Producing corporate videos often comes with high hopes.
The company hopes to enhance its image, build trust among customers and excitement among employees.
Unfortunately, the truth is that most corporate films are… boring.
Why is this the case? And what can you do to make your corporate film production as successful as the films we have described in this text?
Let’s establish what we think a corporate film is.
What is a corporate film according to our definition
Corporate films are not strictly advertising films. Instead of talking about products, they tell about the activities of the company.
Corporate film most often achieves one of the objectives:
- to inspire confidence in customers or investors,
- summarizing the stage of, for example, the 10th anniversary of the company,
- or promoting the company among employees (new and existing).
It is usually distributed through the website, e-mail, social media, conferences, and Intranet.
Corporate video production – the most common mistakes:
1) Mismatching the target audience
This is the most egregious and probably the most common mistake.
It takes different forms:
- A stiff Employer Branding video that is supposed to appeal to young students,
- A video full of technical jargon aimed at non-technical conference attendees,
- A client meeting video that talks about how many markets they have conquered instead of focusing on the problems they can help solve.
How to avoid this mistake:
Create a brief description of the target audience – it is crucial to think about the needs of the target audience. While working on the video, verify that the scene would appeal to this group.
2) Not fitting the video into the context
This mistake is a bit more subtle than the previous one.
Imagine the following situation:
A company has acquired its competitor and wants to create a corporate video for its employees.
What will the film be about? It is most likely about how big their company has become after the acquisition, how many markets it operates in, and why employees should be proud of it.
But that ignores an important factor – the merger means uncertainty for many employees.
Employees fear for their jobs. They don’t know where the company is headed next. They also wonder how the implementation of changes will happen in practice.
A good decision would be to create material that will familiarize employees with the situation and dispel their doubts.
How to avoid this mistake:
Consider what situation your target group is currently in and what they are thinking about. What emotions they are feeling and what they are talking about with their friends over coffee.
3) Lack of clarity about the purpose of the corporate video
Often many people are working on the production of a corporate film and that means many different, often conflicting, views of the film’s goals.
Someone wants to build an image. And someone wants to sell. Still another person wants to dispel employee doubts. It usually ends up being wasted money.
“When something is for everything, it’s for nothing,” – says the folk proverb. And in the case of corporate videos, this is true.
How to avoid this mistake:
Set one specific goal for this film to accomplish. If you find it difficult to do this internally, then ask the studio to hold a workshop where this goal is established prior to production.
4) Boring message
The message of most corporate videos can be summarized with the sentence: “Look how cool our company is!”.
It’s not surprising, after all, as this video is supposed to tell a story about your company. But it can be done in different ways.
You can talk about how many customers the company has and in how many countries. Or you can tell customers and employees about the “WHY?” behind the company’s actions.
Why does the company operate at all? What customer problems does it solve? What is distinctive about its approach? What values are close to the company?
Such a message will be much more interesting than “We have 6,500 customers in 27 countries”.
How to avoid this mistake:
Consider what exactly you want to convey to your audience. What thoughts and feelings they should leave with after watching the video.
5) No clear tone of voice
What is tone of voice?
It is the tone that a message takes.
When we talk to someone live, it is clear to us what the tone of our interlocutor’s speech is. We perceive the volume of their voice and its timbre, we see their facial expression, posture, what they are wearing and where they direct their gaze.
How does this relate to a corporate video?
In the case of video material, the tone is the entire form that the video takes. The types of characters, colors, dynamics, narrator’s voice and music.
Let’s imagine that our corporate video is created in a tone:
The wise benevolent teacher – Dumbledore from “Harry Potter”.
Then the narrative will be calm, full of pictorial examples, with vibrant and warm colors.
Classroom smarts – Sheldon Cooper from “Big Bang Theory.”
The narration will be more challenging, there will be a lot of jargon, and the film will be more dynamic.
The cheerful talker, or Donkey from “Shrek.”
The narrative will be created in colloquial language, there will be various stories and curiosities, and the whole thing will have a slightly chaotic dimension.
Cool guest, namely King Julian from “Madagascar”.
The film will be full of color, animation, changing frames and jokes.
The boring teacher, or Dolores Umbridge character from “Harry Potter.”
The video will look like a typical corporate video – staid, stiff and boring.
If a company deliberately doesn’t choose its tone, it very often ends up with the tone of a boring teacher.
How to avoid this mistake:
Consciously choose the tone you want to take.
6) Form and style not matching the rest
Sometimes an animation will be better, sometimes a video shot by a film crew and sometimes a video shot with a smartphone.
The form of the video needs to fit with:
- the target audience,
- context,
- purpose,
- the message,
- and tone of voice.
Similarly with the style, i.e. colors, choice of characters, dynamics, music, and voiceover.
It is much easier to choose the form and style, when we know that e.g.:
- we are directing the material to employees,
- worried about the recent merger,
- we want to familiarize employees with the upcoming changes,
- showing the impact of the merger on the daily functioning of the company,
- in the tone of a benevolent teacher – Dumbledore.
How to avoid this mistake:
Go through points 1-5 and choose your form and style based on them.
7) Lack of storytelling
The truth is that you can create a good corporate video without storytelling. One example is Ripo’s video, where most of the work is done with good shots and dynamic editing.
But in most cases, storytelling will be very helpful because it can bring dry facts into an interesting and engaging story.
Unfortunately, most often the storytelling of corporate videos looks like this:
“We are one of the largest companies in the leasing industry. We have been in business for 30 years and have 75,000 customers…”
Easy to fall asleep, right?
You can dress the whole thing up, as we did for TechnoNICOL:
Animation about the history of TechnoNICOL
How to avoid this mistake:
Consciously build storytelling.
Summary:
Producing corporate videos is no easy task. There are many traps lurking along the way.
To avoid them, remember the seven deadly sins of corporate video production:
- Mismatching the target audience,
- Mismatching the context,
- Lack of clarity about the purpose of the corporate video
- Boring message,
- Lack of clear tone of voice,
- Form and style mismatched with the rest,
- Lack of storytelling.
Our corporate videos: