Making a Great Corporate Video: 11 Ways to Make it SHINE!

11 Ways to Create a Great Corporate Video

1 - Do you really want a 'Corporate' Video? Who wants to watch a corporate video? 'Corporate' sounds dry and boring to me. What you want to tell is a compelling story. Long or short, simple or complicated, telling great stories is how you make something mundane into something watchable and entertaining. In the end what people remember is a good story and something that's not a cookie cutter production.  How do you get that production?  You work with a production team that takes the time to get to know you and your culture, and then tells some compelling stories about your organization.  (We know how to do that at deweymedia + partners).

2 - Survey the landscape.  What kind of videos are your competitors making?  How are they telling their stories? Get a grasp of what (if anything) your competitors are doing, and make a list with outlining their messaging points.

3 - Bigger than life.  How do you make a your story shine? Make it bigger than life. Make it filmic with great music and graphics, good 'casting' of people in your organization and a then tell a great story.  You may not need all those elements, but you need to think big, bigger than life - bigger than average, because average doesn't cut it.  With so much good video out there, you have to stand above the pack.  So just how do you do that?  Keep reading.

4 - What do you like?  What are the videos you do like?  How long are they?  What resonates?  The music, the images, the voices or the editing?   Save links. 

5 - What don't you like? Sometimes I think this is more important than what you do like because it helps you understand the things that don't work for you and your organization. Get a good understanding of why you don't like what you see.  Remeber many elements of taste are subjective.   Bad is as important as good to a filmmaker because that's how we can better understand your tastes. 

6 - Borrow from the Best.  An old advertising saying says 'steal from the best.'  Everything is derivative or borrows from something else we have seen, heard or read.  There are no original ideas so don't be shy about taking a great idea and adapting for your purposes.  That doesn't mean copying an idea line for line, but it does mean a good concept in an existing video might  work for you too.

7 - What can you really afford?  I can't tell you how many times people have come to me asking for the moon with a tiny budget.  Sure there are cool tricks and short cuts but you can only cut so many corners before you start shooting yourself in the foot. Be realistic. If you start chipping away at the budget around the edges you may prune the concept right out of the video.  And remember, the low cost provider may not give you the best final product.  Using an inexperienced young kid a year out of film school may seem like a brilliant 'can't lose idea' until you have invested days of your time and you realize she doesn't really know how to talk to people in a large organization, you have bad sound recordings and she has pissed off three tiers of management making them wait until she's ready.

8. Prepare for Take-off.   Understand the process.  If you haven't made a video before, make sure you know how it works - all the steps from Pre-Production through Post Production and DVD duplication or web delivery and best practices web site design for video, plus how to best facilitate the entire process. Assign a capable, knowledgeable and will-liked project manager from your company, because your going to need a lot of good will to get a project like this done.

9. Business Unusual.  Making a video is not normal business for an organization - and a production is likely to slow things down. Employees like to watch and things take longer to film than they do in real life. Real fuses (in the electrical boards) blow, and people arrive late and often get nervous on camera. These are all parts of a normal production day. Relax, make it into a fun day of work and expect the unexpected.

10. Short is Better.  Please, REMEMBER THIS.  You can't tell it all.  You can't tell it all.  You can't tell it all.  Once you conclude that there's no way to tell it all you can hone in on what story (or stories) you should tell.   Your video is normally an introduction, a story, an overview, a profile, a case study or an explanation of a few complicated ideas.

11. Enjoy the Ride. Once you realize how easy video is to make, you can see new opportunities it provides. From new product introductions, to HR training, to company/organization overviews, to internal communications with your employees to external communications with customers. There are many ways to speak to your audiences, and maybe some don't need video, but as our constituencies become increasingly video savvy, why not make life easier for them by giving them user friendly communications tools.

 

Paul Dewey wrote this for Digital Content Producer.

Pay for Play: Buying Your Company Onto the Air

Over the years a number of my clients have been approached with various offers from companies to get their company or school's 'story' on the air.  The 'air' ranged from a program, which ran on ABC's Lifetime, to PBS programming to interstitials running on U.S. Airline programming.   Prices for programming ranged from $20k to $40k for a 3-5 minute story.   One element of the sale was that some mid-level TV personalities are involved with some of the production companies making the pieces.

A recent NY Times story   highlights some recent confusion surrounding these so-called 'pay for play' content pitches.  The confusion ranges from what the companies were offering to how the programming could wind up on PBS. 

I have always found this kind of pitch extremely fishy.  Almost any journalist worth his or her salt will tell you that buying a positive news-like story about your company is, at best, highly suspect.  Before shelling out money and running to the publicity bank, companies need to understand who is watching these programs, the details of the time slots and audience demographic profiles.  A client might also try to determine who is researching and writing the piece and who gets final approval on the script before it is completed.

I have been told that some production companies charge clients for usage of the footage, even after the program has aired - so despite paying for the piece the client does not own the final product.  I guess it's another way to make more money of that client. 

While the old adage 'any publicity is good publicity' might ring in the ears of marketing teams at lesser known companies, there are myriad ways to disseminate a story in the new Wild West of the Internet.  Finally, it should go without saying -- before signing on the dotted line carefully read the fine print.  Caveat emptor.