Goosebumps. Not just a sign we were once covered in fur; they’re a tiny neurological event with a big impact. They fall into a few categories but it’s the aesthetic chills, or frisson, that usually apply to our line of work and are a sign we’ve got something right. Everything from a key change to a well-timed pause has the power to create them; to engineer peak emotional experience before thought catches up. Feeling, put simply, can leave a trace.
At their best, brand videos make us feel, and yes, give us goosebumps. They aren’t just conduits of information; they’re creating a positive feeling that becomes inseparable from your brand. A great brand video can act as a kind of emotional thumbprint, a powerful concentrate of your company’s identity, values and tone that heightens awareness of who you are. But this is also what makes them difficult to align neatly with business goals. You want measurable outcomes, but emotional impact is difficult to quantify. I’m not sure Rodgers & Hammerstein were intending to be quoted in a post about video for business, but here we are: “how do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” How can you turn positive, unconscious reactions into something more tangible?
There’s an argument to say, why should you? A brand video shouldn’t be a single source of truth for your whole campaign. It should be part of an ecosystem of assets, one of the carefully laid stepping stones that get your audience where you want them to be. But even the best plans fall flat. Our world is propelled by autoplay and infinite scroll. We’re constantly filtering information, deciding what’s important enough to notice and what can be ignored, the brain’s Reticular Activating System acting as bouncer on the door. Most content never makes it through.
The videos that do succeed earn attention by understanding how attention (and emotion) work in the first place. Particularly in short-form brand video, where you don’t have the luxury of world-building or light-touch brand storytelling that looks like a mini movie. You have seconds to convince someone to stick around.
This is where narrative psychology becomes genuinely useful, not as an added layer of jargon, but as a framework for understanding why certain creative choices work and how, when it comes to brand videos, they can influence behavior. Principles like the curiosity gap, narrative transportation and the peak-end rule all shape how audiences absorb and remember information. An intriguing opening visual. That carefully placed payoff. These really aren’t just cinematic instincts; they’re mechanisms of influence, mechanisms that make your brand memorable.
Because memory matters. Research from Harvard Business School found that information delivered through narrative is remembered far more effectively than information presented as statistics alone*. Emotion strengthens this effect further. The amygdala, the brain’s emotional processing center, plays a direct role in memory consolidation, meaning emotionally charged experiences are more likely to stay with us over time.
This is often where short-form brand video succeeds. Not necessarily by driving an immediate action like buying a product or service, but by creating a feeling strong enough to become associated with a brand in the long term. Influence doesn’t always arrive in conversion rates; sometimes it arrives later.
When I started thinking of examples, I naturally went way back, rather than think of recent work. I’ve carbon dated myself here but I think it proves the point. Take Nike’s Dream Crazy. It’s an old spot now, and that kind of format has been copied to the point of parody. And yet. Despite the controversy surrounding it at the time, Dream Crazy reportedly drove a 31% increase in online sales*. More importantly, it reinforced something emotionally recognizable about Nike itself. Even in a culturally divided moment, the emotional response to Kaepernick’s narration proved stronger than disagreement around it. The feeling and the brand became difficult to separate.
What’s interesting is that many companies still approach brand video as if more information equals more effectiveness. Stakeholders want messages covered and metrics justified, but audiences rarely experience video in such rational terms. Most people decide how they feel about a brand long before they can articulate why.
That’s why emotionally designed brand videos can be so powerful. They create recognition, familiarity and preference. The most effective trust atmosphere over explanation and understand that audiences don’t want to be cornered into paying attention; they want to feel invited into something, and feel the effects. In a moment trying to distract us at every turn, creating the chills surely becomes our competitive advantage.
*Graeber, T. - Stories, Statistics and Memory, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2024), Harvard Business School
**https://www.marketingdive.com/news/analysis-nike-scores-31-sales-spike-following-launch-of-kaepernick-campai/531894/