The Pros and Cons (and Hows) of Using Stock Video

You’ve probably heard the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” more than a thousand times.

It’s true; imagery can explain in a heartbeat what it could take paragraphs or pages to explain or imply. It carries power, and elicits emotions and reactions from audiences. And we’re used to taking those emotional cues, having those reactions, and forming decisions and judgments about what we see pretty much immediately.

That includes photography and graphic imagery of course, but it also includes video. So what am I trying to say here?

When you’re creating a video, it needs to feel authentic.

Whether you’re shooting your whole video yourself or looking to include stock video to add that special something, you need to consider what the goal of your video is, the feel you’re going for, the time, effort, and money you have to spend, and more. Because at the end of the day, the point of your video is to connect with your audience and get them to take action.

Both footage you shoot yourself (or with the help of an agency) and stock footage can help you achieve a strong video if you know how to use it correctly. So with that in mind, here are a few pros and cons to think about when you’re trying to decide if stock footage is right for your project.

Take stock of the downside of stock footage.

Stock footage can get pretty pricey.

Check out some of the sites that offer stock video footage. We’ve seen 20-second video clips for $80USD and $180USD (and if you’re wondering if the cost goes up for better, less ‘cliched’ shots, yes, yes it does). That bill can add up if you’re looking to include more than one stock shot in your b-roll footage.

Speaking of cliches…

Stock video footage can be quite full of cliched, or overly staged shots. Stock video can often pander to the most requested footage, like street shots or office meetings. And because they’re so often searched for, that means everyone is using the same boring footage.

Take this image, for example. Would you want to watch a video filled with these kinds of scenes? They feel too staged, set up, and unrelatable, with everyone wearing similar expressions and outfits, in a perfect setting of a cool, clean, glass office building.

What are they always so creepily happy about?!

In comparison, check out this video created by our friends at George Briggs Media. The office space in the video definitely isn’t staged – in fact, it’s Vidyard’s very own office! Whether you use a production house to shoot your video, or you film it yourself, you can end up with an atmosphere, and a ‘feeling’ of your video that feels much more authentic and inspiring.

Want a different image? You might not be able to find it.

With stock footage, you’re stuck with what you can find. If you want an office scene, you might just get similar results to that footage, or the same buildings in the same cities over and over, or the same demographic group sitting at a bar or coffee shop. If you want something really specific that fits perfectly with your target audience, you would probably have to shoot something yourself.

What if you want a downtown city center shot in your video? Well, here’s an example of a cityscape image. Pretty generic, eh? And maybe a little hard to tie in with the feel of the rest of your video (more on that below).

If you choose to shoot the video yourself or with the aid of a production house, you could use your own city, and take shots that feel so much more authentic and relatable, like this video from George Briggs media.

Stock footage may not jive with the rest of your video.

Our in-house video experts are adamant that using stock footage well isn’t an easy task. It’s difficult to match the visual picture style with the rest of your video. What if the lighting is different, or the colours don’t contrast well, or the focus or blurriness of the background scenes isn’t consistent, or even the quality of the equipment you’re using differs? Even if you find stock footage that you think looks “cool”, might indeed make the rest of your video look poorer in comparison.

The story you’re trying to tell might get lost in translation.

If part of your video feels too posed, too staged, or inconsistent with the rest of your video, your audience will have a harder time feeling like they’re a part of your story. The video won’t feel candid, and will lack a sense of authenticity. A highly polished stock video scene isn’t always the best way to tell your story and share your message because, as Mat King, our Video Production Manager put it, “High production value does not equal a real moment.”

Without a strong story, engagement will slide.

Need I say more here? You want people to watch your video and then take action because of what they saw, so they need to experience an authentic story. Stock footage has an upward battle to fight if it wants to feel as authentic as footage you shoot yourself (or through an agency). As Alex Marshall, Founder of George Briggs Media, puts it, “If a video can’t affect your audience, there was no real point doing it in the first place. Working with a video agency [or shooting footage yourself] is like performing an operation with a scalpel, whereas sometimes stock footage can be like trying to perform the same operation with a bat.”

Well, that was blunt.

There were supposed to be “Pros” in this list, right?

