Video Production Every Business Should Strive For

The TV coverage of the recent British Open won by Rory Mcilroy was produced by ESPN. They aired throughout the four day tournament teases and bumpers that were by far some of the best video production I have seen in a long time.

I love these videos. They exemplify what every business should strive for when promoting and marketing their company, and that’s great storytelling. (Just because these were on TV doesn’t mean you can’t take these as examples and translate them into great video content for your online video marketing.)

What are teases and bumpers? A tease is a video that either opens a live event broadcast or airs just before the event is about to start. In sports, it teases the match up, including past, and present story lines. The majority of live events will have an opening tease including newscasts, election nights, and the Oscars.

A bumper, is a short video that airs when going to a commercial break. The purpose is to promote what’s coming up after the break or later in the show. They don’t want you to change the channel so they entice you with these bumpers to hopefully stick around. Entertainment Tonight are the champs at producing great bumpers.

Before I get into what I like about these video productions I need to make very clear that I would not expect your business to have the resources to pull off what these videos did. They had access to archival footage and licensed music. They were voiced by actor Ian McShane, and shot over an extended period of days. In a nutshell, the budget was there to get what was needed. I do have a point to all this so please bare with me.

Here an example of a tease for ESPN’s British Open.

Here’s a bumper.

Another bumper.

And another one.

And finally, one more tease.

Aren’t they great? I think so. And what’s great about this is that you can do similar video productions. Forget the budgets and resources for a second and think about what is so compelling about these videos? They are all great stories, anchored by excellent writing.

Here’s how it’s done. Within your brand, and your company are stories. Lots of them. To extract these stories you need to take the big picture and look at it with a magnifying glass. Delve into the intricacies and nuances and you will find amazing stories that are just waiting to be told.

These British Open videos did that brilliantly. Yes it’s a golf tournament, but you also have stories about Liverpool, The Beatles, and the Claret Jug.

I challenge you to find your stories. Don’t sell, tell. Also, work with a producer or video production company that understands the value of great story telling and who is willing to work with you to make sure it’s done properly.

DO NOT find a type of video and build your story around that. That’s far too common these days and it does not set you apart. Those awful flat animated videos that so many businesses use today are a great example of what NOT to do.

The greatest gift that online video has presented to you is that you can produce quality video content that is on par with any major advertising firm or big corporation and their massive budgets. You just need to show your viewers your human side. And you do that through the power of story.

These videos were produced by Bluefoot Entertainment out of West Hartford CT. The 14-time Emmy Award winning production company has collaborated with ESPN on this other projects including the BCS and MLB.

Video Production Every Business Should Strive For