Very soon, hardware will cease to be a differentiating factor in corporate video production. 

Way back in the day (i.e. five years ago) the equipment you owned defined your place in the video production hierarchy. Big production houses had very expensive equipment and charged accordingly. Then, out of the blue, Canon added a basic video capture feature to one of their portrait cameras and the video production industry has never been the same.

Today, professional video editing software is virtually free – so cheap that the cost is immaterial. Premiere, Final Cut, Media Composer, Vegas… whichever NLE that suits your purpose – they’re all great products that do much the same thing. The differences between them now relegated to angry LinkedIn rants. Same goes for editing platforms. Nobody knows or cares if you edit on a Mac or a PC. It’s irrelevant.

Hardware still matters in corporate video production today, but not for much longer. Black Magic has just announced a $4,000, 4k camera with a global shutter. That’s astonishing. It’s not perfect, it’s not quite ‘full featured’ and folks with ‘real 4k camera’s’ will dismiss this new camera as something less than ‘professional,’ but that would completely miss the point. 4k workflow is still a bit of a kludge for many, tomorrow it won’t be. Technology is narrowing the gap quicker than any of us realize and the subtleties and nuances that we in the industry chatter about are lost on the average corporate video viewer. Granted, there will always be the need (or desire) to employ the most expensive camera on the market to shoot an immensely complex high-end video for theatre advertising of for broadcast but for the vast majority of corporate video projects the tools we need are readily accessible and they are getting cheaper and better by the day.

We never really see these things coming – we can’t. Our linear brains are not wired to anticipate or predict the effect of exponential growth in technology. The incredible change we’ve witnessed over the past few years in the video production industry is really just the beginning. In a few years we’ll all be shooting and editing in 4k. (Whether it’s one, two or three years doesn’t really matter.) The point is that the cost of hardware is going to follow a similar path to that of software. It will never be free, of course, but it will be cheap enough that hardware will cease to be a differentiating factor in corporate video production.  Everybody is going to have access to the same great equipment and the same great tools. What happens then?

1. A new pecking order will emerge

Each geographic market will continue to have a video production market leader or two – the big name production houses that attract top talent. That won’t change. Beyond and below that however, we’ll start to see a lot of change, in fact that change has already begun. There will continue to be a flow of new market entrants as the cost of production drops. I’m not referring to the steady churn of ‘dabblers’ at the low end of the industry. I mean creative people, marketing people and people with other strategic skills who will begin to take up video production on their own… because they can. We’d all like to think that video production is a highly nuanced craft that requires years of mastery and training but the truth is that if you have talent and drive today there is very little stopping you. You don’t need to work your way up in a production house spending years learning different skills. We’ll also start to see creative firms competing across service specialties. Most ad agencies are already experimenting with video in-house and you will also begin to see video production companies working in social media, marketing and other non-traditional areas. Video production will remain a specialty for some, but for others it will become part of a more integrated offering.

2. More sector specialization

Calling up a prospective customer and saying ‘we do video, would you like some’ used to bear fruit. Today it doesn’t. Being ‘everything to everyone’ isn’t how you want to be positioned going forward. The value in video used to be in production and post-production. Today and tomorrow the real value will be in pre-production. That’s where the ideas, the business logic and marketing strategy are developed. Finding someone who has good equipment and understands how to frame, light and edit won’t be the biggest challenge. The challenge will be finding firms that can help you create a storyboard that delivers some type of measurable business outcome. I’m not diminishing the need for great production and post production skills. I’m saying that these skills, to some degree, will become table-stakes and they will be abundant.  We’re already starting to see the first stages of specialization in the Industry. Video production companies are beginning to specialize in specific business verticals. This evolution is inevitable. As a business owner who would you rather work with; someone who understands the quirks and dynamics of your industry (and someone who might even teach you a few new tricks), or a firm that does corporate video for everyone or simply to finance their entertainment ambitions. As new (non-video production industry trained) entrants come into the market they will bring their business sector knowledge with them – and that will add value to the process. Making beautiful video won’t be as important as making video that achieves a measurable marketing objective. Prospective customers are going to start asking you what type of video you specialize in.

3. More accountability

Accountability is the thing that most production professionals don’t see coming. As the cost of production drops it becomes harder to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Businesses are going to start to hold production houses accountable for results. “Hey, I just shoot and edit video, it’s your script” won’t cut-it. Similarly, winning awards, looking cool and being clever won’t matter the way it used to. As the web becomes the medium of choice for the vast majority of corporate video, feedback and measurement tools will have to become part of your service offering. And why shouldn’t they? This is exactly what business owners want. If you’re going to spend $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or more on a video wouldn’t you want some way of measuring its value to your company? The production houses that bring some level of accountability into the process will thrive. A cool production reel won’t be enough.

4. Video Quality will improve.

I‘m not referring to the overall average quality (average quality has to drop as more people and businesses cycle through bad experiences in the vast lower margins of video production.) I am referring to the quality level of output from most professional video production houses (the folks and businesses who make a full-time living in video production ) – the quality level from full-time production houses will continue to increase. There are many reasons why:

Better tools (all other things being equal) better tools in the hands of professionals will result in higher quality products.

More experimentation. Access to high performance tools will result in more new methods, styles and uses of video. This will lead to better products over time.

Better and quicker learning. There is an unprecedented amount of great training available online either for free or at a very low cost. There are very few secrets in video production today. Just ask Phillip Bloom. Besides that, the best way to learn is by doing, and having access to all of the exciting new tools of production (not just classroom access as was traditionally the case) will result in much faster learning.

