Kwedar & Co. Brand Video Launch
Be sure to read this full post to get great advice on preparing for your brand video shoot, as well as where to use your assets!
We get it. Brand videos are an investment of time, money, staff resources, energy, and more. Plus, being interviewed is tough! However, they’re a really great way to carry forward your message and your tone, showing prospective clients a glimpse of what it’s like to work with you. It’s important to treat yourself like a client. You and your business deserve the care and attention that you give to those you serve, and a great brand video to use in your PR and marketing is one way to take care of your business.
We’ve been directing and producing brand videos for years, and it was finally time to create our own. Thank you to EC Films for always being so wonderful to work with, and help bring our vision to life.
Brand Video
Important tips for your brand video preparation and shoot
Pick a partner (or team) you trust. We work with EC Films because they understand how the videos will ultimately be used in marketing. There are plenty of video teams out there, but not all of them have the marketing chops you need. We work with EC Films on client projects all the time, so when it was finally time to be in the hot seat ourselves, we knew they’d take care of us and help guide us. Similarly, clients bring us in to help direct and produce their brand videos to ensure everything goes off without a hitch, from interview question development and prep, location scouting, styling, and more.
Pick a date! We’ve been in business for 5 years, and this is our first brand video. We’ve known it’s been time and have been ready for a while, so we finally just picked a date on the calendar and worked backward from there. Once you have the date marked off, and the entire crew booked, it’s a lot easier to get serious about FINALLY getting your brand video made.
Know what you’re going to say. This is an investment, so don’t just wing it. For ourselves, as well as our clients, we lean heavily on our corporate brand message to design the interview questions and answers to ensure we convey the right talking points. On the flip side, though, don’t try to memorize your answers. You’ll come across really stiff, unnatural, and unapproachable. You should know your brand message pretty well (hopefully you’re used to saying it pretty often! If you don’t have a consistent message, let’s talk.), so, try to relax and speak from the heart. It’s okay if you mess up; that’s where tip #4 comes in.
Plan for b-roll. This brand video tip cannot be overstated. When you have tons of b-roll, you give yourself a number of benefits:
When you have a lot of b-roll, your interview is SO much easier to edit. The editor can cut away from your face and use your voice over the b-roll footage and string together excellent talking points, even if you struggled in the moment. Trust us on this one! Even the most confident public speakers and interviewees can have an off day, and if you have lots of b-roll options, you have so much more flexibility. If you pull a face, struggle to land a point, etc., it’s all good if you have some footage you can lay your v/o on top of.
B-roll gives the viewer a glimpse into what it’s like to work with you and experience your product or service. You want to showcase smiling, happy people enjoying the process or end results. We recommend this for still photos for marketing materials, both print and digital, and the same holds true for video footage.
When you have lots of b-roll, you set yourself up for marketing success for the long-term, because you can reuse this footage in a variety of ways in your PR and marketing. In the section below, you’ll see how we’re planning to use our video assets. Here’s another great example of a client using b-roll for a fantastic news opportunity.
Carefully plan attire, hair, and makeup.
There’s endless information on the internet about what to wear for a video shoot, so we won’t reinvent the wheel here. However, we WILL recommend that you coordinate with your other on-screen colleagues to ensure your outfits don’t clash. We teamed up with BBN Agency for our shoot day, and we kept each other apprised of our outfit selections to make sure the color palettes went well together. Also, be sure to bring a few outfits to the shoot in case of mishaps, spills, tears, or oops-this-doesn’t-look-good-after-all moments.
Finally, we’ve always been advocates of professional hair and makeup for photo and video shoots, but for the first time we had a hair and makeup artist on set with us all day, and we’re never going back. First, we just so happened to pick the hottest day of the year for our video shoot, and it took no time at all for our hair and makeup to start to wilt and melt (the heat of the lighting, the 112 degrees outside, plus a few dashes of anxiety… yikes). Mo, our hair/makeup artist works specifically for photo and video shoots, and she monitored us with an eagle eye to make sure our hair stayed in place, and our makeup looked fresh and on point. She also took care of our b-roll volunteers, tidying up sunglasses tans and making sure everyone looked camera-ready. Once you factor everything and everyone in, her day rate was a fantastic value.
Try to get some still photos. We are big fans of efficiency, so we knew we wanted to grab some new headshots as well as brand photos while we were on location and all dressed and made up. This only added a small upcharge since the EC Films crew was able to take the photos for us while the video cameras were rolling.
How we’ll use our brand video
Curious about what’s next for these video assets? Here’s how we plan to use our brand marketing video and b-roll footage:
Our marketing video will live on our website and LinkedIn home page
We plan to create additional videos to build up our YouTube profile
We have shorter videos and b-roll footage to create dynamic social media posts, ad campaigns, and to add to email campaigns
and more!
Do you feel like you’re missing this dimension from your marketing mix? Overwhelmed about tackling this on your own? Let’s talk!