2.2 Common traits of effective videos featuring entrepreneurial digital oratory

Business pitches in the form of online video occupy a specific subgenre of “digital oratory,” which as a genre “can be described as thesis-driven, vocal, embodied public address that is housed within (online) new media platforms (and that ideally takes advantage of the developing/flux-laden conventions that the online video context provides)” (Lind, 2012). What those conventions are, however, has required significant recent theoretical explanation (Rossette-Crake, 2022). Entrepreneurial digital oratory forms a subgenre of digital oratory that can be understood as those audio-video productions, housed and disseminated online, featuring a business-minded speaker sharing information with their audience for the purposes of explaining, expanding, or otherwise advancing their entrepreneurial business activities. Common examples include product and service overview videos made by startups seeking investment funding, such as the pitch videos posted to popular crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Understanding and abiding by the emergent conventions of the digital oratory is essential for the entrepreneur hoping to have success within this digital context. As described below, important analytical and experimental studies have thus contributed, in recent years, significant understandings of what conventions do and do not tend to produce success.
Having a spokesperson in the video can critically increase the likelihood of funding. The presence of the spokesperson, however, is a complex feature that help or hurt the video’s chances based on both the editing and the performative delivery. Li et al (2021) find that the spokesperson appearing early in the video increases success. The spokesperson serves as the vehicle for trust and emotional resonance (Jiang et al., 2019). Their vocal delivery is part of that resonance, cultivating a sense of passion and preparedness that can correlate positively with funding success (Allison et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2017; J. (Jason) Li et al., 2017). Even negative facial expressions can amplify the impact of critical proposition data, such as expressing the pain point that the entrepreneurial endeavor solves, thereby increasing funding success potential (Huang et al., 2023).
The spokesperson’s persona must be presented in a strategically advantageous way to positively impact the video. As Korzynski et al. (2021) describe, sharing positive attributes about self, such as experience and appearing hard-wording, can bolster the campaign’s persuasiveness. However, if their persona becomes menacing or wages in intimidation, the pitch becomes less successful. Those findings are consistent with Hou et al’s (2019) findings that fear imagery is negatively associated with entrepreneurial video success.
Demonstration of a business’s product or service is likewise a unique asset to video pitches, embracing a competitive advantage video has over text. As Courtney et al. (2017), describe, multimedia campaigns allow the entrepreneur to “display a working model, prototype, or beta versions of the product” that demonstrate progress, credibility, and viability to potential backers. As Yang et al. (2020) find, any multimedia integrations must be designed in a way that complements instead of overshadows the argumentative content of the video to be effective.