Author: Siy Bishop

Make that budget work!

Your budget’s been signed off and you’re ready to go ahead with your shoot. You’re doing interviews with clients who are visiting the office – a great opportunity to share their story on your company’s social channels. You’ve been given a 2 hour window over lunch time. The crew need an hour to set up and 30 mins to pack down – 3.5 hours…

You had to work hard for the budget and the agency can’t offer half days as the crew are freelance…

How can you make the most of having a crew in HQ? A few tips below:

You can never have enough (good) b roll!

If you have permission to do so, capture some b roll of the office. Work with the agency to put together a shot list of what you want to capture – internal and external branding, certain teams or areas within the building etc. You may not need it for your current project but it will definitely come in handy in the future and the PR team could use it for press. Pick a day when the office is at its fullest!

Are there any other teams who could use the crew?

We’re not suggesting allowing the marketing team to shoot the period drama idea they had, but speak to teams ahead of time – is there a piece of customer comms that could be elevated beyond copy by producing a piece to camera with the CEO? Could you combine the shoot day with an onsite activity that would benefit from being filmed? Check out this post on capturing content with a sales team.

Plan ahead for success

A good agency will always be able to support last minute additions but always try to give them as much notice as possible. Discuss the additional ask with them to ensure everyone is clear on the plan for the day – happy crew – great content!

It doesn’t stop there!

Let’s be honest, it’s a weird world… things feel a little shaky at the moment and creative budget is more precious than ever. When you get it, make the most of the agencies to really get the best for your buck. We’ll talk about making the content you produce work extra hard in a future post.

It’s all moving so fast!

With technology evolving at unprecedented rates and a new advancement in AI seemingly happening every other day, it’s tough for sales teams to stay on top of the latest trends, offerings and products in their own organisations, let alone the wider market.

Sales enablement and sales excellence teams do their best to keep teams updated and in the know, through regular F2F training, powerpoint cascades and newsletters but pages of text and pre-recorded webinars aren’t the most inspiring way to engage and educate a sales audience. Sales teams who really excel do so when they’re learning directly from their peers. 

Video is a fantastic resource for sales enablement/success teams – it’s engaging, quick to digest and when used correctly, a powerful tool to promote P2P learning. Here are 3 crucial considerations before you utilise video. 

Before producing/commissioning any video content take time to consider…

Message/subject matter

Successful peer to peer learning is best when it’s insightful, engaging and is upskilling and/or promoting behavioural change. With this in mind, consider – what’s the information you want to share with the wider sales team and most importantly, what’s the lifecycle of this information? Is it going to date rapidly? If so, video may not be the best solution. If it has a longer shelf life –  a team member talking about how they elevated their sales cycle through engaging with other business units for example – is far more suited to video.

Form

Closely linked with subject matter is the form that the content will take. Are you producing a large collection of 60 second top tips? Then capturing recordings with members of the sales team next time there all in one place is a great use of time and resources. Is it a deeper dive into a complex product or offering? An animation could be ideal, but the production time and cost is likely to be higher. Consider the best way of sharing your message with your audience in a way that’s engaging and educational, yet also fits into their busy working days. 

Delivery and success

Talking about busy working days, how are you sharing the content with your audience? How will you ensure it doesn’t get lost in the deluge of wider business comms? Have a plan in place that’s aligned with the team’s comms calendar and also the wider business. How are you measuring success? There’s far more to video metrics than view count – how are you going to collate honest feedback and generate success metrics? More on this in a future email.

It doesn’t stop there!

Remember – what’s the message/subject matter, what’s the best form for them to take and how are you going to deliver it to your audience? One of our clients had the content play out at 3 sales conferences across EMEA, then sent them out via email, sending audiences to the online portal they were hosted on! Bravo! Find out more about the project here. 

If you want to more info, get in touch.

