Tag Archives: marketing video

CBS’s Steve Hartman is my favorite features reporter. He also happens to be one of the generous journalists whom I consider a mentor… offering a young reporter all sorts of critiques to improve their storytelling.

Every year Steve follows around Secret Santa. You can see the 2011 story and a few from past years at the following link to cbsnews.com. All of them are AWESOME!

Here’s the thing to keep in mind while you watch them… you have generous people like this working at your company. Whether they donate their time or money, your employees are giving back at this time of year… so help them.

Producing a video that highlights their efforts can help their cause. Your business can share the video with its followers, the employee can share it with their friends, and the benefiting charity can share the video with its supporters.

Today’s video serves as your reminder to spotlight the people doing good at your company.

–Tony Gnau

I blogged yesterday about how video helps stir emotions. While the holidays are a natural for tearjerkers, just wait until tomorrow’s post… yup, that’s a TEASE!… they also provide an opportunity for some goofy fun.

Do you decorate your office? Do workers dress up their cubicles? Producing videos on these things give customers and prospects a behind-the-scenes look into your company culture.

I found a perfect example from the UK. Chapman Entertainment clearly has a sense of humor and decided to share it at Christmas time.

–Tony Gnau

No Lords ‘o leeping… no maids a milking… and no partridge. Instead, this week you’re going to get T60’s Five Days of Christmas Videos.

Some may be corporate videos, others might not, but the idea behind all of them is to demonstrate how video is about stirring emotions. The holidays provide a perfect example. They tend to stir emotions by themselves, so tapping video as a medium to communicate their stories brings out the best in us producers.

I can’t think of a better video to start with than Brad Houston’s “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” Brad shot and edited this Emmy award winning TV news story while working at KUSA-TV in Denver. It’s flat-out, one of my favorite stories of all-time. I watch it every December.

I’m not sure what year it was created… certainly pre-911… so probably the late 1990’s. Regardless, this is a timeless example of stirring emotions through video.

–Tony Gnau

Video is art… not a science. That’s an important thing for business leaders to consider, and something important for PR and marketing pros to help them understand.

Being clear on that fact will make your company’s production run much smoother.

We received a piece of regular ole’ mail at our home the other day that caught my attention. My wife is a Monmouth College grad and they sent us a mailer encouraging donations to the school’s annual scholarship fund.

What caught my eye was the image of an online video player and a QR code.

You know video has come a long way when it’s even being incorporated into standard mailers. The QR code sends you to a YouTube video of a student talking about getting a scholarship to Monmouth and what it has meant to her.

The video itself isn’t anything special, although I applaud Monmouth for producing it. I much rather hear from the student herself than read a short and sanitized snippet about her.

Where Monmouth really scores big points is recognizing how powerful video is as a medium, and then looking for creative ways to get their videos in front of people.

Traditional mailers will continue to hit our mailboxes, but there’s no reason you can’t give them a modern twist. Monmouth’s leaders found a great way to do it.

–Tony Gnau

Happy New Year!

This is a natural time to start planning for next year, and mapping out a video strategy should be part of that discussion.

One of the beauties of the medium is that the more quality video an audience sees, the easier it is for them to connect with the brand. That’s why a single video might be nice, but a series of videos will make an even bigger impact.

You’re certainly welcome to do something every week. Social media make delivering that amount of content possible, but if you’re not ready for that type of commitment there’s an easier way to go.

A monthly video would be a great thing to do along with a e-newsletter campaign. Still too much? How about quarterly?

The idea is simply to get videos in front of your audience on a regular basis. The more they see you, the more you become a part of their lives.

–Tony Gnau

Southwest Airlines recently posted a video that’s supposed to give us a look behind the scenes of a day at Dallas’ Love Field.

Okay, that’s fine, but here’s the thing… so what? Why as an audience member should I care?

I feel like this is the classic example of a video where someone simply said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we gave people a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in a typical day at the airport?”

I love the sentiment, but as a marketer and audience member I demand more. “Wouldn’t it be cool” isn’t a reason to go through the time and expense of producing a video. This video does give us a behind-the-scenes look, but how does it benefit me as a traveler? It doesn’t.

If you want to stretch it, I suppose you could say it demonstrates how hard Southwest team members are working for the customer… but that’s a real stretch.

Whenever you’re working on a video, keep asking yourself… why should the audience care? If you don’t have an answer that’s going to ultimately further your brand… you need to refocus.

–Tony Gnau

Wouldn’t you love a million hits on YouTube!? Of course you would, getting your videos in front of as many people as possible is the goal of many businesses.

Reality check… it probably isn’t going to happen… and you know what? It’s okay. You don’t need to get your videos in front of as many people as possible. You just need to get them in front of the right people. Prospects who are interested in your products or services.

Find that audience, give them quality storytelling, and your videos will do their job… even without a million hits.

–Tony Gnau

What works for the web doesn’t always work in a TV commercial. That’s my conclusion after viewing a series of videos produced by the NCAA.

The series is called, the Buick Human Highlight Reel. The videos feature former NCAA athletes who are now making a difference in their communities off the field.

I came across the series while watching last weekend’s Big 10 Football Championship game. There was a commercial promoting the series and encouraging people to go to the website to watch the videos.

I jumped right on it, but here’s the thing… there’s a bunch of videos… all of them about 5-minutes long. It was overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start, and I found myself only watching pieces of the videos.

Then I “liked” the NCAA on Facebook, which is ironic since I pretty much can’t stand the NCAA, but that’s another blog post. Once I started getting the NCAA on my Facebook Wall, the series started making sense.

I still think the videos are a tad too long.  Okay, way too long, but getting them sent to me in small doses via social media made the series much more manageable to watch.

TV sent me to the series, but it didn’t hold my attention. It took social media to really grab me and reel me in.

–Tony Gnau

Is your company or organizations setting goals for 2012? If one of them is to communicate better, video might be your answer.

Whether you’re attempting to position yourself in front of customers or trying to send an important message to employees… video can do the job and do it in a way that’s better than words alone.

Video delivers information, but it also does it in a way that makes an impact on the audience. It’s not some simple message that gets thrown in the trash. A video makes people sit up and pay attention.

How’s that for satisfying your communication goals?

–Tony Gnau