Tag Archives: marketing video

I try to read spinsucks.com everyday. There are tons of PR/marketing blogs, but Gini Dietrich and her team of guest writers consistently churn out some great content.

Guess what… she’s even better in person.

After having read hundreds of her blog posts, yesterday was the first time I’ve watched her speak to a group. It was the blog come to life… really good stuff.

Gini and I met… what… a couple of years ago? She has become a client, and I’m proud that she’s recommended T60 to her clients. One of them was hosting an internal town hall meeting yesterday and Gini was presenting. I was shooting the town hall for a webcast, so I got to see her in action.

She basically gave a social media lesson to the company’s employees. Some of it was business-related, but she talked a lot about the dangers facing all of them as parents. I’ll tell you, I was pretty impressed with the company for bringing her in to do this.

Anyway, if you want to know more about the direction PR and marketing are going, you need to start listening to her. She has a book, and apparently another one coming soon. At the very least, you should read spinsucks.com.

And if you ever have a chance to see her do her thing in person, buy that ticket. You won’t be disappointed.

–Tony Gnau

You can’t be wish-washy and be a video producer. You have to take charge. If something isn’t working, you have to speak up.

Take this video from @Properties. Can you spot the lack of control?

First off… I like the company. I have a friend who is a very successful agent for them. I subscribe to their newsletter and look forward to seeing the videos that accompany each edition. The videos aren’t anything special, but they typically have a professional feel.

This one… not so much. Some of the videography is sloppy, and my biggest irritation is watching one of the partners answer to someone off-camera while the other speaks into the camera.

I don’t blame them. They’re just answering the questions they’re being asked by the video’s producer. That’s who I blame. They’re making their clients look bad.

If you’re on a shoot and see something like this happening, you have to stop the whole thing, and explain what’s not working. Start from scratch if you have to.

It can be uncomfortable coaching a client. I get it, but you know what’s more uncomfortable? Handing over a video that makes the client look bad.

–Tony Gnau

I was filling in my wife last night about this whole Manti Te’o hoax. Notre Dame star football player… a girlfriend’s tragic death… and now the revelation it’s all a sham.

I said, “This is an incredible story.” Her response, “Maybe you should write a blog post about how this isn’t the type of storytelling we do.”

Truthful storytelling

She was being funny, but it actually touches on a delicate issue. How truthful are you when producing your videos?

Everyone has an ethical line in the sand. I mean, I hope they do. My background is in journalism, so mine is pretty strict.

Stop snickering… it’s true! We’ve never had a client who tried to get us to put something into a video that’s false, but some blurry areas have popped-up from time-to-time. And in those situations, I’ll standup. I’m not shy about telling clients when something ethical arises.

I feel like all of us, you and I, are obligated to do that for our clients.

–Tony Gnau

Have you ever experienced technical difficulties?

Ridiculous question, right? We all have. We live in a world of technical difficulties. Video production is riddled with them. The equipment we work with everyday could fail at anytime. The trick is how you deal with it.

Hello, this is tech support

I’m trying to work some through issues right now. I’m serious. As I write this, I’m on hold with technical support for a product to broadcast a meeting live to satellite locations.

We did a dry run this morning. Checked out the meeting space… got a feel for the needed equipment. Tested the video stream… worked fine. Audio… not so much.

Freak-out time

Time to freak-out? Nope. That’s why we did a dry run. If this were the day of the meeting, it would be freak-out time. Today, it’s merely an inconvenience. Now I have a full week to solve the problem.

You can’t always do a practice or dry run before a shoot, but when you can it often helps make technical difficulties easier to deal with.

–Tony Gnau

Have you ever had food poisoning? If not, I don’t recommend it. If you have, you know what I’ve been going through the last couple of days.

No gory details, instead, something that caught my attention over the weekend, and something I stewed over the during two days on the couch. Interview locations really don’t matter.

This is something I’ve blogged about in the past, but it was driven home to me while watching the ESPN documentary, The Marinovich Project.

The good, the bad, and the storytelling

The movie was a contrast in interview shots. Some “good”… Marinovich out on the beach. Some “bad”… NFL Hall of Famer Howie Long in a nondescript hotel room.

And you know what? It didn’t matter.

Why? Because the storytelling was so good. See, a good story is far more important than simple visuals like an interview location. It’s not to say you shouldn’t look for the best location possible, but it’s not something to freak out about either.

A good videographer/storyteller will make it work one way or another.

–Tony Gnau

EntreLeadership podcast host Chris LoCurto got me thinking yesterday. He blogged about how he shifted his leadership mentality from customer-first to team-first and the benefits that followed.

It got me thinking about how T60 does things. See… I’m a solo-preneur. I pretty much do it all. I occasionally get help from freelancers, my wife certainly, but something really stands out for all of us.