Better reference materials. Let’s not kid ourselves, just like in the movie industry; all corporate video production is derivative. We learn from others. We copy others. We do what other people are doing. The quality of reference materials and access to great video samples (i.e. on Vimeo) is accelerating and there is no end of people wanting to showcase their work. We will continue to learn from, and emulate others. The spiral is definitely upwards in this regard.

Specialization. As more people employ video in their marketing activities more specialists will evolve – both in-house and in production houses. This will result in better quality video because the content will become more focused and strategic.

Necessity. Owning equipment used to guarantee you work. Tomorrow it won’t. That means that only companies with initiative and talent will survive. By definition then, the overall quality has to improve.

Business demand. Video marketing will continue to grow in importance. Today video marketing is important mostly for web-based companies and large businesses who can afford broadcast advertising. Tomorrow virtually all businesses will be employing video in their marketing activities.

Allocation of funds will be more efficient. Money spent today on using expensive equipment will be put to better use in pre-production, distribution and measurement.

New and better ecosystems will evolve. As video production increases in use and popularity we’re seeing the development of new and exciting ecosystems develop. Amazon just introduced an automated storyboard tool. Hardware manufactures are all clamoring to announce new motion stabilization tools. All of these support and peripheral tools used in video production will quickly drop in price as competition and broad adoption brings in more money and technology to the industry.

5. Video Production Costs will continue to drop as video production becomes mainstream. (But the amount of work will continue to increase.)

My daughter learned video editing in grade 9 and she’s rather good at it – so are many of her friends. Basic video skills are already a commodity and the downward pressure on equipment prices will result in a hollowing out of the low end of the industry – much the same as we’ve witnessed in photography. Corporations will take simple video production in-house because they can and because it makes sense to do so – especially for basic point and shoot projects. Companies serving the vast and ever-changing middle market will also experience price erosion but specialization and new added-value services should help to alleviate some of this pressure. We’ve seen the same phenomena in website production over the last few years. There is little to no money to be made designing and developing simple/basic websites because there are too many free and DYI options available at the low end. Yet there is still a vibrant market for servicing mid and higher-end websites. The valuable work now for websites is where it always should have been – in creating compelling content. Video will play a larger role in future content creation priorities for corporate websites.

While prices at the high-end of the market have dropped the volume of work has increased dramatically. Television commercials and high-end corporate overview videos used to be the only high-end corporate video production opportunities available but today there are many different types and uses of corporate video.

These market forces will continue to cause production houses to become leaner (and yes, perhaps a bit meaner…) and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. New tech drives new efficiencies in every market it touches. Working out of your house is a good thing. A two-man crew that can do the same work that a three or four-man crew used to do is a good thing. Fitting all of your gear into a car rather than a panel van is also a good thing. Being lean and being nimble is a very smart way to run a business in an industry in transition.

As the cost of equipment continues to drop, talent, drive and specialized skills and knowledge will become critical success factors in corporate video production. What equipment you use won’t really matter.

“Let’s really think this through before we start” is likely the best business advice you will ever receive. Too many video production projects start part way through the process – with a ‘cool idea’, a bad idea, a misguided idea or worst of all, no idea at all. If you haven’t taken the time to properly plan out your production, it will likely fail. By ‘fail’ I mean fail to achieve any measurable business objective. (Being ‘up on your website’ isn’t a meaningful business objective.)

There are many different types of videos that you can create to promote your product or business and there are many factors and costs that go into the production of a video. This post was created to provide the reader with a tool for planning a video production as well as to give the reader an appreciation for the many elements and tasks associated with the creation of a corporate video. Your video project won’t necessarily require each of the steps described below. In fact, some projects (i.e. recording an expert talking-head for training purposes) can be quite straightforward and only require a few of these steps. That said, the success of your video project will largely be determined by the time and effort you put into properly planning your project. If you don’t have a great idea and a solid shooting plan in place no amount of production or post-production expertise and experience can save your project. Consider the following before you start your next video project:

Pre-Production Planning Check-list

The challenge with this phase of video production is that while it’s the most important phase of video production it’s also the hardest to cost-justify. It’s relatively easy to cost-out crew, equipment and editing time, but how much is an idea worth? (A lot, as it turns out) … and who wants to pay for ‘planning?’ If you want your video project to succeed consider the following critical tasks that go into the pre-production phase:

 1. Define your business objective. What do you want your video to do? To raise awareness? To drive traffic to a landing page? To motivate your customers to buy your product? To influence key decision-makers in your industry? To showcase your company as being environmentally conscious ? To clearly differentiate you from your competitors? To save money on travel costs for training or sales? To educate a new target audience on important issues affecting your industry? To drive prospects to the booth at the next trade show you will be attending? The list is infinite but each business objective should have a matching outcome that you can measure. If you can’t clearly articulate your business objective you are wasting your time and money. ‘Having a video up on your website’ or ‘keeping up with your competitors’ are not business objectives. Determining a business objective allows you to focus on outcomes.  Lack of clear focus is the principle reason why business videos fail.
    Answer this question: What do you want to happen when people finish watching your video?

2. Define your audience. Marketing is the process of communicating the value of your product or service to a specific audience.  Unless you are Google or the Catholic Church {merger rumors are unfounded…} you probably have a very narrowly defined audience who can benefit from your product or service. You have to know who your customers and prospects are and you have to differentiate your message for that specific audience. This step typically requires some degree of research. The more narrow the focus the greater chance of success because you can deliver a message that you know your audience cares about. What is the demographic and psycho-graphic make-up of your target audience? What are the needs, preferences and biases of this audience?
  Answer this question: What does this audience care about and how does your product or service relate to those concerns?