Continue the conversation past the final applause

Events are costly, not just from a financial POV but from resource, time and stress! Let’s be honest though, when done well, there’s nothing quite like it – everyone together, senior leaders sharing their vision with the business, employees sharing their wonderful work, the energy, the excitment…

Then the curtains close, everyone goes home and that’s it. Weeks spent on refining the message, creating content, logistics… how can we ensure that audiences not only retain the key communications from the event, but act on it? The conversation needs to be kept alive, but how? Here are three ways you can do just that.

Wrap content that extends event ROI 

Event sizzle video

Do you have a  team capturing content of the event? More importantly than just shots of people having a good time shot on a shaky smart phone, are you hearing from attendees? We talked about the power of human connection in a previous post – find out first hand what attendees key takeaways were. What landed? What are they excited about? Keep the buzz going! Multiple day event? Have a team onsite to edit a video that you could show at the end of the event, and prove ROI whilst the audience is still in the room.

Cascade Packs

Make the most of design and content collateral by creating event-branded cascade content featuring quotes from senior leaders, photography and recaps on key themes and messaging. Additional online interactivity could signpost to replays of event content.

Whether a PDF or microsite, the information can be cascaded down through managers to their teams and used to keep the conversation going.

HTML emails

Ah the humble email. Still a very useful tool in sharing core messaging and thanking people for their attendance. It’s a gentle reminder the morning after the event. Fill it with links to further information – photo gallery, video replays, the cascade pack or the event sizzle video, reinforcing key messages and keeping the conversation alive.

It doesn’t stop there!

You’ll always have people that for whatever reason, couldn’t access the event. For example, it may not always be financially viable for a fully remote team to attend. They deserve better than a hastily written intranet article and a few pictures…

As mentioned, events are a considerable expense so sweat the messaging/creative/content/collateral as much as possible, keep the conversation going and drive action. When we produced an onsite video for Adobe’s flagship sales event in Excel London, not only did the audience get to hear from their peers at the end of the event, but the video served as a vital tool in keeping the messaging alive way past the end of the event. Give us a shout if you’d like to hear more.

Taking audience understanding to a new level

Creating content that drives audiences to action comes from a deep understanding of that audience. Over the past few months we’ve looked at the 5Ws – WHAT, WHY, WHO, WHERE & WHEN and we’ve introduced Think, Feel, Do. Now, let’s go deeper.

To ensure we’re producing targeted content that truly resonates with our audience, we can go even deeper with our Think, Feel, Do thinking. Let’s break it down:

THINK
Do they know anything? (about the current subject!) Are they subject matter experts? What knowledge do you want them to walk away with, post interaction? An SME won’t need the same level of detail as an intern will. Is this an educational piece of content? If so, this is where you may want to do the majority of your thinking. 

FEEL

Emotion is such a powerful tool in storytelling. How are they currently feeling about the subject before you interact with them? What emotional strings can you pull to draw the audience into the story? If the goal of the content is to change behaviours or deliver difficult news, this is where you may want to do the majority of your thinking.

DO

What action are they currently partaking in that you want to change? And what do you want them to do instead? Content should always be driving action – keep it simple, keep it direct, make it easily actionable. If you’re selling a product/service, or you’re actively encouraging the audience to do something, you’ll spend time here.

It doesn’t stop there!

Sometimes the simplest tools can be the most powerful! In future emails we’ll look at the importance of remembering the human behind the message and how you can boost the impact of your video content by moving from tactical to strategic. 

In the meantime, if you’d like further information or you want to talk to us about a project you’d like our help with, get in touch!

Capture attention, create ‘I get it’ moments

You’ve done it. You’ve created THE app of the century. It’s going to revolutionise the way we do everything. But to really get into the detail of what it does, you need to share a text heavy presentation… speaking of presentation, does it have an attention grabbing opener?

Even the best salesperson can lose an investor if they don’t get those first few minutes just right. 

Sure, you can practise in front of the mirror or even dye your hair a whacky colour to get attention however, there’s a far simpler way to explain the ‘how, what and why’ and create ‘I get it’ moments for your audience. 

