Stories that appear too polished and packaged, with extreme close-ups of speakers and over-use of music, will often deliver a very different message from the one you're hoping to communicate: inauthentic. Overly-produced videos run counter to the current social media environment and the pressure for companies to be more conversational in how they communicate.

Here's a healthcare video that's a good example of what we're talking about. Produced by a for-profit patient safety education company, it's one of a series of videos being sold to hospitals for staff education purposes as well as also running on YouTube. As you will quickly see, it's professionally produced and while the production values themselves are solid, I think they end up undermining the real impact of the message.

So what do you think? Does this feel like authentic storytelling to you? Would it have felt more genuine if the interviews didn't seem quite so staged? What about the music? Did it drive home the message or was it too sappy? And how about the length of the video? Did it hold you or would you have been more interested if it was about two minutes shorter?

This type of "inauthentic" storytelling is still alive and well because companies feel they are simply too busy to tell their own story.

Not only is it inauthentic, but it's also ineffective.