3. Develop your message. {We’re still not getting ‘creative’ yet…}  By message I mean what are the ideas, themes or topics that you need to communicate. Ideally there is only one principle message but if you have a broader purpose in mind for your video then you may want to include two or three key messages. What are the things that you need to tell your audience that will resonate with them and what do you expect them to understand AND remember after they have watched your video. Obviously, the more messages you include the less likely your audience is to understand and remember any of them.
    Answer this question: What specific problem am I trying to solve and how do I communicate the solution to that problem?

4. What’s your budget. This topic, more than any other, illicit’s the greatest ‘chicken and egg’ discussions. How can you determine a budget before you come up with the idea?” Or conversely, why would you even bother considering ideas outside of the context of a budget? (“OK!, imagine this… a thousand multicolored toy Poodles all chasing J-Lo, against traffic, through Time Square at rush-hour…”) You might have to do some research if you have no prior experience with video production but at the end of the day you, or someone you report to definitely has a budget for your video project. There is little point in discussing video with anyone if you can’t communicate a budget. If you are unfamiliar with video production costs you can start here as a reference point.
   Answer this question: Find a video similar to what you are thinking about and ask potential video production companies ‘what would a video like this cost to make?’

5. Planned Distribution. While promotion and distribution are outside the scope of this post it’s important to understand how you plan on distributing your video before you create it. Where, how and why will people watch your video. Knowing the answer to those questions will help you determine answers to the next steps in production. A broadcast audience is very different from an audience on a professional business portal and different again from someone viewing your video on a mobile device. There is not a lot of value in creating a video if you don’t have a plan for getting people to view it. Putting it ‘up on your website’ may or may not move the dial. If the video production company you are talking to doesn’t ask this question then I’d suggest getting a second opinion.
Answer this question: How are you going to get people to watch your video?’

6. Concept – What’s the big idea. Often (especially for broadcast commercials) video projects start off as concepts in search of a purpose. (“Imagine a video with these amazing roller-blading babies in diapers, someone’s gonna want it!!!) I suppose that if your concept is epic enough then you can tag a logo on just about any idea and realize some benefit but the execution of most clever ideas never reaches the giddy expectations imagined at conception.  So… back to earth, the vast majority of video production concepts are driven by both practical and creative imperatives. The ‘concept’ or ‘idea’ can be as simple as ‘let’s move the CEO out from behind his big desk and show him actually talking to customers’ or it can be as complex or grand as your imagination and budget allow. Either way, this is where the value is really created. No one might remember who’s idea it was to invite all your brand enthusiasts to a one day event and film them talking about your product but that may be the’ big idea’ responsible for tripling subscription rates on your website.  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to charge for ideas so they typically get wrapped up in execution costs.
   Answer this question:  What is the idea for this video?’

7. Treatment and Storyboard. Your concept or idea is the big picture idea. A ’treatment’ is a summary of how you realize that idea. On larger projects the treatment is usually a one page summary of your idea which will outlines the style of the video and the devices used to communicate your key messages.  From there you need to flush out the video in detail (typically by scene).  For this a ’storyboard’ is created to outline the various sections of your video. The storyboard takes your concept or idea and considers things like: do you use voice-over to support what is being shown; do you use animation anywhere; do you employ actors, if so which ones and how; do you use music to set a tone or maintain a pace; what locations do you shoot at; etc. This is the step where you determine the style, the flow, the length (more on this step below) and the structure of your video. The storyboard is the physical manifestation of the treatment. It breaks down the video into three key components: 1. Script / Narration – what is being said by whom on-screen or as voice-over. 2. What is being shown on screen – where is the action taking place and who or what is in each scene. 3. What other elements (logos, text, animations, cgi, etc. music track, sound effects etc. are needed to support what is being said and shown. Even if you don’t plan on developing a detailed storyboard (as a rule you should…) it’s still a very valuable exercise to write down the structure of your video. It allows you to think through the video in a logical fashion and share this vision with others. It’s also a tremendously valuable tool for accountability. You can’t ask your production company when the video is finished why something wasn’t included during shooting if it wasn’t included in the storyboard. A well written storyboard holds everyone involved accountable.
Answer this question: What are the list of details that need to be included in the video?

8. Length of Video. Shorter is better, but shorter is also harder. Shorter seems riskier because you necessarily have to leave things out and narrow down your message to a very few key ideas. That’s tough to do. But as online attention spans continue to shrink, ‘shorter’ should definitely be the target. ‘Shorter’ is a guideline not a rule, however. If you are creating a product demo, a training video or something else for someone much further along the sales cycle – then these audiences may want more information, they may want more detail. The length of your video then really depends on the motivation of your viewer. A good rule of thumb for promotional videos (targeting the ‘awareness’ or’ interest’ phases of the sales cycle) is between one an two minutes in length. Your video needs to be succinct, it needs to include targeted, relevant information and it better be interesting.
Answer this question:  How long do you need to get to the point of your video?

9. Approvals. Who has to be involved in the approval process. What is their involvement and do they have any input or biases that should be communicated upfront? This becomes much more important in large organizations. If you don’t circulate the storyboard and schedule to the folks involved in approving/blessing the video you may be in for a shock when they tell you that you’ve left something out or you have not represented the material the way they would have liked. Every business video ever made has, prior to release, first been sent to at least one colleague accompanied by the question ‘what do you think of this?’ Why wouldn’t you give the storyboard the same due diligence?
  Answer this question:   Who needs to approve the video and where do they get inserted into the process?

10. Pre-production meetings. The size and scope of the job will determine how many meetings and how many people are involved in the video production process. On large conceptual projects we sometimes hold facilitated story planning meetings with a range of people associated with the project to ensure that we are getting all relevant perspectives on the project. This process has proved invaluable in uncovering stories and reference that no one else would have known about or would have considered. On smaller projects a simple video production brief may be enough to estimate and start the planning process – especially where a good client/supplier relationship already exists. The better the collaboration, the better the outcome.
Answer this question:   Who’s input/perspective would really be of value in the planning process?

