Corporate Video Production – What Works and Why

Posted on Apr 4, 2012 in Social Video, Views You Can Use | 4 comments

Editor’s Note: Jimm is a friend, a great producer and a straight shooter. His chart analyzes the ‘then’ and ‘now’ of video and includes a link to “51 ways to use web video to help your business grow,” Also, click here for more tips on how to max video ROI. Enjoy. – Larry Thomas

 

By Jimm Fox, President, One Market Media

Over the last few years the use and application of corporate video has undergone significant change.  We’re moving inexorably from the text web to the ‘next web.’ Whatever this evolution may bring, one thing is certain – video and interactive media will play a growing role in how all company’s position and promote themselves.

We’ve put together a chart to highlight some of the key changes that have taken place in corporate video production:

 

Traditional approach What works today What’s changed?
Focus of corporate video Your business or product Solving your customer’s problems The focus of video used to be just about promoting your ‘brand ‘- that usually meant a lot of talk about yourself.
Budget Large Small – Medium Production costs have dropped and corporations are being far more tactical with their use of video today.
Access to videos Tightly controlled by the sales team or marketing Created with the express purpose of being shared… everywhere. Social marketing isn’t a trend. People trust friends and colleagues considerably more than they trust corporations.
Primary delivery
method		 - Tradeshows
- Meetings
- Sales Calls		 Web, as well as other traditional methods Soon, everything will be ‘online’ – broadcast media, corporate communications, presentations, etc.
Typical message delivery Actor, presenter or professional voice-over Real people saying real things Your customer is more skeptical than ever. Actors still have a place in video, but nothing can replace the value of a real employee representing your company in your corporate video.
Desired perception of a corporate video Authoritative  Informative  ’Pizzazz’ isn’t what it used to be. Sounding helpful is better than sounding important. ‘Important’ is about you. ‘Helpful’ is really about the customer.
Frequency of production 1 or 2 videos a year 10’s or even 100’s of videos It used to be that marketing would set aside $50,000 for one video. Today it might make more sense to set aside $50,000 for ten or more videos.
Scope of video production Broad – a single video covered as much ground as possible Narrow – video focuses on a specific audience with a targeted message There will always be a place for large scale video productions but the vast majority of videos will be targeted videos delivering a single message to a single audience.
Where videos are found on a corporate website In your ‘video’ section Wherever customers need to view video on your site No one comes to your site looking for a video (unless you are YouTube).  They come to your site looking to solve a business problem.
Where videos should be found On your website Wherever your client happens to be: YouTube, a business portal, on their mobile phone, searching, etc.) Your website isn’t the ‘destination’ you think it is. Creating content that can be viewed wherever your customer happens to be makes a lot of sense.
Uses of Video - TV Commercials
- Sales  Presentations
- Homepage of your website.		 - Customer Testimonials
- Video Case studies
-  Product ‘explainer’ videos
- Product FAQ
- Event promotion
- Recruiting
- Viral Video
- Content marketing
- Infomercials
- Interactive video
- Branded entertainment
- Video press releases
- Community relations videos
- etc.
- click here to discover  51 ways to use video to promote your business		 The number of uses of video continues to grow every day.

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Jimm Fox is President of One Market Media – a video marketing company in Canada ( Ottawa Video Production – One Market Media). Working client-side with Alcatel-Lucent in Paris and Ottawa and with IBM in Toronto or agency-side as managing partner at Animatics Interactive and as founder and President of Shoreline Communications, Jimm has been leading media projects for over twenty years.   Learn more about Jimm on LinkedIn and contact him directly at jimm.fox@onemarketmedia.com.