Customer films. Founder films. Famous-people films.
Films with a job to do: launch the product, land the keynote, move the enterprise deal, announce the round. Directed by Harry Hunter, with real people — customers, founders, CEOs, famous faces — doing the talking, because a buyer believes a person before they believe a claim.
A brand film with a real person in it has a job: make a buyer believe something a claim alone cannot. Launch a product. Open a keynote. Give a sales team a story a prospect forwards. Announce a round. Most of these films fail for the same reason — the person is performing, reading, trying to be what they think the brand wants — and a performance does none of those jobs. My work is to make the performance unnecessary, so the film does what the business needs it to.
I also run a production company. I have produced hundreds of these from the client's side of the table — budgets, approvals, legal, schedules, and the thing the film actually has to do for the business: the launch it carries, the pipeline it feeds, the round it announces. That is why the ones I direct work.
Harry Hunter is the co-founder and managing director of Entropico, a creative production company with offices in Los Angeles, Sydney, New York and London.
Questions people ask
What business problems do customer and founder films solve?
They make a claim believable at the moments a business most needs to be believed. A customer film gives an enterprise sales team a story a prospect trusts, because the person telling it paid for the product. A founder film carries a funding announcement, a partnership launch or a keynote, where the credibility of the person is the message. A talent film lends a brand an audience it has not earned yet. In each case the film's job is commercial — shorten a sales cycle, land a launch, move a room — and the measure is whether a buyer, investor or customer believes the person on screen. Harry Hunter's films for Google Cloud, for example, open its Next keynotes and run as its flagship customer stories, with CEOs of Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Mattel and Deutsche Bank making the case for the product.
What is a founder film, and why do brands use them?
A founder film puts the person who built the company on camera to tell its story in their own words — a CEO, a co-founder, a product leader. Brands use them because a believable person is more persuasive than a claim: buyers trust a leader explaining a decision more than a voiceover describing a feature. They work for funding announcements, partnership launches, keynotes and enterprise customer stories, and they fail when the founder is made to perform rather than talk.
What is a customer film?
A brand film in which a real customer, partner, founder or executive tells their own story on camera. Google Cloud's customer stories, American Express's small-business films and Pinterest's advertiser series are all customer films. Businesses use them because a buyer trusts a peer over a brand: they shorten enterprise sales cycles, anchor launches and keynotes, and give a sales team something to send. They work when the person is believable, which is a directing problem, not a production one.
Brands and the people who spoke for them
Sundar Pichai (CEO, Google), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO, Uber), Ola Källenius (CEO, Mercedes-Benz), Ynon Kreiz (CEO, Mattel), Christian Sewing (CEO, Deutsche Bank), Nirmal Saverimuttu (CEO, Virgin Voyages), Billie Eilish, Kelly Rowland, Rita Ora, Boy George, Jimmy Barnes, Flume, The Presets, Hayden James, Jess Mauboy, Guy Sebastian, Lime Cordiale.