11. Scheduling and production planning. Video shoots, even small ones, are logistically challenging. There are a tremendous number of moving parts in video production and as a result there are a tremendous number of things that can go wrong (something always does…) Pre-production planning will minimize the risks associated with your project. Some things to consider before the folks with cameras arrive:

Location Scouting - Where are you going to shoot and what challenges do you have there? Are there lighting, audio or other logistical problems that you will have to solve. A pre-production location visit and discussion with on-site maintenance or security is often necessary.
Permits - Do you require permits for shooting, sign-off /waivers for people in the video, special insurance, parking access for the crew and equipment, etc.
Crew - Who is on your production crew? Camera, Audio, Lights, Director, Production Assistants, Grip for special equipment, Teleprompter operator? When is shooting scheduled to start and how much time is required for everyone to set-up?
Equipment - What type and how many cameras do you need. What do you have as back-up if something goes wrong? Do you have all of the right lights, lenses, audio equipment, jibs, sliders, reflectors, tools, power, etc. necessary? Do you need special equipment or props or products for the shoot.
Talent or Presenters - Who is on-camera? Are they prepared to be on-camera? Have they rehearsed their lines or will they be using a Teleprompter. When should they arrive? What should they be wearing? Do they want / require hair and makeup? Are they on a tight schedule? (The answer here is almost always ‘yes’….)
Weather - Are you shooting outdoors. What happens if it rains/snows/hurricanes? Do you have an alternate shoot date?
Schedule- – Does your storyboard include a shotlist and schedule that let’s everyone know when to arrive and how long each scene or shot is going to take?

If you consider all of the above steps and take the time to properly plan you will have a much higher likelihood of success on your next video production.

Welcome to the billion channel universe.

{Overheard somewhere in the distant future, say…. next year.} “CSI Toledo is a re-run and there aren’t any new disasters on CNN, let’s watch Roger Kaputnik’s lifecast and see what he’s up to! The implications of Google Glass are far-reaching. From privacy issues, to changes in lifestyle, to new forms of entertainment and gaming, to education, to global communication, to new business behaviors, this is a big deal.  While it’s difficult to say which new wearable devices will be the next big thing, or how these devices will be adopted, one thing is certain – we are going to be capturing more and more of our lives on video and we’re going to be augmenting our daily living with easily accessible information and this is going to have a significant effect on all businesses.

We never really see these things coming.

No one saw the internet coming. Even years after it arrived most businesses dismissed it. Same with mobile, social media, tablet computers, and almost everything else. Sometimes mass adoption takes time (although the adoption cycles are getting much shorter) and being an early adopter is not always the best use of scarce resources. Google Glass is a class of device that is going to do two things: 1. Augment our lives with relevant and contextual information and 2. Record and broadcast our lives. Should businesses care if we all begin to stream our geo-tagged, time-coded and narrated life experiences wirelessly to our personal storage accounts where these visual data streams will be parsed, packaged and organized ready for us to add a soundtrack, Instagram ‘look’ and a bit of meta-tagging to so that we can broadcast our every living moment to the world? Yes, businesses should care. Here’s why:

The ‘outernet’. 

This isn’t just ‘augmented’ or ‘virtual’ reality, this is real reality. We’re going to start using technology to capture and share our life experiences, unencumbered, in real-time. This isn’t us behind our first, second or third screens, this is us living, communicating, learning, sharing and recording. The mobile phone got us out from behind our desks. These new devices will integrate with our day-to-day lives and the effect on business will be dramatic.

Customer experiences. Customer testimonials are one of the most powerful marketing tools you can employ. They are social proof – that last thing we need to ice our decision to buy that 7 blade razer. What if instead of a testimonial you could share real customer experiences.  Imagine a POV video that someone shared right after they had an exceptional customer experience with your brand. Or conversely, what if someone shared a nightmare experience with your product or service. (Remember that video of the FedEx guy heaving the computer monitor over the fence… now multiple that by a hundred or a thousand.) What would that do to your brand? Simply put - your company will have nowhere to hide. If your product or service sucks – everyone is going to know about it. If your product or service rocks – that story is going to be shared.

Hyper-Social. Most established companies still don’t ‘get’ social. Many new companies, especially tech companies, exist because of social. These new devices will make us hyper-social. We’re human – social is our nature (except for my crabby neighbor Ned…) and these devices will accelerate this trend. Sharing text and photos was just the first step. Sharing our life experiences will be commonplace and we’ll start to do this across geographic boundaries. We’ll all learn a bit more about each other – that’s a good thing. Businesses have to pay attention.

Customer Support. Imagine being able to share (not explain… not show… but truly share) your experience with someone at the help-desk who can see and experience what you are experiencing - that would be remarkable. Customer support will be a critical success factor for any business that has any degree of complexity in their product or service offering. The best products are the ones you can just use right out of the box (I.e. Apple stuff…). But for those products or services that need explanation, or for when that product isn’t working the way it should, nothing will engender customer loyalty like having someone there to guide you in real time.

Advertising and marketing. (Google has stated that advertising isn’t a priority for this new product. I laughed out loud when I read this.)  There’s already been some pretty good Google Glass parody videos and you can imagine how distracting ads could be with this device but promotion doesn’t need to take form of graphic images or video – it can just be contextually delivered information based on your current situation. This has always been the great promise of Mobile but aside from Foursquare and a few other apps and games, mobile advertising has yet to live up to it’s promise. This will change. The purpose of these glasses is to help you acquire contextually relevant information. That search will be supported by audio queues from you and also by your circumstances. Visual search will also be part of this experience. (Where am I? What is this? Where do I go? Show me who I know is around. etc.) All of these things are advertising and promotional opportunities. Many of these exist today on your cellphone but it’s a kludge. Contextual awareness today is rudimentary. A head’s-up camera is a game-changer. Now your device and apps will be able to interpret your circumstances in real-time and provide relevant information based on your voice requests and preferences.

