3 Mistakes That Make Corporate Videos Boring

When a video is done right, it can be the secret to shaking your employees and customers from a catatonic state of slumber induced by a world of bland messages and uninspired marketing, to evoking emotion and inspiring action.

The question is, “What does it take for a video not to be boring?”

The secret is emotion.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science found that emotion is the number one trigger that determines how much a video gets shared. The combination of stunning images, unexpected movement, real-life sound, stirring music and vivid color are part of video’s power to elicit emotions for products and services as diverse as coffee and oil-well drill bits to employee engagement and product launches.

Companies Sense the Power of Video

Creating videos topped the list of content forms marketers want to learn more about, followed by live video and creating visuals. Source: 2018 Social Media Marketing Report; SocialMediaExaminer.com 

Those statistics line up with information found on Digital Marketing Institute from Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey research results which show 81% of companies use video for marketing purposes in 2018, compared to 63% in 2017.

Customers Respond to Video

Video attracts two to three times as many monthly website visitors and doubles their time spent on the site. Source: MarketingSherpa  The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video. Source: Mist Media

Google Rewards Video

It’s critical that the opportunity is not wasted whenever the play button is pressed.

Here are three mistakes we see that can prevent a corporate video from becoming an emotional tidal wave for the brand.

Mistake #1 – Failure to approach creative strategy like you are producing a motion picture.

Your next video is an opportunity to tell a story. Your story can make your audience laugh, cheer, think or take action.

Every story should begin by gripping the audience’s attention like they’re being grabbed by the lapel. To do this, you need to think about approaching the video just like studios approach a motion picture with millions of dollars on the line.

Here are six quick tips on how to do that:

1. Tell the story. Make a point.
2. Be open to ideas. Be open to changes. This can be the most fun part of the process.
3. Get it on paper. Storyboard your ideas.
4. It has to be interesting to the audience. The key is connection. Is there any way to bring the audience into the story?
5. Music sets the mood. Choose your music carefully.
6. Respect the three phases of production:
   • Pre-production: Planning, strategy, scripting and storyboarding, etc.
   • Production: The actual content creation whether it is the actual shooting/recording or an all animation production.
   • Post-production: Editing and creating the final master copy.

Mistake #2 – Not scheduling enough time for pre-production.

When creating content that truly resonates with your audience, one of the most important steps is understanding your audience to know what works for them and creating a strategy on how the content will evoke the intended emotions. So allowing enough time for the pre-production process is an essential step in the video production process.

Pre-production is everything that happens before the camera starts filming or the animators start creating. This can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 weeks, but we recommend allowing as much time as possible for this stage of the production process. Among other things, it includes:

• Research
• Planning
• Strategy
• Scripting
• Location scouts
• Asset collection
• Storyboarding

All of this requires collaboration and lots of communication, which competes against already full schedules.

We sometimes get scripts that are ten minutes long and need to be edited to fit in a 90-second video. It’s a tough exercise to chip away and get to the core message.

Mistake #3 – Not optimizing the video length.

The goal of a corporate video is to tell a story and make a point in the shortest amount of time possible, but the length of a video is only one component of the formula.

The formula also includes the format and setting of the video. For example, a 3D animation video like this award-winning one produced for Baker Hughes needed a little over two minutes to tell the story.

Whereas, the Houston Tour Video launched as part of the Greater Houston Partnership’s Houston Image Coalition during Super Bowl LI that was designed to showcase Houston to their target audience in just four minutes.

Audiences have expectations for how long a video should last, just as audiences have expectations for how long a motion picture should last.

Staying within a range of the audience’s expectations prevents disengagement, especially when a video is viewed online.

In this piece of research by Wistia, they found that shorter is better when it comes to engagement.

The rule of thumb is that building emotion takes time, but get there directly. For some videos, the ideal length is 30 seconds and for others, it’s 10 minutes.

So, in summary, your next video could get thousands of views and thousands of shares, and your best chance of accomplishing that is to touch the emotions of your audience.

These three tips will help:

1. Approach creative strategy like you are producing a major motion picture.
2. Allow enough time for research and planning.
3. Optimize your video length for the context and audience.