With so many businesses producing a marketing video, not having your own is like slamming the door in the face of potential customers. Video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo make distribution easy! Effectively these are free worldwide broadcast networks; and their business potential is huge! For the more ‘traditional’ corporate video user Blu-Ray technology means that for exhibition or display use your product or service can really shine in cinema quality. And of course traditional DVD and IPTV technologies mean even more opportunities to take the big blue-chip companies on at their own level!
You might already own a fancy video camera and a high-end computer with all the latest editing software. I’ve even seen software advertised that claims to turn you into an online video producer in five minutes! It all seems too good to be true!
So you think you’re ready to shoot your corporate video? You couldn’t be more wrong! Barnum was talking nonsense, there is such a thing as bad publicity. Just ask Gerald Ratner !
The first thing to realise is that cameras don’t take pictures. People take pictures! Cameras are just the tools that allow them to do it! And tools require skill to use.
Put a chainsaw in the hands of an untrained operator and they’re more likely to remove a limb from themselves than from a tree! And just ask anyone who works in an A&E department to relate a few tales of DIY injuries!
There is far more to the process of making a corporate video than simply getting pictures on the screen! Anything done for marketing or PR purposes is by definition a piece of professional communication. And the implications of what you do at a professional level cut across issues of technical competence, legal safety, aesthetic merit, communicative effect and cost effectiveness. Your business may be tiny, but when you step onto that world-class stage you’re presentation needs to compete with that of giants.
So what are these five golden rules to making a good corporate video?
1) Hire a pro…
What will make your video stand out from the others? How will it be different so that your potential customers will notice you? And will they notice you for the right reasons? Will your online video generate sales leads or just get lost among all the random chaff out there? Or worse still, will your online video turn you into a complete laughing stock?
The thing you don’t want is for your video to stand out because it’s a DIY disaster. And you especially don’t want your business credibility to be ‘injured’ because your corporate video has become a viral comedy.
So, cameras don’t take pictures and putting tools in the hands of people who don’t know how to use them can be dangerous. Where do we go from here? Well, to the same place you’d go to get any job done. To a person who not only owns all the right tools for the job but has the skills to use them safely and effectively. You need to speak to a properly qualified video producer. That means someone who has either….
1) Completed a proper apprenticeship/traineeship with a major broadcaster and probably a course of formal study and examination associated with that.
2) Studied TV production to a minimum of Higher National level at a legitimate academic institution such as an FE/HE college.
3) Holds a degree level qualification in TV production from a UK or credible overseas university.
Be warned. There are no other routes to becoming a legitimate, properly qualified professional within the UK TV and Video production industries. So DO look for someone with a proper degree, HND or who served an apprenticeship with one of the big well-known broadcasters. And DON’T be taken in by someone sporting sham ‘qualifications’ or ‘letters’ after their name that have been issued by some trade association. These sham qualifications are no more credible than a $10 degree bought off Ebay!
Preferably try to find someone with at least 5 years post-educational experience to lead the production side of the project.
Qualified video producers work at all market levels. Some specialise in producing very low budget programmes. Others work at the high end broadcast/blue chip level. Across the range they work to various business models. You may for instance find yourself dealing with a one-man-band (even at blue chip level) or equally well a small company which can deploy several teams at once (even at the cheaper end of the market). Or perhaps one of the major blue-chip oriented production houses? You pays your money and you takes your choice!
There is a really wide choice of qualified producers in the UK all with varying styles, capabilities and specialities. The best advice here is that once you’ve established they are properly qualified is to go with someone who you personally like, who’s visual style you like and who you can get on with on a face to face basis.
Budget wise you’ll save money by going to a small independent producer, perhaps a solo broadcast freelancer or someone who specialises in the low budget market. Bigger firms can often offer a more ‘corporate’ experience with plush premises and good levels of hospitality. Often this is backed up by more advanced technical capabilities. But equally often that’s not particularly obvious in the end product and can simply bloat the final invoice.
2) The script, the script and the story matter most…
Ok; so you have your qualified producer in place, or at least you’ve made the initial contact…
From the outset realise that you’re not just hiring them for their kit any more than you take your car to the garage to be serviced just because the guy there has a full set of spanners!
