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Why you shouldn’t play safe.

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taking-risk

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.

  1. Involve stakeholders in agreeing the brief but don’t share creative ideas with a wide audience – the idea will be killed by ‘feedback’.
  2. 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.
  3. 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!
  4. 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).
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

[email protected]

 

GET TO THE POINT!

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Tired-Work-PixGood

Evidence shows that if you want people to watch your film it has to be short – the shorter the better. The reality is many corporate films are now watched at the desk (while checking emails) or on mobile devices, so your film needs to grab people immediately.

A good technique when writing scripts is the ‘Inverse Pyramid’ in which you hit your audience with the one thing they need to remember first, then important details and lastly the background info. It is often used by journalists and can clearly be seen in newspaper headlines.

The problem is that many reports, presentations and videos start with the background and take ages to get to the point.

So when you are looking at the structure and content of your next communication here are our suggestions:

  1. Write down the one thing that you want people to remember and get this up front in a ‘headline’ style.
  2. Be ruthless about stripping out content. At every stage ask yourself ‘is this essential?’
  3. Direct people to follow up sources of information so you don’t have to cover everything in the film. Your film can be like a 60 second advert that directs people to find out more from other company sources – like follow-up emails, websites or face-to-face meetings.
  4. Avoid including lots of background – that’s old news. Talk about what is new.
  5. If you are filming business leaders use an auto-cue so you can control what they say. If you ask someone to talk for 30 seconds without one they will often talk for way more than you need them to.
  6. A script for a 60 voice-over will typically be about 120 words long. It is really hard to get your message across in so few words – but if you succeed your film will be great!

We have lots of experience of helping clients to hone their message. If you would like to talk to us about how we can help you, drop us a line!

[email protected]