Okay, I didn’t mean to scare you. But now that you know how stock footage can go wrong, you’re better prepared to make it go right! Stock footage definitely has its place in the video marketing landscape, and here are a few solid reasons for using it in your video.

You can’t get the shot.

What if you need to include footage of your server room in your video, but it’s in a different location, or locked down for any reason? What if your video has a space theme but you aren’t an astronaut so you can’t take video from your rocket ship as you shoot into space? What if you want to promote an event but you don’t have the right footage with the necessary feel or branding? That’s when stock video comes into play. It is a good source for getting the shots that would otherwise be impossible (or very expensive!) for you to get.

Our video promoting our presence at this year’s Dreamforce event included stock footage of coffee being made. Why reinvent the wheel? Our coffee makers don’t look as great, and this footage gave us exactly the feel we were going for.

 

It might save you money.

I know I listed the cost as a con. Which is true. But sometimes stock footage can also save you money. How? Well if you only need a short shot of stock footage, that can be cheaper than having your whole video shot by a production house. Before you start your video project, you may want to consider how many shots (and what shots) you want in your video, and how best to achieve those goals.

It can save you time.

It takes time to source a great stock video footage, but it can take even more time to set up production, film, and edit every single shot. Sometimes stock video (when it’s blended into the rest of the shots well) works perfectly under tight timelines.

If you choose to use stock video for your project, how should you use it?

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to go the stock footage route:

Look for shots that are consistent with the look-and-feel of the rest of your video.

Look for similar colour tones, angles, background treatment, lighting, and more so the whole video feels like it belongs together rather than hacked together.

Look for stock footage that doesn’t feel as posed or set up.

Search for video that feels candid, like it was simply a moment in time that happened to be caught on film. After all, this is what people relate to these days – content that’s shared all over social media is shared because it feels real. And that’s because it is real. People don’t want to see a guy in a suit smiling like the Cheshire cat at his computer screen.

Make sure footage is complementary to the script.

What is your script talking about? Don’t have your actors or voiceover talking about what it’s like to work for an innovative company and then show shots of the outside of a building. Stock footage shouldn’t be used simply to give someone something to look at while your script drones on. Footage should always bring  your script to life, and if it isn’t doing that, rethink your footage (and potentially, your script!).

Establish a story or journey.

Use stock footage carefully to connect what happens in scene A to what happens in scene B to what happens in scene C. You can do this through using footage that includes the same characters, for example. That way you’ll follow one person (or group of people) through their journey (like in the George Briggs Media video above, which includes the same woman throughout the story) rather than feeling like a bunch of random scenes were glued together in post without any real sense of purpose.

There you have it! If you’re considering using stock footage, just keep in mind what your goals are, and make sure you’re using it (or not) to make your video as strong as it can be. Your audience will thank you!

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They’re Geeky and They’re Kooky: The Vidyard Family

Duh-nuh-nuh-nah. *Snap-snap*

At Vidyard, our team is really important to us. Some might even call us a family. We’re all a little kooky, but hey that’s what makes us great. Sometimes we can get a little grizzly, but it’s only because we’re so busy!

Neat.

I’m not making any sense, am I? Just watch the video, you’ll see what I mean. *Snap-Snap*

Sing along with these lyrics!

They’re awesome and they’re geeky,
Creative but not cliquey,
They’re altogether cheeky
The Vidyard Family.

Their office has been busy,
That’s why they look so grizzly,
With hair a little frizzy,
The Vidyard Family.

Neat.
Tweet.
Elite.

Their business has been booming,
With products for consuming,
They really are a-zooming,
The Vidyard Family.

From all these ghouls and witches,
And yes, us Vidyard …,
Oops, sorry for those glitches,
Enjoy your Halloween!

—
Want to add some extra spooky to your day? Check out last year’s Halloween video here.

Happy Halloween from the entire Vidyard Family!

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Scaling Your Video Storytelling Without Selling Your Soul

For most of us, video exploded across our personal lives 5 or more years ago. But now it’s our company’s turn with videos being created for our customers, partners, resellers, analysts, investors, our sales teams, other employees and of course every one of our executives. So with this growth in volume how do we maintain quality? How do we continue to produce stories worth watching? It’s just too easy to fall into the trap of converting presentations into animated videos or to simply have someone read a document in front of a camera. These quick and dirty tricks will produce video but not content worth watching and then you’re simply distancing your audience instead of scaling quality video storytelling.

