Unless your head has been buried in the Tatooine sand, you’re probably aware that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is opening this month. As someone who works in PR and marketing, the movie’s promotion a case study on how to execute a smart marketing video strategy.

Yup, I’m a Nerd

Okay, let’s get this out of the way… full disclosure… I’m a big Star Wars geek. As I told my wife when we first started dating, I don’t have a storm trooper costume in my closet… but I’m still a big nerd.

I can quote the original movie (A New Hope) word-for-word.… Read More

Building a brand isn’t easy. As a matter of fact it’s flat-out difficult, but one of the things I find interesting is how the biggest and best companies are using video to build their brands.

We’re lucky to have a brand building expert like Prophet as a client, and I’ve learned a lot from them. Every shoot is like a mini-session on the subject. It has allowed me to look at top companies and get a better understanding of how they’re using video.

The first thing I’ve learned, and the one I’d like to focus on here, is the simple fact that top brands use video. … Read More

Testimonial videos are one of your best marketing tools… when you do them right!

Testimonials are a time-tested way to inspire trust and creditability in a company, brand, product, or service.

It’s the reason why I encourage our clients to create testimonial videos, and I am on a quest to help organizations do them better.

That’s because many companies do them on the cheap, without any creativity behind them. They’re uninspired.

How not to do testimonial videos

The videos I’m referring to are the simple kind you’ve seen on websites everywhere.

They feature someone on-camera singing the praises of a company.… Read More

I can hardly contain myself. Football season has finally arrived. Whether you’re into the NFL, college, high school… heck… Pop Warner, it’s great having it back. As the season kicks-off, it has me thinking a bit. Football and marketing videos have some things in common. Stick with me here… it’s true. I happen to be an expert on both subjects. I’m an award-winning video producer, and I played some football as well. I was one of the least physically talented players on my college team, but my football IQ was right there at the top of the class.… Read More

Business leaders who want to produce a video often have grand plans. They want the video to contain a lot of this and that. We need “this” to be in the video. “That’s” something else that needs to be in the video. “This and that” frequently adds up to too much information. Not to mention it can add to the cost of video production. This is why I usually tell clients they don’t need “a” video. Instead, they need a “series” of videos.

Learning From Pros

Let’s take a lesson from one of our clients. A big perk of being a video producer is you get to work with some amazing companies and learn from the people who make them great.… Read More

Video is becoming more and more popular with marketers and PR pros. Done the right way, research tells us how affective it can be. Done the wrong way, it can waste time and money so let’s look at some common mistakes to avoid when producing a corporate video.

Video Length

Outside of video production cost, this is the number one question I get from clients. How long should our video run?

The first mistake here is thinking there’s a perfect length for your video… there isn’t. The quality of your storytelling is more important than the video’s length. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 runs an hour and a half.… Read More

I’ve been attending a lot of events lately. PR events, marketing events, networking events… you name it. They all have something in common. In many cases the hosts are failing to keep their event alive when it’s over. They’re failing to create sharable content like a corporate event video.

Think about some of the events you’ve been to lately. Did they give you a hashtag? Did they encourage you to tweet, update your status?

Of course they did. I’d be surprised if they didn’t. Encouraging social sharing at corporate events is pretty standard, and many attendees do it.

That includes me.… Read More

BrandSmart is one of my favorite marketing events every year. The Chicago chapter of the American Marketing Association brings in some real heavyweights to talk about their branding success stories, and it’s a day that inspires all sorts of ideas. However, my BrandSmart 2015 takeaway is a little different.

As a ChicagoAMA sponsor, I get to attend and take in everything the speakers have to offer just like everyone attending. Not surprising, many of my past takeaways have centered on how brands are using video. This year was a little different though.

Conversation Starter

My biggest takeaway came from a conversation I had with ChicagoAMA board member, Tom Jacobs.… Read More

Originally Posted: May 29th, 2012

Yesterday was Memorial Day and it provides me with a perfect reason to share my all-time favorite commercial.

That’s right… commercial. A one-minute spot created by Budweiser that ran only once. It’s the 2003 Super Bowl ad titled, “Welcome Home.”

Here’s a few reasons why it’s a great example to learn from for anyone who’s producing videos…

• there’s a surprise. The spot starts in an airport. It’s a familiar setting, but just when we the audience settle in to this “normal” scene we get hit with something completely out of the norm.
• there’s no dialog. I come from a TV news background, so I’m all about sound bites and dialog.

… Read More

Storytelling is far more than a buzzword. It’s quite simply the foundation of a quality communications strategy. And good video storytelling as a tactic trumps fancy graphics, special effects, and without a doubt… it trumps facts and figures.

We’re pretty fortunate to have some amazing clients who work in PR and marketing. They are communications experts, and one of them asked us to produce two sets of videos. One on public speaking techniques and another that’s all about… trumpets, please… storytelling! Hard to pass-up that project, and it turned out to be a perfect case study business leaders can learn from.… Read More