Remoo Mortgages, Lewis Turner / Cardiff Young Professionals.”

We are proud of what are team has achieved since our inception and to be part of the StartUp Awards. We’ve worked across various unique branded projects with organizations like The Open University, NHS Wales, Awen Trust and others, alongside this, we also produced our first TV commercial, and built niches in the legal sector and with event filming. All our projects have achieved success, with countless 5-star reviews from happy clients, thanks for our detailed approach in the pre-production process. Crucially, we also produced our first independent horror short film, Control Room, which went on to win Best Welsh Film, Narrative Film at Focus Wales, a BAFTA qualifying film festival, with only our first submission. Moving forward, we plan on producing more original content, looking at improving the lives of animals.

Kicking off the Black Swan Podcast with our first episode, we sat down with Scott Wilson-Evans, the Head of Strategic Communications and discussed all things marketing and brand, with a focus on connecting with an audience through the use of data, authentic storytelling, and taking risks.

Click here to listen to the audio alternative of this episode on Spotify. For context, Black Swan Productions produces branded content, including creating a campaign video alongside Scott to great success. We hope you find this episode enjoyable, and feel free to reach out if you're interested in joining the podcast or for any other reasons at contact@blackswanproductions.co.uk

0-0:53: Introduction to the podcast.

0:53-1:37: Who is Scott and how long he's be in his current role.

1:37-7:14 Professional journey and what learned to his current role.

7:14-10:10: How do your values guide your marketing approach?

10:10-13:53: How do you maintain a distinctive voice for the NHS brand?

13:53-21:19: Practical steps in evolving the brand identity whilst keeping with core values.

21:19-25:08: How do you approach emotional campaigns?

25:08-28: What strategies are used to create an emotional connection with an audience?

28-30:45: What are the benefits of video production?

We were delighted to have Scott on The Black Swan Podcast after working together previously. “Three years after the publication of ‘Building a Healthier Gwent’, the data tells us that it is getting harder not easier for people in communities across Gwent to live healthy, fulfilled lives. Inequities have been amplified by the direct and indirect harms of COVID-19 and the cost of living crisis. To support change Gwent has now become a Marmot Region.” We provided a campaign video for NHS Wales that included interviewing Sir Michael Marmot, Dr Sarah Aitken and various CEO’s of South Wales councils. We combined the interviews with matching content from the day’s conference, footage from other relevant projects, and stock videos to create relatability and trust.