Market Research. Get a bunch of people together all wearing Google Glass for your focus group sessions and send them off on a brand quest to use / experiment with your product. This is research gold. Real-time feedback amongst peers all sharing and talking about a real-world brand experience – not behind a two way mirror. There is no better measure of a product or service than seeing how it performs in it’s normal environment under normal circumstances. This isn’t just eye tracking, it’s limb, torso, full body and attitude tracking all rolled into one experience.

Internal Communications, Public Relations, Corporate Social Responsibility will all take on new meanings and mandates when you can share the experiences that you are trying to communicate. Instead of stating that ‘our company cares about this, you can prove it by showing what you’ve been doing about it. Talking is good, but real life examples are better.

Get everyone moving again. Over the last few decades we’ve become a society of people who sit at a desk and stare at a piece of glass all day. It’s interesting to note that we spend billions now on air quality, environmental efficiencies and workplace health and safety standards and yet we totally ignore the one thing that is doing us the most harm – sitting all day. These devices could help to reverse that unhealthy trend.

The implications of always communicating, always connected and always recording are huge. Just because 98% of our lives are not that interesting doesn’t mean we’re not going to record them. I’m sure Google is working on an algorithm right now to determine who’s life get’s moved to the first page. Maybe we will start watching each others ‘casts’ instead of television – isn’t this the evolution of Facebook.  (BTW – If anything is going to dislodge Facebook from it’s social perch… this would be it.) This is a development that businesses can’t ignore. From a  shopping experience where access to real-time information such as product specs, reviews, and comparative pricing is available to getting immediate help assembling your new ‘Bjorgen Huugen’ shelving unit, businesses are going to be able to engage with their customers in ways far beyond the mobile capabilities of today.

Bonus video – check out this video put together by college students to demonstrate the creepy, but entertaining possible evolution of this idea.

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We’ve seen this movie before…

Remember a few years back when you were trying to convince your boss that your business needed a real website – not just a ‘web presence’ (an html version of your brochure.) Fast forward to today… finally, your website has evolved to become the information and transactional epicenter of your business (congrats!) but you realize that’s still not enough. Now, everywhere you look on the web you see video.  Every social media ‘poke’, ‘share’, ‘link’, ‘favorite’ and ‘like’ is about some new video that everyone is talking about. Big brands are all over video, your friend’s business has been using video for years now and yet there you and your company are, still finessing the text in your value proposition.

What to do? You know that doing video poorly is a waste of time and money. How do you convince your boss it’s time to invest in Video Marketing? Here are eight business arguments you can use to convince your boss that marketing with video should be a top priority for your business:

1. Social Media is more social with video. If social media is part of your marketing mix (it should be) and you want your content and your messages to be shared, include a video with it. Why? A recent report by Brafton Media indicates that online video is the key driver to effective social marketing and that social media marketing with video should be a priority initiative for marketers in 2013 .The report outlines the three basic reasons that video and social media are such a good fit: People like watching video online, people tend to share things they like and creating sharable content differentiates you from your competitors. The study concludes that ’Brands that create video clips for their specific audiences are likely to see success if videos are shared on social sites, as internet users spend 2.5x more time watching short videos that are personally relevant.’

2. Video generates higher engagement. According to Facebooks best-practices guide, posts including a video generate about 100% more engagement than the average post. Dave Marsey from Digitas tells us in this video that video is one of the key triggers that can drive viewer engagement – that increase in engagement ultimately leads to higher revenue. Video also converts! The research group Visual Web Optimizer ran A/B split tests with video on a specific test offer and found a 46% increase in conversion rates with video compared with just text. The folks at Marketing Experiments have found similar results with video but what’s most interesting is that they’ve also discovered that an offer than combines both strong text AND video is the most effective. Including both formats allows the user to consume the content in the manner which is must suitable to user.

3. Video viewing drives purchase behavior. A recent IDG study reported that ’64% of consumers have researched a product as a result of watching a tech-related video in recent months and close to half of them then looked for a product in a retail store (45%), visited a vendor website or contacted a vendor for information (45%), or purchased a product (44%).’ The same IDG study goes on to explain how much digital is part of consumers lives and that video is becoming the centerpiece of that consumer experience. According to Internet Retailer, over 50% of the people who watch online videos claim that those videos make them more confident about buying a product. This same report also stated that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not. According to Reel SEO, video has become so influential that ’4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video. Today, nearly 1 in 3 shoppers use YouTube to shop for apparel.’

4. Quality video impacts customer perceptions and behaviors.  A 2012 study by Unrly media found that viewer enjoyment of branded video is important because it has a direct impact on key brand metrics. Viewers who enjoyed the video they watched demonstrated 139% higher brand association, 97% higher purchase intent, 35% higher brand favorability, and 14% higher brand recall than their counterparts who did not enjoy the video.

5, Professionally produced  video content is good… and so is User Generated. Comscore released a study that looked at the sales effectivenees of professionally produced videos. Not surprising was the lift in preference for both featured products and the Brands total line was 25% higher after watching the professionally produced video. The User-generated video still generated stronger purchase presence at a lower 16% but what’s interesting is that the combination of professionally produced AND user-generated video produced a combined 35% increase in purchase preference.

