Enablement · Micro Demos · Walkthroughs
Product Storytelling
& Enablement
Translating complex software into clear, compelling visual narratives — and building the systems that made product storytelling a repeatable, measurable organizational capability at Toast and beyond.
Product Stories Don't Tell Themselves
Software is invisible. A feature that took an engineering team six months to build can be lost in a product tour, buried in documentation, or explained away in a sales call. Product storytelling exists to close that gap — to make the value of a product viscerally clear to the right audience at exactly the right moment in their decision journey.
At Toast, product video lived at the intersection of brand credibility, sales efficiency, and customer education. The Micro Demo program and Toast in 5 series were not content deliverables — they were sales infrastructure. They gave reps something to send, gave prospects something to believe, and gave the product team a repeatable way to introduce new features at scale.
Building that infrastructure required more than production skill. It required alignment with Product Marketing on messaging hierarchy, with Sales on where content was actually breaking down deals, and with Legal on compliance across thirteen markets. It required a system, not a shoot.
"Product video is not a creative deliverable. It is the bridge between what a product does and what a buyer believes it can do for them."
The Work at Toast
Three distinct product storytelling programs, each solving a different problem in the buyer journey — and each built on the same underlying system of narrative clarity, cross-functional alignment, and modular delivery.
Flagship Program
Toast Micro Demos
60–90 sec feature-specific video
Format
Mid-funnel prospects · Sales sequences · Web PDPs
Audience
PMM · Sales Enablement · Brand · Legal
Partners
US · UK · Ireland · Canada
Markets
Web PDPs · Sales sequences · Paid social
Distribution
The Micro Demo program was Toast's product video infrastructure for mid-funnel conversion. Each demo was engineered to do one specific job: prove that a single product feature solved a specific operational problem for a restaurant owner. The constraint was intentional — focused demos outperform product overview videos at the decision stage because they match the buyer's actual question in that moment.
The Challenge
Sales reps were relying on lengthy product tours and live demos to introduce individual features — a time-intensive process with inconsistent messaging across the team. Prospects were arriving at demos without a clear sense of which product capabilities were most relevant to their specific operation.
The Approach
Designed a brief-first production framework where PMM and Sales identified the highest-friction feature objections before scripting began. Structured every video around a restaurant pain point, not a product feature — making each demo feel like a solution rather than a demonstration. Delivered a modular asset set from every shoot for reuse across web, email, and paid channels.
The Micro Demo library became a core component of Toast's sales enablement stack — giving reps on-demand video assets tailored to specific prospect segments, reducing reliance on live product tours and creating consistent first impressions across thousands of sales interactions.
Series Format
Toast in 5
5-minute guided product walkthrough series
Format
New customers · Onboarding · Self-serve learners
Audience
Product · Customer Success · Brand · PMM
Partners
Help center · Onboarding emails · YouTube
Distribution
Toast in 5 was a guided walkthrough series designed for new and existing customers navigating the Toast platform. Where Micro Demos drove pre-purchase conviction, Toast in 5 reduced post-purchase friction — giving operators the product fluency to get value out of their investment faster, with less reliance on support resources.
The Challenge
New restaurant operators were often overwhelmed in the onboarding phase — Toast's platform is deep, and written documentation alone wasn't getting customers to activation quickly. Support ticket volume for basic setup questions indicated that customers needed a more intuitive, visual learning path.
The Approach
Built a five-minute structure that followed the natural decision sequence of a new operator: set up your menu, configure your team, understand your reports. Each episode was task-completion oriented rather than feature-led — measuring success by whether a viewer could complete the action, not just understand it. Structured the series for both linear and modular consumption.
The series also served as a proof point for product marketing — demonstrating the breadth of the platform through structured walkthrough content that could be surfaced at different stages of the customer lifecycle, from trial to renewal.
