Tag Archives: marketing

Wait a second!? It’s Archive Friday. T60 usually doesn’t post a blog on Friday. It’s a day to unabashedly promote its past videos!

Well, today we can serve you as well as our shameless plug. :-)

All week we’ve been highlighting Christmas videos and how they can serve companies in their PR/marketing efforts. In most cases, it’s simply putting a holiday spin on the same types of videos businesses should be doing all year-long.

Demonstrating company culture, focusing on charity efforts, highlighting standout employees, and now… promoting company events.

T60 has done a couple of videos in the past for NBA All-Star Chris Bosh. While he was playing for the Toronto Raptors, we were hired to document his annual Christmas party for local kids.

• VIDEO: Bosh Christmas Bash

Businesses hold all sorts of holiday events. Having a video produced like this allows them to share the experience via social media, and also provide a terrific promotional tool for the next year.

–Tony Gnau

Great example today of a storyteller versus a corporate video production. Both center around the same story, but they are not created equal.

American Airlines produces a lot of videos for its YouTube channel. Some are clearly done by pros… others… not so much.

On this occasion, they produced something on their annual charity… The Snowball Express. WTVF Newschannel 5 in Nashville also covered the story. What a difference!

WTVF’s story is well-shot, well-edited, and tells an excellent story. The American Airlines version… well… you be the judge. Watch the WTVF story first…

• VIDEO: WTVF-Snowball Express
• VIDEO: American Airlines-Snowball Express

This is a missed opportunity for American. They had the right idea to highlight their charity effort. It’s a wonderful cause, but they fail to tap any emotions.

Shooting and editing some video isn’t good enough. This is a great example of why businesses need to find quality storytellers for their content.

–Tony Gnau

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