Nobody remembers a value proposition
People forget claims and remember scenes. What documentary field craft says about writing brand copy.
Ask someone what a brand promised them and you’ll get a shrug. Ask what they saw and you’ll get a scene: the nurse counting supplies at 3 a.m., the farmer turning coffee cherries in his palm. We remember scenes — which changes what belongs in the first ten seconds of anything.
Documentary work beats the claim habit out of you, because subjects don’t perform claims. You can’t make a farmer say “we’re passionate about quality.” You can only film him doing the thing until the thing becomes the claim. Slower. Sticks.
The working rule I bring to every brand project: find the scene that makes the claim unnecessary. If the scene doesn’t exist, the brand has a substance problem, not a messaging problem — and that’s worth knowing too.
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