The Power of Storytelling in Branded Content: A Case Study

Hi, nice to meet you. My name is Leslie and I help lead our Branded Content team alongside Alex Tragellis. “The Nervous Newcomer” was the first commercial our team created “on spec.” A spec commercial is a non-commissioned piece of work that is meant to show our branded content chops to the world! And this one was personal for me. 

I am one of those people who owns a guitar that sits in my house collecting dust like a neglected family relic you place out of sight. 

“This year will be the year I learn to play it,” I tell myself when I see it peek out from behind the bookshelf. 

I’ve been saying that for 10 years. 

So, why haven’t I actually learned how to play? If I’m being honest, it’s because I’m an adult who is pretty good at most of the things I do on a regular basis. I’m good at my work, a competent cook, a very adept TV-watcher and I even manage to exercise regularly. These are things I’ve been doing for years. I am so trapped in this routine that I rarely experience failure, especially failure at something other people may find very easy. The older I get, the more entrenched in this comfortable, routine-driven reality I become. 

But I’m not sure that’s a good thing. 

When Diagonal needed to concept a spec commercial, I came back to this thought. I wanted to tell the story of someone who, like me, always wanted to do something but was stopped by the fact that they were “too late” or “too busy” or “too…” anything! 

And that is where we found Skillshare – a platform whose bedrock is continual learning. They were the perfect place for a reticent newcomer to learn how to play the guitar, and stay comfortably incognito while doing so. We wanted to keep this concept at the very heart of the commercial. 

The story follows Gregory, a middle-aged man who signed up for a Skillshare guitar class and plans to start his first lesson. Nervous about starting something new, Gregory manages to find a number of ways to procrastinate his first lesson. Whether it’s vacuuming his room or stacking a deck of cards, something is always more urgent than the guitar. 

We illustrated this frazzled and elongated process with a series of jump cuts. Our DP, Blake Drummond, set the camera on a low, wide shot so Nick, the actor who played Gregory, paced around the space. When seen in the edit, the back to back cuts of Gregory hopping around the room and constantly switching tasks makes it feel like both time has passed and gives the sense that he is unfocused. 

When we got into the edit we found that we had to refine our vision. We wanted to keep the jump cut effects we envisioned, but something wasn’t clicking. We needed more speed – some friction to show his nerves. We added in a few close ups: his hands shaking out, his disconcerted face as he eyed the guitar with skepticism, a few disconcerted grumblings. These moments added to the frantic feeling and let us get closer to Gregory in ways the wide angle jump cuts alone didn’t allow. 

Note to filmmakers – get the alternate angle! 

Once we spliced in the close ups and found our flow the next challenge was sound. I originally wanted no music, hoping we could use a repetitive beat to add to the drama of the procrastination and feed into Gregory’s frustration. We added a metronome sound effect as our sound bed, along with foley, but when we asked the team for feedback people thought their speakers were broken. 

The metronome was not working. 

Back to the drawing board. We tried a few guitar riffs, to make it feel like Gregory was practicing but he kept messing up. 

That didn’t work.

We tried a regular guitar riff, not great either. 

We needed something to make us feel what Gregory felt. 

We eventually found a song that captured the vulnerable but ultimately hopeful feeling we needed – mixed with a few sound effects (including a riser that took the editor and I over an hour of listening to various “whooshes” to get exactly right) – and we were almost there. 

A personal take away from the sound edit was not to get so caught up in making something different that you fail to make it good. 

After we color corrected the edit and had a few final revisions from the team, we considered this a wrap. 

And I signed up for a guitar lesson.