The range of formats is varied but a piece usually falls into one of the categories below:
- “About Us” videos – company introductions or investment case videos
- Management interviews – for major events of stakeholder interest
- Pieces to camera – usually for management/employee communications but also for sales
- Mini documentaries and features or “virtual” roadshows – featuring parts of the business, strategy in action, markets, products, or corporate responsibility activities
- Magazine or news programmes – usuallly for employee communications
- “Fun” videos – eg capturing the highlights of management, employee or charity/fundraising events
- Training and learning videos – for employees or actual/potential customers of complicated products/services
‘About us’ videos
Most companies now need an introductory video on their website to bring it alive. These are usually for customers or potential employee engagement. They are best kept short, filmed on location, often (but not always) best with some senior management input and certainly better with some staff and customer input. They can take a bit of time to conceive and produce and sometimes it’s better to have more than one on site to tell the composite story, with a variety of contributors. They are the vision of your company to outside world online so are important to get right Back to top
This format is often used for senior management communications at key points in a company’s year such as results and major strategic announcements. Interviews are filmed in advance of the announcement, edited on site for immediate approval so that they can be published on the client website moments after the official announcement hits the wires.
This is important because the first few hours after announcement are critical to decision influencing/making audiences such as analysts, traders and the media, and the first couple of days are critical to investment decision makers and other key stakeholder audiences.
This is a useful format when management wishes to communicate direct with an audience, often employees, colleagues, customers or suppliers. These are often best kept short and filmed with one camera, with or without autocue. They can be illustrated with videos, stills and graphics as required. Back to top
Mini-documentaries and features
Many companies, large and small, have markets, operations and customers far afield and overseas that they would like their investor, business and employee audiences to understand better without having to take them there physically. This format is ideally suited to creating short, informative and engaging pieces to achieve this – a virtual investor/analyst day.
For smaller companies the approach can be used to impart the key elements of the whole company’s story – whether as an About Us video or as an investment case video. It can also be used to highlight charity support, sustainability activities, and other events as short videos on the website. Back to top
As the name suggests these are lighthearted pieces usually made for employees and colleagues and only shown internally. Their format varies enormously from short pieces of edited highlights of longer team or company events to themed pieces to play into senior management conferences or simply fun pieces, capturing fundraising or anniversary events etc to share within the company on the intranet. Back to top
These vary enormously in format and are often used for safety instruction, inductions, and on the job training. They are often used to demonstrate best practice in action and to reinforce the key messages communicated through other training methods. Back to top