3 reasons to invest in a sizzle video

Immediately explain exactly what you’re about 

Save time and wow your audience by showing, not telling. Whether it features in a pitch, on your socials or it’s the first thing people see on your website, a sizzle video is the perfect tool for explaining to your audience why you exist, what you’re about, who you’re for and why they should be interacting with you. 

Make the most out of audience interaction

Every second you can get in front of your audience is precious. If you’ve spent marketing budget drawing their eyes to your website or social post, don’t disappoint them when they get there. Seize their attention, drive them to action and generate sales.

Make the right first impression

We get it, when you’re a start up every penny counts and working out where to allocate precious cash is tough. Creative – especially video – can seem like a heavy cost, however potential investors and fledgling customers want to see quality. Anything you put out is a reflection on your brand. That includes the cringy AI generated video you’ve got on your website. Do your product justice.

It doesn’t stop there!

As mentioned, video production costs can seem prohibitive and that’s exactly what Earthmark said to us before we created their product sizzle. We came up with a monthly payment plan which gained them immediate access to a powerful sales tool – they’ve gone on to use this across all of their sales collateral, their home page and their socials, a great example of sweating an asset!

Get in touch to discuss how we can make this work for you.

We know what’s going on… right?

We’ve all been there… we get right to the end of a project, we’re about to pop the virtual champagne when suddenly we get an email – it’s the head of marketing. They’ve seen the animation and they’ve got a few comments…

Why didn’t we involve them in the first place?! Overlooking stakeholders is easily done but in an animation project it can be really costly. In this email, we’ll do a quick refresh on the animation production process to highlight why including every key stakeholder from the beginning of the project is the key to cost saving success!

Understand the process and keep everyone in the loop

Discovery call

We’ve got the green light and everyone (client and agency) comes together to gain a deep understanding of the subject matter and discuss next steps. This is the ideal time to double check – does everyone who needs to know about this project know about it? Are they fully briefed and clear on what’s going on? 

Scripts and style frames

The agency takes all the info from the discovery call and crafts a script (the narrative) and possibly style frames (the aesthetic) to start to bring the story to life. Always build in time for ALL stakeholders to review EVERYTHING. Top tip – put dedicated review time in their diaries. That doesn’t mean that every single stakeholder needs to be CCed into every email, but every stakeholder does need to input as and when necessary because…

Storyboarding

…every step of the production process has a time and value cost associated with it. After the script has been signed off or ‘locked’ then storyboards are created. If a relevant stakeholder sees the boards but hasn’t seen or signed off the script, then we may have to take a step backwards, put additional time (and cost) into scripting and then, boarding. This problem becomes even more significant when…

Animating and voiceovers

…they only see the content after the animation and (if applicable) the voice over has been completed. Days of time and value cost have been spent – a voice over artist has been sourced (we’re all about human VO here at All Things Equal), a studio booked and a session recorded. Animators have been working for days to produce a wonderful piece of work only for it to be picked to bits by a key stakeholder who wasn’t involved in the first place.

It doesn’t stop there!

Animation is a wonderful storytelling tool and when the production process is tight and all key stakeholders are engaged, it can be really cost effective. The production process above helps us funnel out surprise. If you signed off the script, the storyboards shouldn’t be too shocking. And if you signed off the boards, you know what the animation’s going to look like. Don’t let an ‘out of the loop’ stakeholder add time, cost and frustration to the project, get everyone around the table from day one.

Speaking of animations, we’ve got a few on our website – take a look!

Bring your virtual audience into the room

Hybrid events (when an event has a physical and online presence) continue to be a popular communication tool for multinationals who want to share their message from a central location – whether an internal, employee audience, or an external, customer/client audience. During COVID, we were all subject to being online guests – talked at, rarely acknowledged – an after thought.

It’s vital that companywide messaging lands, regardless of audience size or location. Disregarding an online audience can seriously impede knowledge transfer. So rather than the obligatory Q&A session, how else can we communicate with our virtual audience?