Of course you expect them to have a full range of shooting, lighting and sound equipment! And it is absolutely necessary to have all the right tools for the job; which is another reason you’re not going to get away with doing the programme on your camcorder and laptop. But primarily you’re paying for their skill and knowledge.
It’s important for you to realise that it’s your story the producer has to tell. And it’s that story that will make or break your video.
Now, all trained video producers know how to glean a story from the information available to them. But few are psychic! And it helps enormously if you have clear, well defined ideas about what you want. That doesn’t mean the producer should be prepared to abdicate responsibility for the shooting script or any other aspect of production (run a mile from any who are!). But any producer worth their salt will welcome your basic script ideas with open arms.
Of course you don’t have to do that; but it’s preferable. If you prefer to take a back seat here the producer will work with what they can gather , and generally do so to good effect. But good producers actually prefer a high level of client input.
Where to start though? Humans are almost literally hard-wired towards engaging with a narrative flow; a story in other words. I can tell you with absolute certainty that your audience wants a story. And this is where many corporate videos fall down. In fact it’s where many corporate presentations in general fall down!
Fact: A series of facts and figures and image statements is completely un-engaging!
So instead tell your audience a story. Beginning, middle, end. What, why and how… What do you do? Why do you do it? How will it help them? Build your facts and figures and policies and image statements into that story. And close with an opening… Give the viewer the chance to interact with you. Simple!
3) Make them care…
Next, consider the Vicky Pollard effect. Are they bovvered?
Like it or not emotion plays a big part in business decisions. It’s not all about logic. You need to make the viewer care about you and care about what you do and what you have to say. And in business, that’s hard!
Caring means being concerned about and sympathetic to your message. How do you engender that? Why should your audience be concerned and sympathetic about what you do? Your clients are busy, serious minded people. You competitors are just a click away and their message is engaging and inspiring and passionate and thoroughly professional and they have confidence in it….
It’s a tough act to follow. Your corporate video should have the same if not greater passion. Again; people don’t particularly care about statistics, comparisons, charts and graphs, and I make no apology for labouring that point.
People use and value these things as tools. They use them to compare nuts and bolts and to verify things but, particularly in these post-spin doctor times, people are cynical and suspicious of stats and charts. Even though a point might be ‘provable’ with statistics it’s far more believable if it’s backed up with a personal story.
Connect with something within a person and they’ll trust you. What’s more, they’ll encourage others to trust you too.
4) Culture the Benefits…
The thing with your business is it’s all about you. And your customer’s business is all about THEM! We’re not robots, emotion is what makes us human and being human isn’t a bad thing!
Let the benefits of your product or service take precedence over the features; the logic of this is actually fairly clear… Features can easily be built into or cut out of any product. Price, performance, facilities, all are factors that are directly measurable one against the other. And we all know that we balance features against each other to place our product or service at a given point in the market.
The features of a product or service satisfy the logical, rational mechanistic side of the human psyche . But what’s left after logic? Where does your unique selling point really lie? Assume for a moment that the logical mind is satisfied with the features you offer. And that they’re better than your competitors. Surely you’ll corner the market?
Yes; I’m being deliberately silly here! Of course it’s more complicated than that. Ultimately, we are motivated to purchase things by our feelings and emotions. We feel good buying your product. We feel empowered using your service. Your customers don’t feel the features. They feel your benefits. Sell the benefits. It’s about them, not you.
5) Kiss and tell…
I’m often baffled to review our website’s search logs to find people looking for one hour and two hour corporate videos. This is, by far, away too long for a marketing video.
Commercial television has conditioned people to expect the commercial message in short bursts. Very successful corporate marketing videos are often no more than two minutes in length. And a typical running time is under five minutes. Occasionally a very complex factual presentation might run to twenty minutes or more.
But really the golden rule here is to stick to the old cliché, Keep It Short and Simple… Your sales and marketing video, your corporate profile, your exhibition video all should open doors for your sales force. They shouldn’t replace them!
Keep it Short and Simple and Tell them what you can do for them!
Matt Quinn,
