The Video Marketing Blog

By now you know that advertising is dead. People refuse to pay attention to communication that looks, sounds or smells like advertising. Thus the birth of content marketing, which is getting people to pay attention to your product by bribing them with information they find interesting. But content marketing isn’t enough. Just giving people useful information doesn’t address the fundamental reason for making a buy decision. Watch this brilliant video, created by Jeff Rosenblum of Questus, and you’ll start to see how and what you need to be communicating. Then we’ll talk about how to get the job done with video production in Boston or anywhere else.

True story. Sitting in a meeting with Boston-area Company X, discussing ideas for their video production. Company X says, “I think we should make part of it a music video. We’ll need an original song, and maybe some choreography. I saw a music video Hubspot made, and it was really cool. They said an intern did it, and that anyone can do it because it isn’t that hard.” Ah, yes. The ‘How Hard Can It Be’ syndrome. As in, no, we don’t have the budget to pay for a music video, but that’s what we want. Hubspot did it with their 20-something intern. Don’t you have a 20-something intern?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could post videos on your LinkedIn profile? Our business is video production in the Boston area, so the ability to add videos to Profiles, and to the company page, is important to us. But LinkedIn has really lagged when it comes to letting people add videos. Maybe it’s not something you’ve really considered, but if you think about how easy it is to do on Facebook, you start to see that this has been a real problem. Now LinkedIn has just announced that they’ve addressed this problem: you can now add videos (and images) very easily to your profile page. This particular feature hasn’t appeared on company profiles yet, but we're hoping it’ll show up soon. So how do you do it? Here’s a quick 3-step tutorial that will have your Profile populated with videos in no time.

We just completed a very cool video production for a Boston-area maker of 3D printers. 3D Systems needed to showcase the printer itself, along with the wide variety of objects the machine can create. One of the best ways to show isolated products is against a clean white background. And, a really great way to differentiate video from photographs is to use three-dimensional motion, which in this case means rotatation. Sounds kind of abstract, until you see it. Watch this video and notice how cool simple rotation makes these objects look.

We spoke to an association this week about their conference video recordings, and were surprised to hear they are so disappointed in performance that they're not going to create video recordings at this year's conference. Specifically, they said, "we were sold on making revenue" yet that revenue has not materialized. At first glance, their situation appears pretty straightforward: they tried video recordings, made no money, and are abandoning an unsuccessful experiment. But after asking more questions, we discovered something very interesting: they made no revenue because the actions they took with their videos guaranteed that they would make little or no money.

In an article posted earlier this week, TechCrunch attacks a YouTube video for startup Rippln, calling the video “stupid bullshit” and “a two-minute case study for how not to pitch” your new app. Then comes an angry 17-bullet list on what not to do if you’re creating a video for your startup. But here’s the problem: TechCrunch is dead wrong. Yes, the video is icky. But this little video is perfect for what Rippln is trying to do.

We sometimes run into articles and ebooks that make interesting recommendation regarding video production for small businesses: stop being afraid of low production values. Because, the logic goes, “YouTube has lowered expectations, bringing video production into reach for small businesses with nonexistent video production budgets” here in Boston or anywhere else. But before you grab your phone or your iPad and start cranking out videos for your business, read below for a) why you should be afraid of low production values, and b) what this means for your video production.

Unless you’re a comic book fan, your everyday exposure to superheroes comes in just two flavors: Hollywood blockbusters and GoPro videos. Skiers, surfers, skaters – and, my personal favorite: wingsuit BASE jumpers: extreme athletes all, enjoying stratospheric highs from feats that defy belief. It’s no wonder the little wearable cameras which make all this accessible to the layperson are such a hit. What’s really fascinating is how many of GoPro’s customers make videos of the fun stuff they’re doing using the cameras – providing fantastic, free marketing for GoPro.

 You organize a conference, and you create videos of your presentations. You place your conference video recordings in an online library and sell access to attendees and non-attendees. Great! You’re using your videos as assets to benefit your conference. But – are you sure your videos are playing, and playing correctly? Videos that are improperly hosted may play poorly, or not show up at all. This can be a big problem: people who have a hard time playing your videos will get irritated, and maybe angry, because they paid for your videos but your videos aren't working.

We were thrilled to find out on February 25 that we'd won a 2012 Platinum VISTA Award for Corporate Video Production. The VISTA Awards are bestowed annually by the New England Professional Videographers Association, for excellence in video production.