Do You Actually Need a Corporate Video?

Do we need a video?

Businesses often approach corporate video production with the solution already decided: we need a corporate video.

But that isn’t always the best place to start.

Before deciding what to make, I want to understand what needs to change as a result of making it. Are you trying to explain a complicated process? Recruit people? Introduce a new product? Build trust? Show the scale of an operation? Give customers a clearer understanding of what you actually do?

Those are very different communication problems, and they don’t necessarily need the same kind of film.

Start with the audience

A film intended for someone encountering your business for the first time has a different job from one aimed at potential employees or an existing customer considering a new service.

Knowing who needs to see it and what you want them to understand usually tells us much more than deciding that it should be two minutes long.

One video isn’t always the answer

Sometimes a single company film makes perfect sense. But increasingly, the better approach is to use a production to create several pieces of useful content.

An interview might become a main film and several shorter edits. A manufacturing shoot might produce a company film alongside individual sequences explaining particular processes. Photography can often be captured at the same time.

That gives the business a collection of material it can actually use rather than one film sitting on a homepage.

And sometimes you don’t need video

This is worth saying.

If a series of photographs, good writing or a simple graphic communicates something better, making a video for the sake of having a video isn’t helping anyone.

The medium should follow the message, not the other way around.

Start with the problem

The useful conversation isn’t “What kind of video should we make?”

It’s:

“What do we need people to understand, feel or do?”

Answer that first and the shape of the production becomes much clearer.