WhatsNextDC: 4 Concepts for Producing Award-Winning Video on a Grad Student Budget

As part of the WhatsNextDC keynote this week, I shared a few simple and inexpensive approaches on how to produce corporate videos for YouTube:  Humor, cinematography, information and history/documentary.   Here’s the slide deck (with a bunch of extra text added).  It includes a few examples from an IBM smarter planet animation that was part of the PRSA Silver Anvil award-winning campaign, a comedy voted “Staff Favorite” in Comedy Central’s “Test Pilots” contest, and a 2013 Webby Honoree.

I’ll update this later today with a few photos, tweets.  It was a blast to emcee.  Thank you, Tod Plotkin and all the folks at Green Buzz Agency for producing an outstanding social media conference.

ROI on Humor in Social Marketing

I’m often asked what is the value of using humor in social media and marketing efforts.  While I can’t always make the case that a :60 YouTube comedy is going to inspire an impulsive purchase of a $100,000 piece of hardware, comedy helps corporate videos stand out and be remembered among the clutter.  NBC News reports that 72 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, so it is becoming more and more difficult to get noticed.

Today, at the B2B Content2Conversion Conference at the New York Times Center, Michael Brenner, Forbes blogger and SAP vice president of marketing, included our valentines video as a case study.

The spot, while completely absurd and ridiculous, helped us amplify an important marketing message during a product launch over three years ago.  It earned press coverage in The New York Times, NetworkWorld and other trade magazines; and David Meerman Scott referenced it as a best practice example in his bestselling book Real-Time Marketing & PR.

And here we are, more than three years later, and it’s being presented to a group of B2B marketers and influencers, and the social buzz continues from some of B2B’s top influencers, including Ann Handley, Margaret Molloy and Marissa Pick.

I don’t think Michael Brenner sold any routers for us today, although if he did, I’m sure he’ll DM me about his commission check.

BtoB Magazine: Elements of a Great Story

Usually the first question I ask when I’m preparing to produce a corporate video is “Can we film this in Burlington, Vermont?”  It’s a beautiful location, especially August through October.  But on our recent trip, the temperature on the lake with the windchill was minus 40.  Communication is challenging when your jaw is frozen shut.

Stalling so we could stay indoors a little longer, Steve Shepard and I had a chat with Ann Handley about corporate storytelling.  It’s featured in BtoB Magazine this week.

Plan to shoot your next video there, and schedule stops at Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, and American Flatbread. But keep an eye out for the lake monster.