Brand · Web · Performance
Homepage & PDP Video
Hero web video · Product page assets
Format
Top-funnel prospects · Direct web visitors
Audience
Brand · Web · PMM · Demand Gen
Partners
Heap · Vidyard · YouTube · LinkedIn
Distribution
Homepage and product detail page videos occupy a unique position in the marketing ecosystem — they are often the first moving image a prospect encounters, and they carry the dual burden of establishing brand emotion and product credibility simultaneously. Updating and optimizing this content at Toast required close collaboration with Brand, PMM, and the Web team to ensure every frame was doing strategic work.
The Challenge
Existing homepage and PDP video assets were inconsistent in tone, length, and product coverage — some reflected older product versions, others prioritized aesthetics over conversion clarity. The web team lacked a reliable process for commissioning, reviewing, and updating video content as the product evolved.
The Approach
Established an audit-and-replace cadence tied to product launch cycles — ensuring PDP video refreshed alongside feature updates rather than lagging behind by months. Collaborated with Demand Gen to align video messaging on high-traffic pages with active paid campaign language, reducing message mismatch across channels. Built a performance tracking workflow to surface which PDP videos were driving engagement versus abandonment. Storyboarded and edited the final video.
Introduced Heap and Vidyard analytics monitoring for PDP video performance — making video behavior on product pages visible to the broader marketing team for the first time, and creating the data foundation for ongoing creative iteration.
One Brief.
Multiple Assets.
Every product storytelling engagement was designed to produce a full asset family — not a single video. Here is what a complete production set looked like.
Top of Funnel
Brand & Hero Video
60–120 second narrative-led piece establishing brand credibility and product category. Lives on homepage, YouTube, and paid campaigns. Emotional and aspirational — designed to make the viewer believe before they investigate.
- Homepage
- Paid Video
- YouTube
- LinkedIn
Mid Funnel
Micro Demo
60–90 second feature-specific proof video. Problem-first narrative arc. Positioned to address the exact objection a prospect carries into a sales conversation. Lives on PDPs, in sales sequences, and in the hands of sales reps.
- Web PDPs
- Sales Sequences
- Email
- SDR Outreach
Sales & Enablement
Sales Cut
30-second distillation of the Micro Demo. Designed for asynchronous sending — a rep can attach it to an email or drop it in a Salesloft sequence without setup. Cuts straight to the value claim with minimal context required.
- Salesloft
- Vidyard
- Async
- Email
- Outreach
Paid Social
Social & Paid Variant
Platform-native 15-second cuts optimized for LinkedIn and paid social. Built with caption-readable structure and native platform dimensions. Repurposes production footage at near-zero incremental cost.
- Salesloft
- Vidyard
- Async
- Email
- Outreach
Customer Education
Product Walkthrough
5-minute guided tutorial structured around task completion. Designed for onboarding, help center embedding, and lifecycle education. Measures success by activation, not just views — did the customer do the thing the video taught?
- Salesloft
- Vidyard
- Async
- Email
- Outreach
Web & SEO
Web Loop & PDP Asset
Silent auto-play loop optimized for product detail pages and landing pages. Supports dwell time and conversion without requiring audio engagement. Kept current with product UI changes on a quarterly refresh cycle.
- Salesloft
- Vidyard
- Async
- Email
- Outreach
Product Storytelling
Across My Career
The discipline of making products legible through story is a through line across every role I have held — in different industries, at different scales, and under very different constraints.
Common Thread Collective
Performance Creative for DTC Products
Embedded with performance marketing teams to translate product data and customer behavior into creative briefs for DTC brands. Built video ads structured around proven purchase triggers — making products feel necessary rather than promoted. Tested narrative structures against conversion metrics and iterated in real time.
Brands spanned apparel, health, consumer goods, and lifestyle — each requiring a distinct narrative approach to the same brief: make someone who has never seen this product believe they cannot live without it.
First Media · So Yummy · Blossom
Platform-Native Product Storytelling at Scale
At First Media, product storytelling meant something specific: making food, lifestyle, and consumer products irresistible to audiences scrolling at speed. Managing 900+ video pipelines across So Yummy, Blossom, and Blusher required developing platform-native storytelling formats that made products feel discoverable rather than advertised.
