How to Justify the Cost of Premium Brand Film to Leadership

Marketers have all been there: you’re pitching a premium brand film to the leadership team when the CFO asks the question: “What is the return on investment?”

Depending on the size of the organisation, the bosses can take a dim view of brand films. Especially when the economic climate isn’t ideal. They can be seen as a discretionary luxury or a “vanity project”. But that’s just because the c-suite are stuck in a short-term, performance-marketing mindset. You need to help them see the bigger picture. We’re here to help you paint one. 

A premium brand film isn’t a marketing expense. Seriously. It’s a long term capital asset. 

And they’ve arguably never been more important than right now. Because we’re in an era of high competition, fast-rising Customer Acquisition Costs, and never-ending content. Brand is the only true differentiator available. The brand film helps you to establish yours. 

This article is intended to help you to get your brand film the green light: complete with word-for-word arguments, legit metrics and context to help you sell your brand film concept to the company. 

Let’s get into it. 

Asset vs. Luxury: The Economics of Brand

You might have heard a lot about demand generation recently. Maybe it’s just us, but the term seems to be everywhere right now. And rightly so, because you can’t sell a product if nobody knows they want it. 

Don’t just take our word for it. Reference real clever people. When pitching your premium brand film don’t even wait for the CFO’s hand to raise, simply cite Les Binet and Peter Field’s foundational marketing research on the 60/40 rule. 

Binet and Fields contended that advertising was most effective when 60% of budget was spent on long term brand building and 40% on activating short term sales. 

Performance marketing captures existing demand and aims to efficiently transfer this demand into revenue. Brand building isn’t about existing demand. Its job is to create the demand of the future. 

Hit the CFO with the concept of the “CAC decay”. Explain that, on any given day, only 5% of a brand’s total addressable market is in the buying phase of the funnel. (That one is from the clever people at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute). Your job is to ensure that when a potential customer joins the 5% who are ready to buy, at some point in the future, they have an affinity for your brand and your products. You have already created the trust. This drastically lowers the cost of acquiring that customer via search or paid social later. But the brand film doesn’t get the credit for the conversion.

So the concept of the brand film is simple: They might not be ready to buy today, so make something they’ll remember tomorrow. 

Brands are so focussed on feeding the algorithm and pumping out more and more content, that the shelf life of the content goes down and down. 

Invest in your brand and you’ll save on direct acquisition further down the line. 

The Multiplier Effect: Concrete Impact on Business Goals

This might be a harder sell, but we’re going to say it anyway (and you should too): a brand film isn’t just marketing.

A premium brand film is a multi-departmental asset which has an impact across the whole business. 

When pitching the brand film to multiple stakeholders, you need to refer to the impacts they actually care about. 

• Sales and revenue: A premium brand film builds trust and brand affinity. This in turn reduces sales friction and shortens the conversion cycle. It makes it easier to generate money. 

• Talent acquisition: Recruitment is incredibly expensive, and costs brands thousands of pounds before they paid a single thing to the chosen candidate. But a compelling brand film makes the right people want to work for you. It’s not just an advertising tool but an employer branding one. By positioning yourself as a premium brand you attract stronger talent and reduce recruitment fees. 

• Investor relations and fundraising: For start-ups and scale-ups, a cinematic brand film isn’t just for customers, it can be used to win over a new investor. The premium brand film is the ultimate opener to the pitch deck. It signals maturity, stability and long-term vision to the backer. 

Why the Giants Do It, and Why the Challengers Should Too

Discounting prices is a race to the bottom, and whatever you set the price at, becomes the price that customers are willing to pay. The way to maintain a high ticket price is to provide the potential customer with reasons why. Patagonia, Yeti and Nike don’t make brand films because it’s fun (although we’ll tell you that it is). They do it to get their audience emotionally invested in the product. 

It’s this emotion that ensures the customer will pay a premium price and won’t wait for the inevitable discount. So the brand film isn’t a luxury. It’s protecting your margin. 

If anything, we’d argue challenger brands need premium brand films more than the big brands. Everybody knows what Nike is all about. The challenger brand needs to earn the public’s trust. For new brands, trust is measured in minus numbers. It’s built up over time. Not by discounts, or “time is running out”, but by tapping into the emotions of the viewer, helping them to understand what the brand is all about, and giving them a reason to care. 

A great brand film can help a challenger brand punch above its weight, building authority and projecting scale. It will separate the brand from an alternative reliant upon cheap, AI-generated videos, or forgettable, recycled social media trends. 

The eklectics Advantage (Authenticity as a Commercial Tool)

There is plenty of discourse online about the digital consumption of gen-z and the growing skepticism towards advertising felt by everyone online. It’s harder than ever to break through the noise and resonate with somebody. 

Advertising doesn’t only grow more expensive, it gets less and less effective. The modern consumer is looking for authenticity… and what’s more authentic than a documentary film?

Our agency is run by award-winning documentary filmmakers and we love this medium for its ability to send a message and hit people where it matters. We bring all of our experience, craft and sensibility to our brand film work. It’s about doing something real. Because people can tell when it isn’t. 

Squeezing More Juice Out of The Asset

When we’re assessing the return of the brand film investment, we’re not just looking at a hefty video file, we’re looking that everything else that comes with it.

Say eklectics delivers a 2-minute hero film for your website, the impact doesn’t stop there. We’ll provide social cut downs, vertical reels, stills photography and internal training assets. 

With our new Distribution+ services, we’ll even support you with audience identification and publishing strategy to maximise your audience.

Investing several thousands pounds in a video sounds a lot more expensive than spending it on months of premium, multi-channel collateral, supporting multiple departments, boosting sales, recruitment and fundraising potential. 

Stop Making Content

Sometimes, if you want to make a premium brand film, you’ll need to speak the board’s language to unlock the budget. So hit them with a reduced, long-term CAC, a multi-purpose asset for all departments, and an irrationally loyal customer base who don’t act on price alone. 

If you want that kind of impact, you need to produce something worthy of it. Not disposable social media content, but something that moves people. 

People forget content. They remember how you made them feel. 

Want the exact blueprint for building cult brand loyalty through proper filmmaking?

Download our brand new playbook, Stop Making Content. We’ll show you how to blow people’s minds, not put them to sleep.