Play
When you think about who you are deep down, do you reach for a list of adjectives? Do you pull out a spreadsheet?
Or does it come from somewhere deeper, somewhere you can't quite put a finger on but absolutely know is there?
That's what we reckon building a brand actually is.
We'll be honest, we don’t like brand videos much. In fact, we kinda loathe them. Most of them, anyways.
They all seem so generic, you know the ones... stock footage of people high-fiving in glass offices, a voiceover recorded by someone who really wants you to know they went to drama school, fast cuts, swishy transitions, and finally – a grand logo reveal at the end as though you’ve just witnessed something groundbreaking.
Newsflash – you haven’t.
A brand video should be the biggest, truest thing you can say about yourself in under 60 seconds.
Not what you built or how it works, but what you actually care about, and why that matters.
It has to be honest enough to last years, because you’re planting a flag. And flags don’t move when the weather changes.
Our brand video came together in a single session.
Two people, a shared document, and some things that really needed saying out loud. Done in an hour.
And then the video simply landed in our lap, and I mean that literally: one moment all we had was the script, and the next moment we had a video.
Ben recorded the voiceover. A single take, just for us to test. We laid it up, we listened and we liked it.
But then the self-criticism kicked in. “Let's redo it.” “Ben's not happy and wants to try again with different intonation." "Maybe there's another way of saying this bit."
He recorded an alternative, but we decided it was simply nowhere near as good. It lacked the naturalness of the first take. At which point, the voices returned – instincts born out of the world we live in today. They said, "Let's remove some of the pauses and tighten the cuts." "Do people have the attention spans for this?"
In the end, we decided to stop questioning it and we pretty much left it as it was.
Every instinct in modern content says: cut fast, keep moving, don't let the audience breathe.
We went the other way entirely. Every cut runs two to three times longer than convention says it should. Deliberate. Considered. Slow enough to allow the viewers to feel something.
For a platform called the thinking app, it seemed only right.
When we asked people whether they'd share the video, most said yes. But a few said no, and the reason wasn't that they didn't like it. It was that it felt too personal.
That's the best review we'll ever get. Seriously.
There's a word for what happens when something touches you deeply. Recognition. An idea that resonates so much that it feels like you're staring back at yourself in the mirror.
That's what a brand is when it's working. A feeling of deep recognition.
And here is where the self-actualisation gets interesting, because we think insite as 'a product' and insite as 'a brand' have been doing exactly the same thing all along.
insite exists because thoughts are precious and fleeting, and the world is not set up to protect them. It gives your thinking back to you, on your terms, in the moment when it matters.
We are counter-cultural
Talented, possibly, but definitely not following the trends. We aren't a well-funded tech operation with a launch budget and a brand agency on retainer from day one. We’re just a bunch of people who looked at the digital world and knew it needed a change.
We're about to move into bigger spaces. University campuses. New communities. New people taking this brand into rooms we haven't been in before. And the brand we’re trying to build is something you want to carry, something you want to be a part of, something meaningful.
Turns out that's not too different from what happens when you start putting your thinking first.
Be sure to give the video a watch!
Until next time,
Angeline @ insite
