All about video production

Hi, I'm Matt.

And I'm Chris, and we're from Rusty Monkey.

Still in our warehouse.

Yep, it's going well, isn't it, all that fit-out?

Yep, nothing's happened. But, you wouldn't have expected it to yet really, and maybe the next few will be like that, but it's an exciting time.

It is. So today we want to talk to you about video.

Who on earth are we?

Who are these guys anyway, and why should you listen to their advice? Ooh, an award!????

What we haven't really done is introduce who we are in the company. So I'm the Creative Director, I'm in charge of a lot of our creative output, and making sure our projects run smoothly, and I've got a good understanding of online marketing. Chris here - we should put a little strapline up underneath Chris with a BBC logo on it. Are we allowed to use the BBC logo?

Hmm, I'm not sure. I could make one that looks similar, but isn't the same.

Okay, that'll do.

Fine, I'll do that. I'm our video expert, and I've also been a freelance camera supervisor for the BBC and other areas for about twenty years.

Haven't you recently won some awards?

Oh, thank you for asking, Matthew. Yeah, I've got an award for Meghan and Harry's wedding. An RTS award.

Nice. He just passed me £5 off-camera there. Thanks for that.

That's okay. Very proud. Anyway, so we know quite a lot about video, as it happens, and if you want to spend millions of pounds on a video, we can do it. I can get you 250 cameramen tomorrow if you want. But you probably don't have that budget.

And what's the value in that anyway? I think it's important to understand what you want to get out of your video and what it's there for. People can get video just for the sake of video, but it's really about making something that's going to work for you. There are over 300 hours of video footage uploaded to YouTube every minute, or something, so where are you gonna put the video, how is it gonna stand out, and why are you doing it?

Let's break those things down then.

Why do video? Engage better with your audience. Create more dynamic marketing content.

It can really help you get your message across in ways that ordinary marketing probably couldn't. And the nice thing about video is there's lots of different delivery mechanisms for it - you can put it through lots of different channels.

Yeah, and when you're talking about your business, it can be a bit more fun than the bland text that's on websites and brochures - it engages more with people. So we obviously recommend doing video over other different types of content.

Where should you put your video? Understand how best to target your audience.Promote your video in all the right places.

Where would we put it? What's the placement for it?

So, yeah, we don't just like to produce your video for you. When you get your video done, you wanna think about where that's gonna be put. Lots of people get video done, they upload it to YouTube, and they expect a result. They expect some sort of engagement, or something to happen from that. Ordinarily, they probably won't get very much. So sometimes, alongside a video, you need some online marketing with that - you need to get that video out there, you need to promote it, you need to get people to share it. Perhaps the video is tied to some other complicated campaign, maybe you're trying to start a competition, or do something else. Maybe you are just trying to introduce people to an exciting new product. But to get that out there, you really need to make sure you've got a good understanding of video placement. We know as well that video works really well on Facebook, for instance, and that it converts better, and that it reduces your cost per click for your advertising. Anybody who knows anything about online marketing will tell you exactly the same - video converts better than any other medium through social media. Are you going to put it on a DVD and send it in the post? Put it on a Betamax?

Old school. And if you know where you're gonna put it before you do the video, then it's gonna be a lot more cost-effective for you to produce it. And we're gonna produce something that works. If it's an advert on YouTube, you're gonna have to capture someone's attention in the first five seconds before the skip button comes up. So it'll be a very different video than if you're trying to show it on YouTube to people in your industry who are already excited about what you do. So that would be two very different kinds of video.

Exactly. So understand your audience, and where your audience lives. Are you B2B (business-to-business)? Is it gonna be better to promote through LinkedIn? Or are you B2C (business-to-consumer)? Do you understand your demographics, and can you get it straight to that demographic through Facebook or Twitter?

What content should your video have? Have fun, tell a story. Make a video that works for you.

And with video, the content is really key, and you can do lots of interesting things. It doesn't have to be a dry a list of the benefits of a widget. It can be a fun thing, and it can be a narrative-based thing.

That's a content thing, isn't it? Do we have a number for content?

Yeah, content is number four.

Oh right, so let's do the next one.

That is the next one.

Oh, we're onto content.

We're onto content. I seamlessly moved onto content, while Matt didn't.

This is why you're the video professional.

It was seamless as well. So, you can do quite fun things with video.

Yeah, I think concentrating on your content and making that engage with your audience is really key. Just producing an advert is not always the best way of doing it. Sometimes it's better to do a vlog format, for instance. Or is it worth doing a product walk-through? Or is it worth doing a piece about your manufacturing process? We're doing a video at the moment actually for some guys who have an interesting new product, but they've changed the world of their industry with this product, because it's completely different. And they now have to re-educate their entire audience about why this product is so different. So sometimes these explainer videos are a really good thing.

If someone's changing the world like that, you can get over the enthusiasm that they have for their product on video, whereas through a leaflet, or whatever, you would never see that. That can be really powerful.

What they're trying to communicate is crazy complex, so having somebody who has that knowledge and understanding, saying that face-to-face, translates so much better than reams and reams of the same thing written down.

Yeah, and if the content's good, you can do a video reasonably cheaply. If you imagine most of the videos on YouTube that have got the most subscribers are actually quite cheap. So all your PewDiePies and people unboxing toys - they've got millions of subscribers, and they're done really cheaply, just in front of someone's computer. So you don't have to spend a fortune, you've just gotta make the content really relevant to the people you want to speak to.

Work with your internal creatives if you have them, partner with a creative company or a video agency. Talk to them about your business, get them to understand your business, and they can help you get your content right. Importantly, they will help steer you in the right direction if you don't know which direction to go in.

Obviously, we can do that. We do that really well.

Yeah, Chris will. He's trained.

Yeah, I'm good at steering.

We need your award, don't we really.

I can superimpose it.

Can we CGI it on my hand?

Yeah, wow, look at that award.

And it's gone!

How much should you spend on video? You can't buy viral marketing.Focus on reaching your audience.

Anyway, costs. So how much do you wanna spend on a video? In my freelance capacity, I worked on a video for a large car company. We had about fifty cameras dotted around London, and it was supposed to go viral. It was some sort of weird bank robbery thing... I can't really say much more about it, but it cost a fortune. It probably cost, I would estimate, about £5m. Maybe more. And it was supposed to go viral, but did it? Not so much.

No, you can't buy viral. Certainly in our experience, you just can't buy viral. Some people in the comments below might say, 'Well actually, I did,' but we'd probably argue you fluked viral. Viral is almost an impossible thing to go out there and buy. Create enough content and you might get lucky, but the important thing is to create the content that's gonna engage with your audience. Because viral marketing isn't necessarily gonna be the thing you really want to aim for. Everybody wants it, everybody wants the millions and millions and millions of views, but unless you're doing proper mass market stuff - which most businesses aren't, they have a specific audience - it doesn't bring the value you probably expect it to anyway. So don't buy viral, it's just gonna be a well to throw your money into.

Well I think that's probably enough for this video. We could talk about video for days.

And we promised we'd keep them short.

We will talk in more detail about some of these video aspects, but if you want to know anything about any video, write a message to us and we will endeavour to answer any questions you've got. So that's it for now, we'll see you on the next video that we do. Consistent!

Consistent!

We'll definitely do that.

We're on it.

Bye!

We could teleport out, actually.

Okay.