The operational discipline required to maintain narrative quality and brand consistency across that volume — without a loss in creative effectiveness — became the foundation for the systems thinking I later applied at Toast.
Kharece Productions LLC
Commercial & Branded Product Work
Embedded with performance marketing teams to translate product data and customer behavior into creative briefs for DTC brands. Built video ads structured around proven purchase triggers — making products feel necessary rather than promoted. Tested narrative structures against conversion metrics and iterated in real time.
These engagements taught me that product storytelling at its highest level is not about showing the product — it is about making the audience see themselves in a world made better by having it.
Operating Model
Brief & Stakeholder Alignment
Every product video began with a structured brief — not a production request. The brief captured the audience segment, where they were in the funnel, the one claim the video needed to prove, and the specific objection it needed to neutralize. PMM, Sales, and Brand signed off before a frame was scripted.
Narrative Architecture
Product demos fail when they lead with features. Every Toast Micro Demo was structured around a customer problem first — establishing the friction, then revealing the product as the resolution. This narrative arc made product footage feel like proof rather than promotion, and drove meaningfully higher completion rates.
03
Modular Production Design
Productions were designed from the outset to yield multiple deliverables: a 60–90 second hero demo, a 30-second sales cut, a 15-second paid social version, and a looping web asset. Shooting and editing with modularity in mind tripled the asset output per production without increasing budget or timeline.
04
Performance data from Vidyard, YouTube Analytics, and LinkedIn informed every subsequent production cycle. Completion rates, drop-off points, and click-through data fed directly back into narrative and editing decisions — shifting the team from intuition-based creation to a data-informed creative loop.
Measurement & Iteration
01
Who It Takes to Build
Product Storytelling That Converts
Product video that actually moves deals forward is not a creative output — it is a coordinated organizational effort. Here is who was in the room and what alignment looked like in practice.
Product Marketing
Messaging Architecture & Feature Prioritization
PMM owned the narrative brief upstream — identifying the specific claims each video needed to prove, which customer segment it was targeting, and where in the funnel it would be deployed. Working in lockstep with PMM before scripting began was the single most important quality lever in the entire production process.
Sales & Revenue Enablement
Deal Intelligence & Objection Mapping
Sales reps knew which product features were losing deals in the field — information that rarely made it back to creative teams in most organizations. Building a regular feedback loop with Sales enabled video briefs to address real-world objections rather than hypothetical use cases, making Micro Demos meaningfully more effective in active sequences.
Brand & Creative
Visual Identity & Tone Governance
Product video must feel like the same brand as every other touchpoint in the buyer journey — from the paid ad that first introduced the company to the sales demo that closes the deal. Brand partnership ensured visual consistency across the Micro Demo library regardless of which vendor or team executed the production.
Legal & Compliance
Multi-Market Clearance & IP Governance
International product video across UK, Ireland, and Canada introduced compliance requirements around talent releases, music licensing, product claim substantiation, and regional regulatory standards. Building Legal into the pre-production workflow — not the approval stage — eliminated the delays and rework that had historically slowed the program down.
What Product Storytelling
Actually Is
— Pattern One —
Lead with the Pain
A product demo that opens on a feature loses. A product demo that opens on a problem — one the viewer recognizes immediately — earns the next thirty seconds and every second after.
— Pattern Two —
Build for the Channel
A video on a PDP serves a different function than a video in a sales email or a LinkedIn ad. Designing for a single format creates work. Designing a modular asset architecture creates leverage.
— Pattern Three —
Close the Data Loop
Production without measurement is guesswork. Completion rates, drop-off points, and click-through data are the feedback mechanism that turns a video program into an iterating system rather than a recurring deliverable.
The best product storytelling programs are not built video by video. They are built as systems — where brief, production, distribution, and measurement are connected into a loop that gets smarter with every cycle. That is the difference between content and infrastructure.