Short and Long Form Branded Content Production

The world of content production is ever evolving. Particularly when it comes to branded content, what works today may not work so well tomorrow, and will work worse still the day after that. And to make things even more complicated, there isn’t necessarily a clear through line delineating what works and what doesn’t. Long form content may be necessary for telling a story, but you oughtn’t underestimate the power of short form content. Just go have a look at TikTok if you need any proof to attest to that.

The key, therefore, to content production lies in the planning. Please don’t wince at such a dull-sounding word; hear me out. Great branded content can look off the cuff, but you don’t get to that point without a sh*t load of planning. To stay ahead of the curb, you must constantly be planning your content production. This oughtn’t be at the detriment of producing fast-paced agile content – rather, it enables it. For long form content production in particular, the proof isn’t in the pudding, but in the planning. If you haven’t done your due diligence, it will show, and your branded content will suffer for it.

Granted, just insisting on the importance of planning may sound like a horrendous oversimplification. That’s because, lexically prior to that, is the importance of understanding one’s audience. Naturally, it’s hard to plan anything if you don’t know what you want to plan. After all, how could you expect to produce compelling branded content without first thoroughly establishing who that content is for? Audiences are diffuse and should be treated as such. That’s precisely why long form content can be effective in some cases, and in others, short form content is the better option.

Despite what you might expect, short form content production is arguably a lot harder to get right than long form content. You need to grab your audience’s attention, get your message across, and leave them with something to take away with them – oh, and you have to do all that in under 30 seconds. Long form content production throws up its own challenges, but it at least gives you some leeway to take the audience on a journey. That’s a luxury you simply do not get with short form content.

In summary, Content production is hard to get right and very easy to get wrong. But as we’ve alluded to, there are certain things you can do to give yourself a leg up. And understanding the audience of your branded content is at the very core of this. And understanding audiences stems from understanding culture. It is for this very reason that High Stakes Films was founded to be a culture-driven production house. We do the work before the work to make the actual work seem like less work. If that sounds confusing, then we should probably talk. Whether it’s short form content or long form content, we’ll take care of all your content needs till your heart’s content. Drop us a line and we’ll explain it a little more…