6. Video helps your site with SEO. According to Search Engine Watch, ’Google and other search engines work to have a mix of content types displayed in search results (a.k.a., blended search results). For this reason, they give a higher ranking to video content than other forms of Web content in order to make sure that searches consistently display mixed search results.’ (There is an often misquoted 2008 research report conducted by Forrestor that claimed anywhere from a 50% to a 500% lift in search engine performance with the use of video. Forrestor stills agrees in principle with the findings of the report but doesn’t provide any specific performance reference.) A post by Jeremy Scott at REELSEO claims that videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click through rate than their plain text counterparts. 

7. Adding digital video to a TV media plan is very effective. Comscore has released a study looking at the effectiveness of traditional broadcast advertising and online ad buying. Key findings indicate adding a digital video component to a TV media plan can increase reach very efficiently. The report shows that digital video ad formats are just as effective as TV ads and that multi-screen viewers (especially in the younger age segments) need to be marketed to on multiple screens.

8. Video adoption metrics.. (The numbers you see quoted most often) There’s a wealth of statistical information concerning the adoption of video and some of these trends may be relevant to your business. It’s always best to lead with direct evidence, but if that isn’t enough here is a list of trends and stats that you can overwhelm your boss with:

- Youtube attracts a kazillion* viewers a month and a bazillion* videos are uploaded every second. (*estimates)
- 22% of small businesses plan to post a video to YouTube in the next 12 months
- Online video ad spending will double over the next four years.
- Rich media ads with video generate 6 times as many post-ad site visits as standard banner ads.
- Over 90% of advertisers plan to use VANs (video advertising networks) in the coming year.
- 87% of brand and agency marketers use video for content marketing.
- 76% of marketers plan to increase their use of video marketing in the next year.
- Online video has taken the lead from television viewing (84% to 83%) in a recent survey conducted by Nielsen.
- 7 out of 10 B2B marketers use online video. Up 35% from last year.
- 40% of all QR codes take the user to some kind of video content
- Click-thru rates rose 7% to 13& when the word ‘video’ was included in the subject line.
- Forbes Magazine published a report stating 65% of Senior Executives have visited a vendor’s website after watching a video online.
- By 2015 Google predicts that over 50% of all display ads will be rich media ads.

In late 2009 I wrote a blog post declaring that 2010 would be the year that all companies become media companies. I got a little ahead of myself with that prediction but we are beginning to see many companies move beyond simple text and photos online and begin to develop engaging sharable media assets that help explain and promote the unique value offered by their brand.

Note: This post is also found in the TOP 10 POSTS Category of this blog.

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And is your company properly protected?

When you hire a video production company or independent production professional you expect them to be fully insured against all reasonable dangers and liabilities that might arise as a result of their engagement. Chances are, nothing will go wrong… but if something does go wrong you’d better hope that you and your production company are fully protected. If you video production company is not fully insured they may not be able to ‘make whole’ any damages that result from their actions.

Most video production professionals insure their production equipment against loss or damage. This insurance, while valuable for the production company, does nothing to protect you. You want to ensure that your video production company also has other types of insurance in place to protect you and your company against the cost of any damage directly caused by the video production company.

The first and most common form of Insurance taken out by video production companies to protect their clients is General Liability Insurance. This is insurance to cover accidents that happen in the normal course of production: A light falls over and damages your CEO’s Ming Dynasty vase collection, or one of the crew accidentally knocks out all of the power on your campus. This type of insurance covers most production-related risks.

Professional Liability Insurance is a separate form of insurance and relates more to the proper / professional performance of the production company’s duties. Errors and Omissions insurance is a form of Professional Liability insurance. If the production company makes a mistake on a large project and is forced to re-shoot, at their own expense, they should have Professional Liability insurance to cover the cost of the re-shoot. If your production company accidentally films someone who didn’t grant permission to use their image in your video, or if the video production company uses music that they do not have proper copyright permission to use, the harmed party may come after both you and the video production company. Whoever has the most money is usually the primary target of the suit.

As well, there are other types of insurance that your production company should have in place:

Specialized Insurance If your video production involves foreign travel to dangerous areas or hazardous activities like stunts, filming onboard a boat, aerial videography, etc. you may require specialized insurance that covers these contingent activities.
Slander and Liable is a specialized coverage required in certain professions. If, in the production of your video, the production company represents an employee, a competitor or public figure in a way that is inappropriate, the offended party could have cause to make a slander or liable claim. Again, you want to know that your video production company has a rider in their insurance policy that contains adequate protection to cover this risk. While most industries cover slander and liable as part of the General Liability Insurance, certain industries such as media, publishing and video production often require specialized insurance because of the higher risk associated with work in these industries.

The current industry standard for commercial production is $2,000,000 in general liability insurance. In entertainment projects typical insurance coverage will run much higher than this depending on the scope of the project.

Bottom line – if you are not sure ask your video production company about what insurance coverage they have in place. If you are not sure what coverage they should have, ask your insurance broker.

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No one really trusts you or what you have to say about your own company. Why would they? But people will listen to other people’s opinions about your company. If they know and trust that person – so much the better. Even if they don’t, they are more likely to believe a stranger (or better yet, a bunch of strangers) talking about you rather than you talking about you. That’s why testimonial videos are so powerful.

So is any testimonial video a good one? Not necessarily. It has to accomplish three important things:
1. It has be / feel authentic.  ‘Be’ is always better, but ‘feel’ is the next best thing. (We’re talking about marketing here….)
2. It has to be interesting. A talking head is still a talking head no matter what they are saying. Plan on having something interesting going on in the video. (Showing a customer using your product or service is a good place to start.)
3. It has to deliver a message which is relevant and that resonates.  Hearing a customer say “ABC Inc. provided great service… ” is not particularly informative.

