The 8 Mistakes Guaranteed to Doom Your Corporate Video Production

It’s been a truly amazing journey. I’ve been in the video and multimedia production business since 1981 and in my 30+ years in the business, I’ve seen some absolutely incredible leaps in the industry. To put video in historical perspective, it was only 22 years before I took the plunge into professional video that Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba, and JVC introduced helical-scan recording, which is the method used since to record on video tape recorders. It took almost the entire subsequent 22-year span to bring these helical scan recorders into the home.

When I started in video production in 1981, consumer video recording was in its infancy. Most American homes did not have a VCR. VHS was still battling Betamax (what’s that?!) for supremacy in the home video format wars. Tape (huh?) was the staple of industrial and advertising video production and 2″ “Quad” machines (what??) were what the “real” broadcast studios used for their best quality editing and studio work. Field cameras capable of producing the best broadcast-quality pictures cost more than most houses at the time. (And now these have been surpassed in quality by today’s consumer camcorders.) The CD-Rom had not yet come on the scene, and internet use was years away. Compressed video and streaming on web sites were barely the proverbial “figment” of someone’s imagination. DVDs? HDTV? You’re kidding!

Yet despite the incredible technological advances over the decades, many things have remained constant. The need to capture and retain audience interest, tell a story, and accomplish one’s objectives were all critical to effectively communicating then, and remain so today.

And as technological advances have brought affordable high-quality video and multimedia into the hands of the neophyte, the need to use them “correctly” has remained. Just because you’ve got a paint brush, that doesn’t make you Rembrandt!

Let’s take a look at some of the mistakes still made in workplace corporate video and multimedia programs:

The 8 Mistakes Guaranteed to DOOM Your Corporate Video or Multimedia Project:

MISTAKE 1. DON’T BOTHER TO IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE (OR TO CONSTANTLY KEEP IT IN MIND)

This is the first and foremost rule of creating any kind of communications program, yet it is amazing how often it gets violated. This rule is certainly not unique to video or multimedia programming. In all forms of audio and visual communication, it is imperative to develop a precise definition of the target audience – and remember it.

Market research firms and departments spend billions of dollars annually to determine who will receive a message so that proper product placement, advertising and promotions can be done. And it is money well spent.

Yet we often see companies approaching their video and/or multimedia projects with a “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach. They use a shotgun when a rifle is called for. They try to appeal to several audiences with the hope that the program will serve multiple purposes. Remember, when you try to appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody.

While the same basic program can sometimes be used for different audiences, it is recommended that different variations or versions be developed for those different groups. It’s a simple matter to re-edit or re-narrate portions of a production. However, efficiency demands that this is planned from the beginning of the project.

So remember to plan the project with your audience in mind. Know what their level of expertise or experience is with the topic. This will avoid the problem of shooting too low (e.g. wasting their time showing or telling them something they know) or too high (losing them because you assume a level of expertise they haven’t yet attained).

MISTAKE 2. DON’T PRE-DETERMINE YOUR OBJECTIVE

This goes hand-in-hand with the first item. In addition to knowing who you are talking to, you need to know what you want them to do or feel after the program has been delivered.

Whenever possible, the objective should be quantifiable. It is certainly easier to measure results in the area of training. As any good training professional knows, pre- and post-training assessment tests can quantify the results of a training program.

Similarly, for sales and marketing or communications, detailed testing and statistics can be gathered about project awareness and attitudes before and after the presentation of the overall program package. But each of those probably aren’t the real desired results – the true goal is pumping up the sales figures.

As in training, it is desirable to measure the effectiveness the sales or communications program has in meeting the stated goals.

There is a problem, however. Measurement of the specific impact of the ecommerce video production company program is difficult, as the production is typically not used in isolation. Instead it is usually part of a package of other material delivered in conjunction with the video or multimedia program.

Ideally, we would like to emulate large consumer companies, where extensive market research provides detailed analysis of specific advertising and promotional techniques. They can isolate the effects of individual components of an overall brand marketing strategy, for example. But this requires an extensive historical background and a very large sample size to help isolate variables and establish causal relationships.