Our standards

Everyone who works for T60 has high standards. Our videographers and editors… take their craft seriously. My wife… wants perfection. And I comb through every frame of the videos we produce.

I’m sure a lot of this is lost on our customers. In many cases, we’re looking at details they don’t see or even think about, but that’s okay.

Influenced by college football legend

My college football coach John Robinson used to tell us, “Just do your stuff.” What he meant was if everyone focuses on their job, the team will succeed.

That’s what we do. Each of us takes pride in our performance, and the customer gets a great video.

Does pride play a role in your job performance?

–Tony Gnau

I guess this is a good week for b-roll. I started the week by blogging about how you can shoot b-roll, provide it as free content and get some publicity from it. Today, it’s how b-roll can save your butt!

I’m sure most of you know what b-roll is, but if you don’t… here’s a descent definition.

Now, back to my story. We produce a monthly vlog for a large trade organization. This month the CEO talked about the outlook for 2013, and he spent a lot of time on what last November’s election is going to mean for them.

The organization’s communications chief usually provides us with photos we can use to cover a lot of what he talks about, but she was at a loss for what to do about the election stuff. He kept mentioning, “what’s going on in Washington,” and talking about Congress.

The initial thought was buying some royalty-free photos, but I told her not to worry about it… we’d take care of it.

Little did she know, we have stock b-roll of Washington, DC. I shot it four years ago when I was there on vacation. My college roommate and I met in DC for one of our baseball trips… we saw the Dodgers play the Nationals in DC and the White Sox against the Orioles in Baltimore.

He thought I was crazy when I showed up at the hotel with my video camera and tripod, and I told him I was getting up at 7 a.m. the next morning to shoot some DC b-roll.

His natural question, “Why?”

My answer, “because you never know when you might need some. I’m here and it’s just an hour or two of my time.”

That video sat on the shelf for four years until last week. Our client was super excited after seeing it in the finished video. She even forwarded me the email the CEO sent complimenting her on this month’s vlog.

Think we just earned some customer loyalty? Think she’d be willing to refer us?

Going the extra mile for something as simple as b-roll can pay off big time.

How has b-roll save your butt?

–Tony Gnau

Here’s a new one… I accidentally “liked” Online Pet Depot on Facebook, and now I’m being treated to all sorts of fun pet videos.

I don’t know when I “liked” it. Once I realized I was getting their posts in my feed, I was going to click “unlike” but a funny thing happened.

I started watching the videos. Nothing spectacular, just fun pet videos that people have posted on YouTube and now Online Pet Depot was sharing them with me.

It’s brilliant marketing when you think about it. Pet videos are some of the most popular on the web. Online Pet Depot has access to a ton of free content via YouTube and they take full advantage.

They’re providing me with something I’m enjoying, now when they tell me about a sale I might actually pay attention. Whether or not I’m converted into a customer is still up for grabs, but “their” videos keep their brand in front of me.

What sort of free video content is out there that applies to your industry? You might want to consider sharing it with your followers.

–Tony Gnau

Holy cow! That was a break. I took two weeks off from blogging and most business activities, but now I’m ready to go.

Hope you had a great New Year’s because we’ll start with an observation I made that night.

If you watched any TV news coverage on New Year’s Eve, you probably saw video of people celebrating around the world. Sydney, Hong Kong, Dubai all checking in, but it wasn’t news outlets providing the video.

All three of those cities’ tourism bureaus shot the video, in some cases streaming live feeds, and provided it to news outlets.

This is something more and more businesses and organizations are doing. Shooting their own video and providing it to media, bloggers, etc. It’s a good idea because many of these content creators are looking for… well… content. The better the stuff you provide them, the more likely you’ll get covered.

Enter video… the best kind of contact out there. Why? People watch, that’s why.

Providing quality video is a great way to entice coverage.

–Tony Gnau

All hail the power of video! Last week, I blogged about how my wife has finally bought-in. She received a holiday video last december from her alma mater, this year just a standard email.

She was disappointed, but the disappointment didn’t last long because guess what showed up this week?

I promised her not to be too brutal with my criticism in the previous post, she LOVES her school, so I didn’t even mention it by name. Well, looks like I can now because Monmouth College redeemed itself by sending out a 2012 holiday video.

Now, it’s no great achievement. I kind of like the concept, but it’s a pretty basic video. The big question I have is about their PR/marketing/fundraising strategy.

Was this planned all along… text email followed by video email? Or did they get negative feedback when there wasn’t a video this year? Were there lots of people like my wife who were disappointed they didn’t produce a video this year, so they quickly put something together?

I don’t know the answer to that, but either way it’s clear video is a power communications tool.

–Tony Gnau