In the heyday of the corporate video boom the early nineties, the head of a well known production company stood up a conference and proclaimed, ‘I have a reputation for making bad videos very cheaply.’ I don’t know how bad his videos were but he was certainly prepared to undercut the market. As equipment costs came down and the few remaining barriers to entry were removed, it wasn’t long before anyone could make bad videos very cheaply – and they did. The debate about professionals versus amateurs has been raging ever since.
Today, the problem is slightly different. People are making quite good videos very cheaply. If online tendering and procurement hell weren’t bad enough, there are now brokers such as PopTent that allow you to pitch your project to hundreds of videographers, as they call them. Fifty or so might volunteer to do the work, gratis, and you get to choose which production you want to pay for! It’s all part of the Wikinomic trend towards collaborative crowd sourcing and it’s not going to go away. That said, it’s unlikely to be an economic option for most professional film makers.
…the crowd is no less likely to come up with workable solutions
So will our traditional client companies be pitching their corporate videos and events into the crowd? The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was designed using a collaborative model, so anything is possible. If this happened we would only have ourselves to blame. There’s a wealth of knowledge within our industry but little of it is formalised: we have no academic base to draw on and our only tangible measure of effectiveness is awards, which don’t go nearly far enough. Given that our approach to projects tends to be generally unsystematic, the crowd is no less likely to come up with workable solutions.
…we need to produce a better product
So how should we professionals react? We need to improve our service and produce a better product, that’s how. We need to develop tools and strategies to manage client engagements more efficiently so they won’t be tempted into the crowd. We need to be more assertive about what works best, using carefully prepared examples. And of course we need to measure outcomes. Perhaps we should ask the crowd for suggestions about how to achieve it. Who knows, we might be surprised by what the crowd throws back.
November 30, 2011
As a composer, I am only too aware of how bad videos are made! Endless yards of souless, bland, repetitive music taken off the shelf has the effect of making viewers think “something is wrong with this programme”. They don’t immediately blame the music because of its subliminal effect.
IMHO, what we need is evidence …a way to quantify the effect that a programme has had on an audience. Being crude about, showing that “Programme A made this difference to a companies bottom line, whereas Programme B irritated customers”.
Once we have such a system, I will happily go head to head with off-the-shelf music anyday to prove a point …and I’m sure many others in our industry would do the same. Such systems must be available, or possible to devise – but where to start?
November 30, 2011
This has been going on for years in the form of free pitches which can cost a production company £20K a pop! Technology, including e-auctions and the Cloud, is only making matters worse. I firmly believe that effective measurement is the solution. Or perhaps,it’s an elusive ‘holy grail’as it’s very tough to get clients to engage with and pay for measurement, despite making positive noises. I took part in an excellent workshop on the Event ROI model which was attended by the magnificent total of one client!
December 3, 2011
Measuring ROI for a corporate video is extremely difficult. The best measure for success has to be customer satisfaction. A while back, I regularly surveyed our corporate studio’s internal clients and confirmed that they kept coming back because we were doing a good job and not just because we were cheap.
Customers are a lot more sophisticated than we often give them credit as they get to watch a lot of video and television and they can quickly tell whether you have produced an average, good or great product.
One last comment, process can be stifling to creativity so we should not forget that even though the work takes place in a corporate environment, it is worthless without a decent amount of creativity. And even in large corporations, most clients will accept production blemishes if the work is creative.
December 8, 2011
I am sympathetic and experienced enough to recognise what Jonathan is saying and to agree; I assisted on my first corporate (health and safety in a nuclear power station) in 1979 age 18. The most important component in a production for me is the intelligent, skilled and experienced members of the team, however we elect to shoot and post produce, and as importantly however we plan to attract and engage with the audience during, as part of the process and afterwards. My motto is for ‘authentic, extraordinary stories easily shared’. To deliver I may take user generated content, or commission the very best with a budget to match.