The Video Your Product Launch Actually Needs

I've shot product launches for Nike, Sony, and a dozen brands in between. And the thing nobody wants to say out loud is this: most product launch videos are expensive wallpaper.

They look beautiful. The lighting is perfect. The color grade pops. And then they disappear into the internet with a fraction of the conversions the brand expected, and nobody's quite sure why.

I know why. And it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what brand video production is actually supposed to do.

Pretty vs. Converting

When I was brought in for the Infatuation x Nike Joyride shoot, the brief wasn't "make it look cool." That's the default brief. Every brand asks for that. The actual question worth answering is: what do you want someone to feel in the thirty seconds after they stop watching?

If the answer is "they should feel like buying" — which it usually is — then the video has to be built around that emotion from the first frame. Not the last thirty seconds. The first frame.

Most product launch videos are built backwards. They spend 80% of runtime on the product's features, and the final ten seconds trying to create an emotional response that hasn't been earned. It doesn't work. You can't demand an emotional response. You have to construct the conditions that make it inevitable.

What Actually Works in Brand Video Production

Lead with the problem, not the product

Your viewer's attention is a limited resource. The second they feel like they're watching an ad, their guard goes up. The way around that is to start with a truth they recognize — a problem, a feeling, a moment of friction — before you ever show what you're selling.

For the Nike Jordan Luka 3 shoot, the setup wasn't "here's a shoe." It was "here's what it feels like to be moving at speed and needing something that won't quit on you." The product entered a story that was already in motion. That's the difference.

Give it a point of view

The worst product videos have no opinion. They're neutral. Balanced. Safe. And completely forgettable.

Great brand video production picks a side. It says something about the kind of person who buys this, the kind of moment they're in, the kind of world they want to live in. It might not appeal to everyone. It appeals deeply to the right people.

Sony's Kando 5.0 is a good example of this. We weren't making a product demo. We were making a declaration about what it means to be a creator who takes their tools seriously. That point of view did more to position the product line than any spec sheet could.

Match the format to the platform — before you shoot

This is where most brand video shoots go wrong at the planning stage. You can't shoot a single master cut and expect it to work everywhere.

A :60 brand video that performs on a homepage looks nothing like a :15 cut for Instagram Stories, which looks nothing like a loop-optimized TikTok version. The framing decisions, the pacing, the information hierarchy — these all change based on where the video will live and how it will be watched.

When I approach a product launch, the first conversation isn't about aesthetics. It's about distribution. Where does this live? How will people find it? Are they scrolling, or are they actively seeking? The answers determine everything downstream.

The Failure Mode Nobody Talks About

There's a particular kind of product launch video I see constantly, and it almost always comes from the same brief: "We want it to feel premium."

Premium is the enemy of specific. When you optimize for a feeling of luxury or quality or sophistication, you tend to drain the video of the specific detail that makes people actually care. You get beautiful abstraction. You get perfectly executed nothing.

The videos that convert aren't the most polished. They're the most precise. They know exactly who they're talking to, exactly what moment they're capturing, and exactly what they want that person to do next.

Where to Start

If you're planning a product launch and thinking about video, here's the only brief that matters: who is the one person this is for, what are they feeling before they watch it, and what do you want them to feel and do after?

Start there. Build backwards from that person, that feeling, that action. Everything else — the gear, the crew, the locations — is execution. Strategy comes first.

I've built this process across dozens of brand video productions. If you're launching something and want it to actually work, the conversation starts with strategy, not aesthetics.

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Building a product launch and want video that converts? Let's talk about what you're making and who it's for.