The video nobody watched

Hi {{first_name}},

Most corporate videos that fail are not bad videos.

They are competent, well shot, on brand, approved by everyone - and then they sit in a folder. Nobody links to them, nobody sends them, and eighteen months later somebody asks whether it is time to make a new one.

There is usually one reason, and it happens long before anyone picks up a camera.

The video was aimed at everyone.

Clients, staff, investors and new recruits all want different things from you. A prospective client wants to know whether you can do the work. Someone deciding whether to apply for a job wants to know what it is like on a Tuesday. Those are not the same video, and a piece that tries to be both ends up being neither.

It is the most common expensive mistake in corporate video, and it is decided at brief stage - in the sentence that says "a video about the company".

The fix is unglamorous. Before anything else, answer three questions:

• Who exactly is watching, and where are they when they watch it?
• What do they think now, and what should they think afterwards?
• What happens next - is there something to click, or is this ambient?

A brief that can answer those produces a video with a job. A brief that cannot produces something everyone approves and nobody uses.

The other thing worth knowing: the brief is where the money is. A vague brief does not save time, it defers the problem to the edit, which is the most expensive place to discover it. Script changes are cheap. Edit changes are not.

We have written up the whole thing - the four formats and what each is actually for, how a production runs from brief to delivery, and the five ways a corporate video quietly fails.

Read the guide → {{pillar_url}}

Cheers, {{sender_name}}