What are we looking at here?
Finding critical focus in your shot is one of the bedrock principles of photography, but it is just as important in pre-production. Video production has become incredibly democratized. Everyone has an HD (or 4K) video camera in their pocket, and distribution is free with your Facebook or Twitter account. Skilled editors and VFX artists can fix shots or create new ones seemingly by magic (which is a flawed assumption, and a discussion for another time). With so few limitations to the mechanics of video, there is a temptation for companies to shoot first and ask questions later. That mentality can lead to an unclear and jumbled mess of messaging. When you make the decision to leverage video in your marketing strategy, it’s important to think about how and why you will use it. Just like an unfocused image, an unfocused video doesn’t really get a message across, or worse, it can send the wrong message.
When I’m writing a treatment, editing a spot, or creating motion graphics I am constantly consulting the creative brief. And if there isn’t a brief, the first step is to create one.
Ask yourself some questions. Who do you want to watch this video? Where will they see it? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do after they see it? How does it fit with the rest of your marketing? Your answers to these questions are your road map when moving forward. Create a brief based on these answers, and consult it regularly. This is all marketing 101 stuff, but you would be surprised how many marketers skip the basics when it comes to video production. I think this is because even the most savvy marketer can have their brain hacked by a great video.
It can be easy to confuse good, clean, focused design with fast and cheap design. The same goes for video. You see an Apple commercial and assume all the effects were practical and they just showed up and turned on a camera. You might briefly consider post production too but that’s all just computers, right? How hard could it be? In reality the cleanest messages require the most work to form, especially if you are going to have multiple people working on the project. How will you keep them all going the same direction? Build a map.
Who?
At TTP we have created videos for a wide variety of eyeballs. Teachers who make purchasing decisions about music equipment at their schools. Health club franchise owners. Busy millennial moms who want to cook something healthy but don’t have a lot of time. There could be some crossover here, but even if our health club franchise owner is also a busy millennial mom, we speak to her differently depending on what we’re talking about.
Your message and your video should always consider who you want to see it, and what will motivate them to do the thing you want them to do. The teacher wants new risers in her classroom, but she also wants to make a good recommendation about how to allocate the school’s limited budget. She cares about the kids she’s teaching, and about how the school spends its money. What motivates her is very different from what motivates a single guy buying a fashion watch. Knowing who we are talking to and what they want is crucial to creating an effective message to move them.
Where?
Once upon a time, marketers created broadcast commercials, paid millions of dollars to have them produced, and more to have them air on television in front of as many eyes as they could. Crazy, right? This still happens of course, but it’s a dumb model. Sure you can run your ad for blood pressure meds on CBS during prime time, and maybe 30-40% of the people sitting on the other side of the screen have hypertension. But what about the people who don’t? You’re paying to advertise to them too. For some products, including blood pressure meds apparently, this approach makes sense. We will never see football without beer commercials, or baseball without beer commercials, or golf without, well you get it. For the vast majority of products and services though, marketing videos can and should be more surgically targeted to the audience.
What if your ad for blood pressure medication was running on Facebook instead, and you were paying for placement in front of people who have joined a message board for hypertension sufferers? Now your dollars are being more efficiently spent, but the platform or platforms you choose may have different specifications that you’ll need to keep in mind when planning. You can’t just assume a broadcast-like spot will work everywhere.
You might decide that a pre-roll YouTube ad is the right place for your message, but that probably means you’ll have 5-6 seconds to grab attention. Maybe your target demo is on Instagram. Now you’ll want to consider producing the spot in a 9X16 or 1X1 format. Knowing where people are going to see your video, and planning accordingly before you shoot is essential. Take it from a guy who has edited multiple 16X9 spots and then had the client ask about 9X16’s to be cut from the same footage. If it wasn’t shot with multiple crops in mind, it’s going to be a problem.
What?
Now you know who is going to watch this video, and where they will see it. All done.
Oh wait! What are they going to be looking at?
If you’re selling a product, they’re probably going to want to see that thing. It could be in an all white studio setting with amazing lighting and bullet point graphics. If that’s the case you will want to plan shots with some negative space that allow for your type to be legible. If your product is a home appliance, it may be better to have it on a kitchen set. This is all dependent upon what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. The point is to think about the essence and purpose of the product, the needs of the viewer, and how your video can bring the two together. You could also shoot customer testimonials of people who have used the product. Try to find people to interview that are close to your target demo. People are more likely to trust people like them. Is your target demo a middle manager at a manufacturing company? Find a few who have used your product and interview them.
Testimonials are great for marketing services as well, especially if your service is complicated or technical. You may find that a video about your enterprise level software solution is just a bunch of talking heads and some b-roll of your happy customers, and we never see the interface or even a computer screen. Again, what is the essence of your service, what does your ideal customer need, and how do we get them together?
Why?
This is kind of a two part question.
First, why should someone watch this video? It should be incredibly informative, or entertaining, but just in-case make it both. People are swamped with content, so don’t waste their time. Pack your video with value for the viewer. Humor or a visual spectacle can be entertaining, but you’ll want to include valuable information or an interesting hook that leads them to seek more from you down the road. Just make sure whatever value you add is serving the ultimate goal of the video. Don’t sell me that blood pressure drug with a video about grandad's hilarious heart attack when he jumped the Snake River Canyon. Not funny, mister.
Second, why should they act on what you’re pitching? If you’re selling something, you need your audience to want it more than they want the amount of money you’re asking for. Maybe your product will pay for itself over time, or it creates more time for them to get other things done. Maybe your service is a charity and they want a sense of helping mankind more than they want the $50 they are donating to you. You could be pitching a free service and you’re just looking for a new subscriber. In that case think about how to take away the pain points of creating an account, and remembering yet another confounded password. Anticipate the barriers that will keep your viewer from becoming a customer, and address them.
How?
As in, “How can I buy this wonderful product or service?”
Don’t forget a call to action, ya goofball.
If you’ve done your homework and created a brief that spells out these parameters for your video, and you stick to it, you can probably shoot this thing on your Ring doorbell and edit on your old graphing calculator and you’ll have at least some success. If you lost that graphing calculator or you’re looking for a higher quality production, give us a shout. We can help with the strategy, planning, execution, and distribution of your message.