All week I’ve been highlighting some of my takeaways from last week’s BrandSmart conference. The event was put on by the Chicago chapter of the American Marketing Association.

Panel discussions… featured speakers… movers and shakers in the marketing world… all under one roof. It was a terrific event.

T60 is a Chicago-AMA sponsor, so we were thrown into the mix as a BrandSmart sponsor as well. We got to set up a display table and talk to people about our passion… storytelling.

BrandSmart Video competition

One of the things a lot of people commented on was that there were two other video sponsors that had tables. Nothing like a little healthy competition, right?

Wrong. We all talked with one another, checked out each others’ stuff and you know what? We’re totally not in competition with each other. All three of us clearly have our own areas of expertise.

One of the companies focuses mostly on 30-second commercials. The other company seemed to feature a lot of longer format videos. T60… short and to-the-point storytelling.

Production companies are all different

If you’re looking for someone to produce your videos, please keep in mind no two production companies are alike. Chances are the three of us at BrandSmart could all produce what the others specialize in, but in T60’s case we choose not to. We rather focus on our passion.

So… remember to ask the production companies you approach what types of projects they enjoy the most. The bigger the company, the more likely they dabble in a little bit of everything, but what are they best at producing? Look at their work and you should also be able to judge for yourself.

It’s important to find someone who lines up with what you’re looking for. I’ll tell you right now, if you’re looking for a production company that’s going to roll in for the day with a big production team carrying all sorts of fun video toys… T60 isn’t the company for you. We’re lean, fast and focused on telling good stories… short on flash and long on substance.

Figure out the type of video you want, the type of production team that fits with the project and pick a company that’s going to deliver.

–Tony Gnau

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