3 ways of making online audiences feel included 

Interactive presentations

Polls, questionnaires, and quizzes – simple audience interactivity can go a long way to help an online audience feel included. They need to be considered at the very beginning of the event planning/content creation for maximum impact. Teams has some built in interactivity, tools like Mentimeter offer more advanced functionality.

Featuring them in the room!

Bringing remote callers into a live session does add a level of complexity, however it’s a really powerful way of actively including them in a meeting. Whether an SLT member providing a remote business update, or an employee asking a question live during a Q&A, it’s a really positive way of boosting inclusivity. Build in testing time before go live!

Content focused on your online audience 

Video content that puts a spotlight on your online audience will boost engagement, whilst educating the wider business on activities happening outside of HQ. Introducing individuals/teams in a human, engaging way makes for powerful content and 

remote recording tools make capturing the content quick, easy and cost effective.

Elevate production, make the audience feel special!

Nothing says afterthought more than a single, static, poor quality webcam at the back of a room. Bad sound just adds to a  poor experience…

Consider elevating the production with multiple cameras, dedicated sound and even a light or two. Honestly, the response from your online audience will be worth it.

It doesn’t stop there!

When we’ve worked on events where the online audience has really been considered, the feedback speaks for itself. Remote content creation doesn’t need to be expensive and the massive jump in production that can be gained with just a few extra pieces of kit is a worthwhile investment.

We regularly produce content for, and also live stream internal events for a number of our clients and the response from their audience continues to be hugely positive. If you’d like to know more, get in touch.

Have a good week!

Don’t let your content get lost in a sea of sameness

When it comes to landing your message and motivating an audience to action, understanding their current mindset is a vital step in producing informed content that cuts through. 

Last month we refined our audience with the 5W’s. Let’s take it a step further… 

Poorly performing content usually suffers because it’s too generic and gets lost in a sea of sameness. It’s trying to do too much, without doing anything particularly well. Time, energy and budget are spent and the results can be underwhelming. 

How can we ensure that our messages land and our audiences are driving to action?

 Three simple words… Think, Feel, Do!

Thinking, Feeling, Doing

By mapping out what our audience currently Think, Feel, Do about the subject, and what we want them to Think, Feel, Do after they’ve interacted with the content, we can tailor to fit. For example:

Message: A video of a senior leader talking about a brand new training opportunity for store managers

Audience: Customer facing store managers and deputies 

	THINK	FEEL	DO
BEFORE	The only thing I know about training is that there’s a lack of it!	I feel flat – I want to do more  but don’t have the resources	I’m using external resources to find management tips
AFTER	Ok this sounds great! Can’t wait to get started	I’m motivated and I feel listened to – we’ve been asking for this forever!	Where do I sign up?!

So what conclusions can we draw?

Currently the audience is pretty fed up with the lack of opportunities. They’re keen to learn and they’ve been asking for support but don’t have the resources. The audience would benefit from feeling like they’ve been listened to. The plan for roll out and/or signposting to further information should be clear, as should the timeline – they’re keen to get going! Overall, a personal message like a piece to camera from a senior leader would have a stronger impact than an email or animation. 

Top tip: No doubt you know your audience well but try and gain insight to inform your Think, Feel, Do thinking to ensure the thinking is sound. 

It doesn’t stop there!

When we worked with Adobe’s Sales Enablement team to produce video content that would turbocharge sales, Think, Feel, Do was a vital tool in helping us to understand their audience and craft content that would resonate. Find out more about it here.

If you want to speak to us about how you can use Think, Feel, Do in a future project, get it touch!

Extend ROI way past curtain close
Campaign activations are high energy, high investment moments. They are designed to delight audiences and inspire action. You only get one chance to capture that energy! Once the crowd has gone and the activation wraps up, the opportunity to create impactful content disappears quickly. The best results come when filming is seamless, which is why a little preparation with your production team makes all the difference. Put the right things in place before the day and you will walk away with a sizzle reel or highlights film that extends the reach of your campaign, proves return on investment and keeps the buzz alive long after the event.

