BLOG: Top Corporate Video Fails - Part 1

Video marketing is the most effective means of promoting your business, with companies who do so growing their income 49% faster year on year.

If you’ve ended up here because yet again, you’re being faced with parting with a portion of your marketing budget, you may need a bit more convincing, and are probably wondering what, or who, was to blame if your last video flopped?

So, whose responsibility was it when your video wasn’t the earth shattering, viral sensation you had hoped for? Was it the production company who misinterpreted your brief, the marketing assistant who posted it without linking through to your website, or could it have been that painfully wooden interview with your CEO?

Our series of corporate video pet hates, single(s) out some of the critical decisions that are made throughout the production, post-production and distribution process that will help your campaign to protect your brand and promote your business.

1. Playing it safe

The video experience has never been so accessible and our constantly evolving relationship with technology means anyone can direct and upload a film in seconds, so it’s no wonder that your content may be getting buried beneath this digital downpour of viral videos. If you’re keen to create a piece of content that is irresistibly sharable, we suggest thinking outside of the box…

After all, around one billion hours of video is watched every day worldwide on YouTube alone. They may be subtitled, but it’s easy to get lost in the ‘noise’ out there!

Working alongside our Creative Director and team of visual storytellers here at Mentor, our pre-production team can sit down with you and help to develop a bespoke concept that transforms your corporate video into a memorable campaign that surprises and challenges your audience, while remaining true to your company values.

Our humorous ‘Flats and Shanks’ series of videos with international rugby legends David Flatman and Tom Shanklin, demonstrates effective planning in action. The purpose of the videos was to promote Great Western Railway as the best means of transport during the 6 Nations Rugby tournament. With careful research and scripting, we tapped into the humour of the rugby fans, with friendly banter between the opposing players. The duo was a huge success and racked up over 400,000 views via social media.

At Mentor, we can challenge the dull, dry sales pitch that you’ve come to associate a ‘corporate’ video with and create something memorable that will truly help you to stand out from the crowd.

Please keep your eye out for our next instalment, 'Bombarding us with Info'.

Or, click here for more details about our video production services.

Article Author: Dave Mason

Dave is Mentor Media Training's Managing Director. He is a CIPR Accredited Practitioner and regularly trains for the PR industry institute. His extensive career in broadcasting spans 30 years across radio and television. He has coached executives from major public and private sector organisations, as well as the UK Armed Forces/NATO, around the world for the past decade. Dave is respected for his inspiring training, which is supportive and concentrates on fast learning development. A founding presenter and shareholder of Somerset’s Orchard FM, he went on to work extensively in commercial radio around the UK, as well as BBC News, where he was a Correspondent at BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 1 Newsbeat. Dave has been a TV presenter, reporter and producer at ITN, GMTV, (ITV Breakfast), ITV News Westcountry and HTV West. He was one of GMTV’s senior producers for a decade, covering major international, domestic, political and entertainment stories. His roles have included senior news producing and planning, undercover investigations, war reporting and features production. Dave still broadcasts as a crisis communications pundit on Talk TV / Radio, BBC Radio and is a visiting lecturer at several universities. He is a non-executive Trustee of community station Radio Bath and the author of 'Handling the Media In Good Times & Bad'.

Block Exception:System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at MentorTraining.Website.Models.BlockModels.OtherNewsBlockModel..ctor(IPublishedContent currentPage) at ASP._Page_Views_Partials_OtherNewsBlock_cshtml.Execute() in c:\Mentor\Applications\live\live.mentormediatraining\views\Partials\OtherNewsBlock.cshtml:line 8 at System.Web.WebPages.WebPageBase.ExecutePageHierarchy() at System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage.ExecutePageHierarchy() at System.Web.WebPages.WebPageBase.ExecutePageHierarchy(WebPageContext pageContext, TextWriter writer, WebPageRenderingBase startPage) at Umbraco.Core.Profiling.ProfilingView.Render(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer) at System.Web.Mvc.Html.PartialExtensions.Partial(HtmlHelper htmlHelper, String partialViewName, Object model, ViewDataDictionary viewData) at WebBlocks.Views.RenderingEngines.PartialViewRenderingEngine.Render(HtmlHelper html)