If you are under 40 you probably escaped it.
If you are over 50 you suffered through it time and time again.
The dramatic ritual of other people’s slides.
Remember those evenings?!
Everyone in the dark for hours watching images of a holiday scroll by.
Someone else’s.
Actually, more often than not, another couple’s.
Maybe there was a beautiful one here and there, but a parade of sunsets, portraits, her on the terrace, him on the beach, the restaurant, the hotel, the palm tree, the incredibly nice lifeguard (the wife said), I did not find him that nice (the husband replied).
And then the dune buggy, the excursion, the camel etc.
You get the idea, right?
Today, now that this terrible social ritual is gone, you can experience the exact same chills in two ways.
One: open a random Facebook profile and scroll through the photos uploaded there.
Two: watch the majority of boat videos (or photos) found online.
In both cases you get the same emotional involvement you had with another couple’s holiday slides.
Maybe you find a couple of better shots, or an image worth pausing on that truly gives you an emotion.
But for the rest it is a sequence of scenes that are always the same and always mute.
Mute because they tell you nothing.
There is no story, no narrative, no evolution.
Photos? The boat is either empty and stationary, or with him and her.
In the second version it can be either stationary or moving.
Thanks to AI, today we also have images of boats moving without him or her.
Videos? A boat sailing (shot from a drone). Crew layout: him at the helm, her on the sundeck (bow or stern).
Some heroic screenwriter even thought of a highly courageous interpretation with her at the throttles, but generally with the boat stationary.
Perhaps to show that the lady can also stand up and not just lie down soaking up the sun.
The end.
So, since you spend money on photo and video productions, why do you condemn yourself to communication that is as attractive as other people’s slides?
A boat is a boat.
Reduced to the essentials: something that keeps you afloat and, if desired, moves you from A to B through the water.
Every boat guarantees this.
Even your competitor’s.
What only you can give me is a reason to choose yours.
Not a list of features.
A reason.
Take me to the North Cape in August.
Make me feel like I am the only one in the bay at six in the morning.
Or convince me that with your boat moored in the harbour I will look like someone who made the right choices in life.
The “smooth passage over the wave” and the “large and spacious sundecks” can still be shown, but inside a story they become proof, not promises.
You let the client form that idea without needing to tell them all over again using the exact same words.
Some of the most successful brands focused precisely on this change of perspective.
One shipyard and one accessory brand.
Absolute Yachts, with the Navetta series, sold volume, comfort and a “home-like” life on board – meaning a promise of a living experience beyond the boat.
Dockmate received dozens of inquiries because they showed the beauty of stress-free docking, rather than showing how ergonomic the remote control is.
In short, give me something that is emotionally valuable to me.
And then I think, what if the reason is actually something else?
That is, brands create boring content not because they cannot do better, but because they are afraid to tell a story – because a story implies a point of view.
And a point of view implies that someone might not share it.
Much more comfortable to make the drone boat video sailing along.