Here are some top tips on what we need from you to make the most of the day:

1. Passes and access confirmed in advance
Making sure the crew can move freely avoids wasted time and missed opportunities. Passes and parking organised ahead of time mean we can capture content before the event even begins, setting the scene and adding valuable context to the final film.

2. Questions for contributors signed off
Agreeing questions in advance ensures the right messages land while giving contributors time to prepare. This helps answers feel considered and confident, and means those on camera can really shine!

3. Permissions for filming secured
From venue sign off to participant consent, clear permissions avoid delays and ensure all footage can be used with confidence. This step keeps things smooth and stress free.

4. A dedicated area for interviews and kit storage
Having a space set aside for interviews allows us to capture high quality sound and visuals. Away from distractions, it also helps contributors feel more comfortable on camera. A dedicated kit area keeps our bags and equipment tucked away and out of sight.

5. Key people available at agreed times
If leaders, customers or stakeholders are central to your story, having their interviews scheduled and a clear brief shared ahead of time avoids last minute stress and ensures their voices are captured. While we can always pick up content on the fly, securing these moments means your film has the credibility and impact it deserves.

6. Someone on site to help with logistics
A nominated point of contact who can help locate people, arrange access and answer quick questions is invaluable in keeping filming efficient and stress free. It makes all the difference when time is tight!

It doesn’t stop there!
Put these steps in place and you will set the stage for a seamless shoot that captures the very best of your activation. The result is a sizzle reel or highlights film that not only showcases the energy of the day but also extends its life, keeping the story alive and the excitement flowing long after the event. Events move fast, but with the right planning we can capture every high point, every voice and every detail. Ready to make your next activation unforgettable? Let’s talk about how we can bring it to life!

Only as good as the information you start with

When commissioning explainer content, the output will only be as good as the information that you give to the production team. Too little information or ambiguity and your audience will be left in the dark, more confused than when they originally watched the video!

To clarify, explainers are videos that educate an audience on a product or process. They’re the perfect tool for creating clarity from complexity and they perform best when they’re simple, understandable and engaging. To get there, you have the right people in the room at the very beginning of the project. So who do you need and what do you need to do with them?

Uncover the facts with a discovery call

What’s it about?

A discovery call is usually led by the team who is producing the final asset – it could be an agency or an internal team if the production is in-house. They gather together everyone mentioned above, and all of the details around the product/process are discussed to ensure they have all the information they need to do a great job. 

Questions can include:

• Who is the product/process for?
• How do they benefit?
• Is there a process to follow to achieve success? Give us all the detail!
• Are there any difficult points? If so, what? 

Who needs to be on it?

The relevant agency folk, then from client side, the project owner/manager plus all of the relevant subject matter experts. This includes the people who really understand the product/process you’re trying to explain. Ideally there are varying levels of seniority on the call. A junior member of the team may know the process inside out, whereas someone more senior may be able to give the details around long term benefits/goals/strategy.

Why are we doing this?!

It’s vital that whoever is producing the explainer for you has as much information as possible. Whilst they may know some surface level information, they’re about the narrative and creative – they need the support of SMEs to craft the story and produce the content.

Top tips

• It’s very easy for an SME to presume knowledge – they’re the expert after all. Try and shift perspectives to that of a complete novice
• Use AI note taking tools so everyone can focus on conversation, rather than note taking
• There are no silly questions!

Always start from a presumption that the audience has zero knowledge on the subject, even if you know they have. This may sound like additional work, but it may uncover elements that upon reflection, are really useful for the audience to understand and gives the production team a solid base to start from.

It doesn’t stop there!

Communicating a complex process in a visually engaging way so that the audience understands it isn’t easy. Take the time at the early stage of the project to ensure that all parties involved in the project get it. In a future post we’ll refresh ourselves on the animation process but for now, here’s a lovely looking explainer we did for our friends at Kalibrate.