The Playbook
In Part .1 we looked at why marketers are struggling to scale up their video strategy, the verious pain points that are preventing them from devising and executing an effective stratergy and the opportunites that are being missed as a result.
In Part .2 we present our Video Scale-up Play Book where we address these pain points in an efficient and cost-effective manner. We’ll discuss the importance of having the right plan, having the right people and the right production process. The framework will allow you, global marketers, to plan and execute high-scale, including local, campaigns fast and effectively. Below, we break the playbook into three key bite-size sections:
01 Plan – Engaging content depends on creativity. We have a full briefing at each stage for our teams.
02 People – We’re enlisting the help of professional video and film-makers to create content.
03 Process – We’re looking at more innovative ways to make and market campaigns.
01 Plan
“Fail to plan, plan to fail” as the old adage goes. Only 40% of our survey respondents say they have an ‘objective of what the video was to achieve’ and only 37% had a clear brief.
These results ring major alarm bells in both the efficiency and effectiveness of video production. The first step in any high-performing piece of communication is to understand what role it has to play, engaging the right person at the right time and getting the right results.
The brief is the golden opportunity to capture this information and ensure all parties, from sponsors to contributors, and internal teams to external partners, have a common vision and understanding of what needs to be achieved.
Takeaway:
Ensure every project has a clear brief, including an objective of what is to be achieved and the role video will play in doing this, within a wider campaign or as a standalone piece.
\ SEE AN EXAMPLE BRIEFING TEMPLATE HERE
Benefits:
- Clear, consistent vision as to the reason for and targets of the production,
and how this will come together
- Reduced miscommunication and versioning, which will decrease internal and external support, administration, versioning and associated costs
- By focusing people’s energies in a single- minded way, the creative process will be better and a higher-performing outcome will result. In turn, with a clearly defined role in your communications planning, you will boost the chances of hitting your KPIs and business requirements. This fosters better grounds for creating a virtuous circle and protecting budgets.
02 People
Already, 36% of our respondents are using freelance creatives to make video campaigns, 26% are tapping third-party planners and 25% production experts.
Takeaway:
Many marketers and in-house studios, especially when operating a centralised model, are overstretched in their ability to produce video and sometimes lack the confidence
or expertise in this medium.
Having multiple parties siloed in
a decentralised structure also comes with its own problems of inefficiency, inconsistency and knowledge loss between videos.
A trusted partner with the right ability to scale globally, such as the Wooshii approach (a central point of contact for specification, creative and management backed up by a strong global production network), can span both these models successfully, with all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
Benefits:
- The benefits of accessing third- party expertise are clear: our survey respondents cite quality as the top output when using third parties for video production. Expertise, cost, consistency, speed and ROI are also praised. ROI is something we’ll return to in subsequent reports.
- When expertise and consistency is combined with a scalable global network, this supercharges the ability to scale video production, localise it, create efficiencies and access location filming, which may have otherwise been prohibitive.
03 Process
Nearly half (46%) of the respondents use a documented creative development process and 40% storyboard a video in the early stages.
Storyboarding, creative development and clear, careful management of the amendment processes are investments which can save a huge amount of time further down the line.
Benefits:
Careful specification and amendments can be a game- changer in the efficient development and delivery of effective video.
At Wooshii, we have developed a proprietary-only system to manage contact, from briefing to mark-up to delivery, which has helped clients get back more time but with a much better result.
Consistency at scale is the goal but it’s currently out of reach for many businesses. Yet by adopting these playbook guidelines, it can happen.
Let’s see an example of a organisation that has been on this journey and how the process came to life for it:
Paul Stokes, Director Corporate Marketing at Abdul Latif Jameel, shares his experiences:
“Every video used to be a self-contained project, so each agency needed lots of briefing. There was little relationship and consistency; you had to explain your brand every time, which takes longer.”
“With one partner agency, as time goes on they will bring ideas to you. Our energy and environmental services video has footage shot in Uruguay, Australia and Spain, and none of the core team needed to leave London because the supplier has its trusted developer network. This reduces costs and saves time.”
“We might have news to communicate and do it in many languages. The ability to do these quickly means you are showing respect if an audience doesn’t have English as their first language.”
“We’ve developed a stringent set of brand video guidelines, including positioning of fonts, text, music, and opening and closing idents. Even without really looking at the screen you know it’s a video by us.”
For more insights like this download our latest free video marketing report where we discuss the main drivers in video’s phenomenal success and how to best utilise it to create awareness, deliver engagement and influencing the decision-making process.
