Here’s a frequent problem many business leaders find themselves in at one point or another. Employees appearing in your marketing videos who then leave the company.

Oops. I hate when that happens. Talk about a predicament. As a company, do you kill the videos completely, or do you just let them ride?

I wish I had a simple answer, but it’s one of those… “it depends” answers.

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Suggestion from a PR/marketing Expert

This was actually a question tackled by PR/marketing guru Gini Dietrich in one of the past vlog segments we produced for Spin Sucks. She totally nails it, although I’ll add one thing to her comments.

Gini says unless it’s a rogue employee or someone who left on bad terms, it’s best to keep the video up as long as you have their permission. SEO value alone is a good reason for that.

How about this idea?

However, I’ll add a suggestion. Don’t kill the video, kill the employee. There might be a way to simply extract the employee from the video with some editing.

It’s not always going to work, but in a lot of cases you can simply pluck the person out and you’re all set.

Will it cost you something to do it? Again, it all depends. I know we’ve had cases on both sides with our clients. If all we need to do is pull out a couple of sound bites and it doesn’t impact the story? No charge.

On the other hand, if we’re pulling out sound bites and other video of them in the video… and finding replacement pieces of video… and tweaking the story… yeah… there’s a charge.

The good news is even in that scenario, it’s going to cost far less than producing a new video.

Who knew killing employees could be so easy?

–Tony Gnau

Tony Gnau is a three-time Emmy-winning journalist. He is also the founder and chief storytelling officer at T60 Productions. T60 has won 11 Telly Awards for its work over the last eight years.

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