Dare to be risky when making a corporate film.
No one in a communications role got fired for making a film ‘like the last one’ or indeed one which looked like lots of other corporate films – but there’s the rub. To cut through the noise and clutter of thousands of others bits of communication your work has to stand out. To be different. And that involves taking risks.
A novel, creative treatment may be harder to sell-in to stakeholders, and in busy lives the path of least resistance can be appealing. But films with high talk-ability are usually films that take a creative risk. Put the effort in to getting a creative idea commissioned and you will reap the rewards.
Here are our top tips to get a memorable, original and effective film.
- Involve stakeholders in agreeing the brief but don’t share creative ideas with a wide audience – the idea will be killed by ‘feedback’.
- Give your agency the time and budget to do the creative thinking early on in the project. If there is no time everyone will revert to what has been done before.
- Practice ‘Greenhousing’ – where you give ideas time and space to grow, saying what you like about an idea. It is amazing how great ideas often emerge from one that you thought was a bad one at the start!
- You don’t have to spend a fortune on production to get a great film but you can’t skimp on the time spent to come up with a good treatment. The Thames Valley Police ‘Tea’ film about sexual consent is a good example here (see previous posting).
- Manage stakeholder expectations. When you are working on the brief make it clear that you are not expecting to produce ‘one like the last one’. Nobody likes a surprise.
- Don’t use the pitch process to try and get good ideas. No agency comes up with its best responding to an RFP or pitch document. Great ideas come when a client opens up to their agency and the two work together as partners.
We received a brief to make a training film to explain Return on Assets to a marketing audience. Not a very inspiring subject. But our creative animation was a million miles away from what you might expect and everyone – including the CEO – loved it! You can see a short excerpt from it here https://vimeo.com/107701583
I you would like to put us to the test with your creative challenge drop us a line.