Secrets To Video Strategy In Uncertain Times
April 1, 2020
1st April 2020 by CH
During these strange times we’re living in, well established brands and businesses are still using content strategy to their advantage.
In the midst of a pandemic like COVID-19 where we’re all connected and spending more time online than ever, digital content is actually even more important to support and strengthen internal and external communication.
Videos can be produced in any style and used for any purpose – from raising brand awareness, encouraging sales, promoting a product or business success, rewarding and recognising people and initiatives, to name a few.
Put simply, videos really resonate with audiences in ways that other mediums simply can’t.
Any video needs a clear aim, purpose and outcome but this needs thought and planning.
Here’s what we recommend.
Set your aims early on
What is the overall feel you’re going for? Serious? Funny? Informative?
What about the pace? Are you planning on snappy quick transitions? Slow and thought-provoking music? Or something minimal? All of this will have a big impact on how your audience will react from the very start.
Aesthetics are really important too.
If you definitely need people to feature (employees/leaders/customers/consumers/actors/models/presenters), how can you do this without filming them in situ? Well that’s an easy one. Find out more below.
Are you going to create a video bursting with colour or take a more realistic approach?
Perhaps stock footage with a voiceover is a good call? (and that voiceover can be anyone, a professional voice or even someone within your company, we can do it all remotely).
Maybe you (or we!) have some archive footage that can be re-edited and repurposed?
Would an animation, text led or infographic style suit best?
All of these decisions depend on the narrative and what is best for your brand or business, but try to establish a consistent tone throughout your video that mirrors your aims.
Be clear and considerate
Obviously any video needs a reason for the audience to watch and continue watching, even with autoplay functionality.
Don’t assume that telling a viewer you have something they’ll want to know about or a fantastic product or service is enough to make them commit. You might think it’s fantastic, but the average viewer needs more convincing, and fast.
Focus on why a consumer/customer/employee needs to convert or continue on your journey and how you can show this in the video. What will your initiative, product or service enable and how will it benefit them?
Look at your insights and learnings from previous videos and also what your competitors are doing at the moment. Do your research and find out what’s trending, what people are talking about inside your business and online.
Using accessible content and showing real life situations like self-shot footage is a good idea and can set a tone that most people can identify with it, especially while most of us are working from home.
Make it easy for them
Once you’ve convinced viewers that your video is spot on, don’t fail at the last hurdle.
At the start or end, provide a clear call to action, aka CTA.
A call to action should be easy and actionable info that guides people in the direction you want them to go, click through to, talk about, buy, etc.
This can be done visually with text on screen but for added power, you can supplement it with audio via a voice over, or a filmed interview or piece to camera recorded in situ or through a video conference recorded by us.
Our golden rule
Whatever the purpose and whoever the audience – your video should be shareable, useful and interesting to watch.
Either way, there’s lots of factors to consider but hopefully these tips have got you thinking. We can help with the rest.
Have an idea but need our production expertise? Get in touch and let’s get the ball rolling.
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When Euronics came to us with a brief, it was a good one: take a true story about an extraordinary delivery and turn it into something worth watching. The Brief Joe, a Euronics delivery agent, had been tasked with getting a chest freezer to a customer in rural Wales. The road ran out. He carried on anyway, on foot, through fields, across rivers and over hills. The customer was delighted. The story deserved to be told. Euronics asked us to produce a short comedic video retelling that journey. The challenge was finding the right visual language to match the scale of the tale. The Concept We pitched several approaches centred on a comic-book aesthetic, bold, energetic and a little tongue-in-cheek. It felt like the right fit: a story that was equal parts heroic and absurd, told in a style that leaned into both. The concept paired real interview footage of Joe with AI-generated visuals to bring his journey to life. Where a traditional shoot would have required location days across Welsh countryside, generative AI gave us the tools to illustrate the story scene by scene. Creative Wrangling We filmed Joe against a studio blue backdrop, letting him tell the story in his own words. His delivery did a lot of the heavy lifting (puns intended!), dry, matter-of-fact and quietly brilliant. The AI-generated visuals were built around detailed multi-angle reference sheets for Joe, the Euronics van and the chest freezer.
