Corporate video production refers to audio-visual corporate communications material commissioned primarily for a use by a company, corporation or organisation (Reference: Wikipedia).
We all know that corporate videos tell us something about the owner of the corporate video. But, how do you come up with a compelling corporate video? By compelling, I mean a corporate video that will attract the people that you want to learn about your company, corporation, or organization. By compelling, I mean a corporate video that will clearly convey the “right message” to the “right people”.
I never thought that I would ever need to worry about coming up with a corporate video as an Association Manager. My perfect plan is to just hire a professional team of video editors. Voila! I will have the corporate video that we will launch in time for our association’s anniversary celebration. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
I am not an expert in video editing but I would like to share with you the 7 things I have learned about producing a corporate video for an association based from my experience.
1. Hire a professional team of videographers and video editors – Leave the technical aspect of video recording and video editing to the experts.
2. Testimonial type of video works – A testimonial type of video worked for our association. The corporate video featured members telling the viewers why they took the program and how the Program impacted their professional career. We picked members that will represent the different industries where members work.
3. Identify the key personalities that will be featured in your association’s corporate video – You do not need to look far because you can get the personalities within your association’s board of directors or trustees. You may also want to contact the past presidents and directors of the association. Associations are volunteer-driven and featuring your board members as the key personalities in your association’s corporate video is an added-value for your volunteers. It is also one of the many ways that you can entice your members to be active and get involved in the initiatives of the association.
4. Choose the video shooting location – The location will set the tone of the video. You can rent a place or you can simply prep up a meeting room. Just make sure that the location is not exposed to noises such as the sound of a ringing telephone or the sound of cars passing by. It will also help if the location has a good lighting. According to the videographer, a good time to shoot is early in the morning when the sun is just about to rise and late afternoon when the sun is hiding.
5. Schedule the shoot – It is always a challenge to gather your board members all together at once. If you have a scheduled event where the board members will attend, you can ask them to free-up their time already so you can gather them after the event. If not, give them 2-3 schedules to choose from. To save up on the cost on the professional fee videographers as well as the rental of the video location, inform your board members of the target date of video recording ahead of time so everybody will be present for the shoot and you will not need to pay for the additional shoot and for the rental of the video location.
6. Dress code – Inform your key personalities about the dress code for the video shoot. It is advisable to have them wear solid colors for easy editing. Discourage them in wearing white as it will be hard for the video editors.
7. Prepare guide questions – Guide questions should be disseminated to the key personalities and give them enough time to think about what they will answer. There is no need for them to submit their answers to the guide questions. As the term implies, the guide questions are just their guide. Their answers to the guide questions should not be scripted. Anybody can easily detect if what the person is saying in the video is scripted.
The most important lesson that I learned from producing the corporate video of the association is you have got to know your association. You should know by heart what your association is all about so that you will be able to produce a video that will tell the audience who you are as an association. Yes, hiring professionals is a big help. You can depend on them on getting a good quality video recording and creative video effects but you cannot depend on them when it comes to the video content. Be very vigilant in getting the right key words and phrases that you would like to highlight in the video. Ask your video editor to make it graphically memorable to make sure that you get viewers’ attention. For our association’s corporate video, I had to watch and review the video recordings over and over again to be able to get the powerful messages from each of the key personalities and to be able to put it all together to come up with a compelling and cohesive corporate video.
I hope that these few tips will help you come up with a compelling corporate video for your own association.