Before you begin your next testimonial video here are nine things that you should consider:

1. Have you scheduled a pre-shoot meeting?  The best investment of time you can make is to schedule a pre-shoot meeting with the interviewee before the shoot to take them through the process. One of the reasons this doesn’t happen is cost – often your client won’t want to pay for the additional time to prepare for the shoot but this is arguably the most important time investment on the entire project. You get to know your interviewee, you get them familiar (and therefore comfortable) with you and the filming process, you get to do a site inspection prior to shooting and you get to find out the type of things that they may or may not want to say when you start shooting. All of this gives you time to plan and prepare for the shoot.

2. What is the overall style of the video? Is your video simply a talking head of someone sitting on their living room couch or behind their office desk or is it a video that incorporates footage of your customer actually using your product or service? Budget will dictate how much effort you put into your video but it doesn’t require much more effort to shoot the person you are interviewing actually doing something. Planning is usually the problem here. Unless your talking head is truly engaging (most are not) you should at least consider using two cameras for multiple angles (which makes the video easier to watch and helps you cut between sound bites) and you should also consider getting your interviewee physically doing something.

Video Portrait – Michael Ball from One Market Media on Vimeo.

Should a portrait be ‘moving?’

Video will continue to find new forms and change how we market our products, our services… and ourselves. Some months ago while editing I created this little vignette out of a ‘hero shot’ of an expert who was part of a series we were producing. I did it for fun, sent him the file and he thought it was great. End of story. (I have no idea what, if anything, he did with it.) Then while cleaning up files I came across the clip and wondered whether this could or should be a new form. I haven’t seen this explicit form used before and don’t even know if it has a name but I’m sure there are many who have experimented with ‘moving portraits’ or ‘video portraits.’

The question is:  Is there a need (market) for this type of video / photography? (This type of media sits at the intersection of videography and photography.) On the positive side of the ledger these videos tell more of a ‘story’ – you get a little more information in a hundred and fifty frames than you do in one. They can also be a lot more engaging if done well. The biggest question around the use of this new form is ‘where the heck would I use this?’ Thumbnail photos are universal today – if you click on them you typically get a larger version to peruse. While video can’t easily replace that function I could see this form, as an example, used in the ‘about us’ section of a website – especially in the creative services sector where being a bit ‘non-standard’ is usually a good thing.

Video won’t ever replace text… or photography, but more information communicated in an effective manner is always a good thing. What do you think. Is there a place for Video Portraits?

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Wild Peru (OMM Blog Post) from Cainan Querido on Vimeo.

In the spirit of One Market Media employee travel posts, I thought I’d share some highlights from a trip to Peru.

A diverse country with a photogenic landscape and wonderful people, Peru has everything a nature shooter could hope for: rain, snow, waterfalls, marsh, rain forest, small villages, big mountains, ancient civilizations, crazy wildlife – there’s lots to work with. Anacondas, centipedes, and tarantulas bigger than your hand made the trip that much more exciting.

New York | New York from Sam Fox on Vimeo.

On a recent trip to New York City I took some time to capture how I see “the big apple” – a city full of life and full of contrasts and contradictions.

Video is growing faster than any other component of the marketing mix and yet businesses continue to struggle to develop marketing videos that have a measurable impact on sales.

This post explains why preparing a video production brief is necessary and provides guidelines as to what
should be included in your next video production brief.

Whether you are creating video in-house or hiring a production company to develop your next video you need to be able to communicate the context and goals of your video project.

Why is a video production brief important. 

A project brief is standard tool used in marketing. If you are developing creative for an ad you would provide your agency with a creative brief. If you were developing a new product design you would provide your design house with a project brief. If you were developing a new website you would provide your developer with a design brief. A search marketing brief is now becoming standard practice on SEO engagements. So why not video?

Corporate video has quickly evolved from television commercials and corporate overview videos. Today, video can and does touch ever aspect of marketing from mass media to tactical, hyper-targeted marketing programs. Like social media, the adoption of online video has evolved much faster as a consumer tool than as a corporate tool. With new advances in technology the means of production have dropped to such an extent that now any business can, and does produce video – a lot of it experimental and most of it quite ineffective. Blaming your lack of success on YouTube or on ‘all the hype around video’ however, misses the point.

Toady we’re in what the Gartner Group refers to as the ‘Trough of Disillusionment.’ “We’re tired of the hype around video, quite frankly we haven’t seen the results and we don’t think video is really going to help us.” That statement is probably true for many companies today. Video for the sake of doing video is a waste of money. Video without a plan is a waste of money. Creating videos because your competition is doing so, or because ‘your website is getting boring’ is also a bad idea. Like those companies a few years back that chose to develop a ‘web presence’ and built digital brochures, most companies today fail to tie strategic targets, and more important, accountability into the video production process.

Video isn’t going away – quite the contrary. Video is unsurpassed as a tool of both engagement and persuasion. As the chart above illustrates we’re at the point now where (hopefully) we are moving beyond hype and statistics (who cares how much video is uploaded or consumed every hour), through the trough of disillusionment (” I can’t understand why the one hour video that my cousin shot of me talking didn’t move the dial”) and into a period that ties business results with video production. How do you achieve this synergy? Focus. Focus on objectives, focus on your audience and their business problems and most importantly, focus on (measuring) results.

The process of creating a video production brief causes you to answer tough questions about your business
(“do we really want to say that…”) and it serves as a document to help you engage and shortlist prospective video production companies.

Guidelines for your Video Production Brief. 

The following should be included in the brief you hand off to the team responsible for creating your next video project. If you can’t provide all of the following categories of information to your production team (with some detail) then you may not be ready to start your project:

Company background

How are you situated in your market? How is your company perceived by your customers? (Ask a couple of them… you may be surprised by what you hear.) What are your key brand attributes? Why are you different? Where do you want to be in one year? These questions are all important context that helps your production company understand why video might be helpful in promoting your company. This should be the easiest part of the process. Often it’s not.

