It’s very aspirational in tone and hopefully opens people’s minds to the options that on-going training at work can give you.

How are students today using technology?
Well, a Day in the Life story following a student would certainly give us some hints.
This case study was very much about how schools need to teach in the same way that students are now experiencing life though video, computers and mobile phones.
Students use an incredible amount of technology and it’s up to the teaching environment to reflect that.
Schools today don’t want students glued to the TV but there’s nothing wrong with students using the internet to research topics alongside the more traditional methods.

This is an animated opener we produced for their client “Fit for Work” in Brussels this year.

WS are always a great team to work for with very clear ideas of what they want to achieve on behalf of their client.

This is a good example of how to get across a lot of information when you have very little actual video content by way of interviews.

This is a much talked about communication film used by Metia’s client at marketing events and by sales teams out on the road.

All of these films were shot on the canon 7D and were created to be played at the event and also on the web.

I think you’ll agree that Grant Ridley is a particularly impressive bloke already and obviously a future Richard Branson.

For whatever reason you may not have any usable footage of your company or product so using motion graphics with key interviews is a great way of dealing with a lack of footage.

For this project it wasn’t a lack of footage but merely that we were bringing together half a dozen case studies into one package.

There’s also the added bonus of re-using footage you already have and refreshing a case study without actually having to go out and shoot more interviews.

We created this video to show clients what they are potentially missing out on and also show them whats possible nowadays with animation in making a thought provoking presentation.

One of the toughest jobs with any corporate video whether you are making an intro film for your website or a sales video for the marketing team is…keeping people’s interest.

One of the best ways of doing this is telling a personal story.

I don’t mean I want to hear your life story from the age of 5 but personalise how your product helps on a human level.

One of the keys things to remember about a corporate video is that it’s people who are ultimately buying your product and they want to know whether you can help them;

Make more money

Provide a better service for their clients

Make their business more efficient

Help colleagues at work

Let’s take the example of a client of mine  that makes servers for the IT industry. They are a big company, one of the biggest in the world.

Now whilst they may have the fastest servers in the world, that can compute the most incredible amount of information. That’s all pretty meaningless unless we have some real life examples of this product in action.

It’s simple really, don’t concentrate on shots of the servers but concentrate of the effect they have to the workings of a business.

Does having this fabulous IT structure help with customer service? Yes it does… so lets hear from the customer service department with their story of how using your particular server product has helped them create a better business.

Remember it’s the CEO who’s signing this purchase off ultimately. He’s wants to know how he can improve his business not lots of figures about how much memory it has

I call this the lobster story.

Imaging you run a large industrial business that develops man made fibres used in making ropes and netting.

This fibre is also bio-degradable. Rather than spend a day filming the inside of a laboratory why not find an interesting industry that uses your product – a lobster fisherman!

You make a 3 minute client advocacy film about a day in the life of the lobster fisherman. To satisfy your research department you could include a short interview from the scientist who developed it and about the technology behind the product and why it’s so environmentally friendly but basically we are making a film about a lobster fisherman.

By the end of watching this testimonial video your clients will know this product is tuff, durable and environmentally safe – they’ll also have been genuinely interested in the life of the lobster fisherman. And then right at the end they see your company’s logo and a website address and phone number.

We haven’t bored them with science, we’ve genuinely tried to be interesting and at the end……”oh and by the way… this is who we are and where you can find us.

A real example

Back to my client – a multi-national who provides IT solutions.

I’ve just recently shot a client advocacy video or a testimonial video for this  particular client. This marketing video was for sales teams to show potential clients how this IT solution works in real life.

This large IT company has a car rental company as a client in South Africa who had completely over-hauled this IT infrastructure with this new solution.

But rather than show lots of computers we did this.

We took a cameraman to the pickup point in the garage of the car rental company and we asked the clients of this car rental company – “What do you think makes great customer service?”

The first 60 seconds of this corporate video consists of lots of happy clients of this car rental company talking about their great experiences, they were very happy clients, it’s a good company. No mention of server hardware solutions though.

We then interview the CEO and asked her what she thought made her company stand out and she said it was all about putting the customer first. Still no mention of the server hardware though.

And then finally once we, as a viewer had bought into this company, and thought “That’s the sort of company I want to run I’d be happy to buy into their business partners and the solutions they provide” we talked briefly about the IT solution our client provided the car rental company.

We spent barely 30% of the video talking about the IT solution of our client but spent more time showing what great customers their client had and what their core values were.

Why, well any salesman will tell you that you have to sell yourself first before trying to sell a product. By showing what made their client successful made it easy to show why you should use our clients solution.

Always look for the personal story when making a corporate video.

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