How do you make technical writing compelling in a promo video?
We’ve been wrestling with this question this week as we planned a video for our online Help documentation writing service.
The challenge seemed straightforward at first: create a compelling video for our website. But the more we discussed it, the more complicated it became.
Do you showcase cost savings: the support tickets avoided, the hours saved?
Do you feature happy, smiling customers singing your praises?
Or do you take a completely different approach?
Finding our message
We needed to channel our inner “Mad Men” and develop a script that would resonate. A video is one of the most powerful ways to capture attention on a website: those first few seconds can make or break whether someone understands what you do and why it matters.
But having a video isn’t enough. The message has to, as the kids say, land.
We could have taken the safe route: show a frustrated user struggling with bad documentation, then reveal how our service saves the day. It’s been done a thousand times. It works, but it felt generic.
The theme that worked for us
After a few rounds of brainstorming, we landed on something that relates directly to today’s reality: writing for both humans and AI.
For software companies, this isn’t just a nice to have anymore. It’s a real, immediate challenge.
Your documentation needs to serve two masters. It has to guide human users effectively, with clear explanations and intuitive structure.
But it also needs to be optimised for AI agents, chatbots, and search algorithms that are increasingly becoming the first point of contact for user questions.
When your documentation fails at either task, the consequences are tangible. Users get stuck. Support costs rise. And worryingly, AI tools give incorrect or incomplete answers because they can’t parse your content properly.
Why this now matters to software developers
This dual audience isn’t a future problem, it’s happening right now.
Search engines are using AI to interpret and summarise documentation. Users are asking ChatGPT and other tools to explain how software works.
If they’re using your competitor’s information to provide the answer, you’re in a pickle.
If your help content isn’t written with both audiences in mind, you’re already behind.
That’s the story we decided to tell in our video. Not just what we do, but why it matters in this specific moment. It’s a challenge our clients face every day, and one that’s only going to become more critical.
Keeping it real (and realistic)
Something we learnt along the way: perfection is the enemy of done.
We could have spent months refining every frame, obsessing over production quality until it looked like a flashy Super Bowl commercial.
But the law of diminishing returns kicks in fast with video production. After a certain point, you’re investing exponentially more time and money for marginal improvements that most viewers won’t even notice.
For example, we originally planned for the robot to be sitting hidden behind the user, and it would then lean over and wave. After 30 minutes of battling with Veo 3 to get it to generate that scene, we gave up and used what Veo had done instead – the robot walks into frame and waves. It’s not as funny as our original intent, but it still conveys the message.
Our video isn’t going to win any advertising awards. It’s not as polished as what you’d see on TV. And that’s OK.
What matters is that it clearly communicates our value proposition and resonates with the people who need our help. Hopefully it does that.
Here is the video:
Sometimes good enough, done and published is better than perfect and stuck in production limbo.
The real measure of success isn’t production value; it’s whether the video helps potential clients understand how we can solve their problem.
How would you script a video like this?
What would be your key messages?
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