Focus of Video

Do you want to promote a product, a service, your customer support, your entire company, or something else. (You can’t promote them all at once.) You need to be able to provide sufficient detail about exactly what it is you are promoting. What problems do you solve for your customer? Is your solution unique? How do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace – price, technology, service, selection, experience, etc? You’re not looking at business outcomes here – you are determining the specifics of the subject matter in the video. No one but you knows the answers to these questions. Making your video production team guess at (or worse, make up) your key areas of focus is never a good idea.

Competition

Who is your competition? Do they use video to market themselves? Is it effective? How and why should your video be different (or similar) to their video.

Target audience

Exactly who is it you are trying to reach and why. What are their unique attributes. Have you built persona’s for your key audience. (I.e Sally is a 28 year old product marketing manager for a high tech firm who is married with no children…. etc.). This is one of the most difficult questions for businesses to answer- not because they don’t know who their audience is but because they are concerned about having too narrow a focus. Fortunately the cost of video production is considerably lower than it was just five years ago so it’s possible to build more tactical video solutions for each audience.

Where is your audience? (This question is new…and very important.) How do you best reach your prospects and customers in a multi-channel universe. Will your customer be accessing your video on a desktop PC, mobile device, in-store, via broadcast network or some other means? Each channel has unique demands and the video created should be tailored to that channel.

Business Goals

What are the specific business goals that you want the video to drive? Views, downloads, traffic, referrals, awareness, clicks, inquiries, shares, links, ‘likes’, calls, sales, etc? You have to be able to identify specific goals otherwise you will never know if your investment was worthwhile. Knowing this will help your video production company to determine the best approach to creating your video.

Preferences

A great place to start is to show a prospective video production company a reference video and say “I think this video works really well, here’s why…” The video you show may not be the best approach but it may be the best way to communicate your preferences, biases and opinions to your prospective production house. Video has a lot of moving parts and there are many ways to highlight your understanding of your audience’s business problem. Having a reference video that you have seen and like as a starting point can be a great way to move forward.

Timelines and budget

When will the project start and when is the completed video required? Have you allocated a budget for the project? If you have it’s a good idea to communicate the budget and ask the video production companies exactly what they can deliver for that budget. The alternative is hiding the budget and asking everyone to guess at your budget. This forces the video production company to make assumptions about the number of shooting days, locations, actors, number of cameras, type of equipment, amount of motion graphics and all of the other variables that go into the creation of a video. The only way to get a useful comparison is to ask production companies to provide detailed treatments and estimates based on these assumptions.

It would also be helpful to share your decision criteria and selection process with prospective production houses.

Conclusion

Creating the above brief may seem like a daunting task. For busy marketers a quick email or phone call may seem like the more expedient approach but the time taken to fully define the requirements and context of the job will almost certainly lead to better business results.

{ Note: Distribution and promotion of your video is a separate (but important) activity and beyond the scope of this post.}

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

This is the first part in a two-part post. The next post will look at managing your next corporate video project by developing a video production brief.

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Creating a successful viral video is like creating a hit record – it’s really, really difficult.

Michael Dubin, Co-founder and CEO of the The Dollar Shave Club is on his way to becoming the Victor Kiam of this generation. (A clever reference for the ‘over 40′ crowd…) The Dollar Shave Club launched with over $1,000,000 in funding from former Myspace CEO Mike Jones’s business incubator Science Inc. It has been reported that the video cost less than $5,000 to make but those numbers, like many production figures, probably hide a lot of unpaid or undeclared contributions from various parties.  With video views closing in on 4 million and product reportedly flying off the shelves (figuratively speaking), this marketing campaign is ‘making hay’.

Why this video worked.

There are two claims to success you can make with a viral video: 1. The video drove awareness or, 2. It drove business.  Awareness is good, business is better. The Will it Blend? series is the all time winner in this latter category.  Most viral videos today focus on awareness and even then the creators do their best at hiding any brand message so as not to offend sensitive viewers with anything too ‘salesy’.  Like Will it Blend, this video focuses on the unique attributes of the product in an engaging way and it doesn’t try to hide the fact that it is a promotion. Heck, there’s even an explicit call to action at the end of the video.

Inspired by the Old Spice videos, Dollar Shave Club has a lot going on and it’s a lot of fun to watch. It’s funny, it’s surprising and it actually makes you think (at least enough to consider the merits of the product). In order for a video to spread virally it has to be funny, or shocking, or entertaining – so much so that people want to share it with their friends. This video has certainly benefited from a lot of sharing. It’s very well written and Dubin, who has a background in improv, is fully committed in this video. Using profanity (even veiled profanity) is always a risk, but it works here. It shocks you enough to make you wonder what’s coming next. I can’t remember the last time a Polio reference made me laugh so hard. Great style, great delivery and great writing all came together to create a very engaging video.

Takeaways.

1. You don’t need expensive equipment or special effects to be effective. More than anything, you need a good idea.

2. This video is a shot across the bow of the Broadcast Industrial Complex. It pokes fun at celebrity endorsements, fake marketing technology and just about anything else that broadcast commercials employ to convince people to buy their products. It will be interesting to see if they maintain their internet-only marketing approach over time. (My guess is no.)

3. You can be successful with viral video even when you are ‘selling’ your product.

What’s next.

Dollar Shave Club plans on releasing more products this year, including shaving cream and after-shave moisturizer. Will the company be able to recapture the magic of this video or will they be like the band members of ‘Baha Men‘ sitting around saying ‘Come on dudes… we gotta come up with another “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Time will tell.

If you are one of few who have yet to see the video here it is: