How to Nail Your Video Series’ Concept With a Show Positioning Statement

Creating an original video series is an exciting endeavor for marketers. But, since it’s also probably a brand-new endeavor, you may not have a process in place for vetting show concepts. Fortunately, one of the most effective ways to create a concept worthy of loyal followers is to root it in your brand’s existing values.

That’s because people buy what you stand for as much as what you sell. If they can connect with your brand on a personal level through your values, they’ll want to spend time with your content and eventually, do business with you.

Writing what we call a Show Positioning Statement will guarantee that your video content is grounded in and reflects your company values. Here at Wistia, doing so has helped us drive the concepts and creative direction of our Webby Award-winning docuseries One, Ten, One Hundred, and our talk show for marketers, Brandwagon.

Learn how to write your own in this post to ensure that your idea for a video series is as reflective of your values as it is binge-worthy.

The key elements of a Show Positioning Statement

Your Show Positioning Statement describes who you’re creating your binge-worthy content for, what message you’re communicating, and why your audience should care. It’s the foundation of your video series and the compass for its creative direction.

For every show you create, you should have a unique Show Positioning Statement, which should include three core elements: audience, insight, and theme. Once you identify each one, frame your Show Positioning Statement like this: “We connect with people who [audience], but [insight], by [theme].

Below are some examples of Show Positioning Statements that a B2C and B2B brand might write (they’re totally hypothetical, mind you). Follow these examples and then get started on your very own!

B2C: A cold-pressed lemonade brand

Audience: The subculture you’re targeting

The first step to crafting a Show Positioning Statement is identifying your target audience — ideally, a group of people outside your existing audience who share a unique belief. You might call this group a subculture or niche audience.

For a company that sells cold-pressed lemonade made without any added ingredients and believes that food and drink should improve people’s lives, their target audience could be people who strive to live a healthy, additive-free lifestyle.

After identifying this target audience, the lemonade brand’s Show Positioning Statement starts to look like this: “We connect with people who want to eat and drink more healthily.”

Insight: The unique problem your audience grapples with

The next step to crafting a Show Positioning Statement is uncovering an insight about your audience. As one of the most frustrating problems your subculture faces and is constantly trying to solve, the insight highlights the gap between their aspiration and their current situation.

For the lemonade brand’s target audience — people who want to eat and drink more healthily — one of their biggest challenges is differentiating between food and beverages that are nutritious and the ones that claim to be. This is a prevalent problem in the lemonade industry, where an overflow of brands mass-produce their beverages by mixing powder with water but still claim they’re natural and healthy.

Locked onto this insight, the lemonade brand’s Show Positioning Statement could look like this: “We connect with people who want to eat and drink more healthily but don’t know how to identify packaged food that is actually nutritious.”

Theme: The solution to your audience’s problem

The final step in crafting your Show Positioning Statement is picking a theme, which offers a solution to your insight. As always, make sure it aligns with your brand’s values. Otherwise, your audience will perceive your brand as disingenuous and might disengage from your content.

To offer a solution to their audience’s pressing problem, the lemonade brand could show their audience how to identify nutritious food and drinks by examining the ingredients. They could also recommend certain brands from each food and beverage group.

With their theme determined, this brand’s Show Positioning Statement might end up looking like this: “We connect with people who want to eat and drink more healthily but don’t know how to identify packaged food that’s actually nutritious by exploring what ingredients actually make them healthy or not.”

B2B: A freelance talent brand

Audience: The subculture you’re targeting

For this example, we’re going to talk about a brand whose software connects companies with freelancers. To attract the best customers, they need to attract the best freelancers, as the talent of the freelancers ultimately makes or breaks their product. With a target audience of people who want to build a successful freelance career, this brand’s Show Positioning Statement could look like this: “We connect with people who want to build a successful freelance career.”

Insight: The unique problem your audience grapples with

Being a freelancer is one of the toughest gigs around. You’re constantly hustling to finish projects, market your brand, and, toughest of all, close more deals. Given how prevalent this insight is in the freelance industry, this brand’s Show Positioning Statement could be: “We connect with people who want to build a successful freelance career but struggle to thrive in a cutthroat industry. ”

Theme: The solution to your audience’s problem

To help solve this problem, this brand could inspire their audience to persevere and find success as freelancers by creating a documentary about how some of the most successful freelancers have built their careers. After selecting this theme, this brand’s Show Positioning Statement could be: “We connect with people who want to build a successful freelance career but struggle to thrive in a cutthroat industry by inspiring them to persevere and find success through true, motivational stories from successful freelancers.”

Spend time getting your concept right

As you can see, by running these hypothetical businesses and their brand values through the Show Positioning Statement framework, we could easily generate a relevant, emotionally-resonant concept for their next video series. And at the end of the day, the most important part of crafting a video series is creating a compelling concept. Just think about your favorite shows and films. Do you love them and keep coming back for more because of their actors, cinematography, or special effects? Or do you love them for their stories? In most cases, it’s the latter. And that’s exactly why you need to invest time in perfecting your video series’ concept.