Our team experienced this video explosion a few years ago with videos being requested by many groups outside Marketing. Sales started producing a lot of videos followed by HR, IT and now every department produces videos for internal and external audiences. Through this evolution, we’ve learned a lot. Here are the three things we’ve learned to focus on as we continue to scale video creation at an alarming pace.

Script

The first thing we worry about isn’t lights, mics, cameras or any other type of equipment or crew. Our very first concern with videos of any type and for any audience is the script. What’s the story? Who wrote it and are they intimately familiar with the audience they’re targeting? Who are the main characters? Is this video about us or about our audience? And will anyone watching care or remember? If we can’t see the point of the video from the script we shouldn’t go any further as it will take us longer to trace our steps back to a better story (script).

Most of our marketing colleagues have no real experience in screenwriting, though they have worked on copy and many have written content for white papers, e-books or blogs. But screenwriting is different. You’re writing for action as it plays out amongst characters your audience cares about. Characters, settings, actions and dialogue need to be balanced in a compelling plot that keeps your audience interested. But what do you do if you don’t know how to write for the screen?

The simple answer is to hire a screenwriter for which you should reach out to your video producer. If, on the other hand, you’re committed to learning this form of expression I recommend a quick review of Aristotle’s Poetics and a thorough reading of Robert McKee’s Story. Neither are light reads but you will most certainly emerge a better screenwriter (and director and editor) by simply consulting these two masterpieces. Personally, I prefer to dig in to data voraciously to understand why the audience will do what I want them to do. From there I back up to what that tells me about the audience and who they really are – with as much detail as possible. Then I build from that primary character or “hero” outwards to “find” the story through relentless iteration. Along the way I’ll pick up characters and the best turns and twists in the plot will seem natural (though unexpected) if my characters are built correctly for my audience.

State of Play or “Flow”

The second thing I worry about with our videos (assuming we have a workable script) is helping the audience achieve a “State of Play”. This is the act of suspending reality long enough to truly immerse yourself in an activity you enjoy. You can see this intense state of focus in children as they lose themselves when playing and it’s the same state of mind athletes enter when delivering record-breaking performances. Most of us have achieved this state when watching our favorite movie in the movie theater and at home watching movies and television. In fact, I see people every day in this state watching a video from their social network on their smartphones.

But the ability to take your audience to a State of Play requires an intimate understanding of who they are and what matters to them, which should be reflected in your script. Beyond that it requires flawless execution, especially in editing. The “flow” of your video, and especially your sound, will account for most of what you need to take your audience where you want them to go. When your flow works the audience can easily lose track of time and connect your content with their own thoughts, ideas and feelings. But when you break this flow they’re instantly reminded of that email they need to reply to. Almost every book I’ve picked up about film or TV editing will lay out the foundations you’ll need for flow: constructing sequences, setting and managing pace and tone, and more deliberate choices like contrast, juxtaposition, etc. Take these editing fundamentals and work them back in to your script to bring your characters and plot to life.

Team

But the most important thing I worry about with every video project we manage is the larger team working with us. Why do they want to make this video? Have they done this before? Who will lose their job if this is an utter failure? Over the years I’ve found there are certain personas that can kill the potential of our videos quickly and easily. What’s worse is most of these people aren’t aware of the damage they’re doing to the content and ultimately to our audience.

The Cheerleader – This person believes every idea is great and simply can’t say “No” to anyone. In fact, this persona cringes at conflict which directly inhibits decisiveness. Conflict is critical to the creative process and should be encouraged in a respectful, constructive manner to create great video. Fear the Cheerleader, for you will lose a lot of time and most of your “edge” when you have one working on your video.

The Yes Man – This persona is often unidentified until someone challenges the most senior person on your video project. Then the Yes Men come forth, often in groups to protect whoever the most senior person on the project is. Ironically, this person rarely needs protecting, which is why they got to where they are in their career. I’ve seen many strong executives lose their ability to connect with an audience because of the entourage around them that’s constantly trying to keep them and their image safe.

The Script Clinger – This is the subject-matter expert or executive who simply can’t say anything on-camera unless it’s written down in a script. The problem you’ll have with this person is twofold: (1) Visually, it looks like they’re reading or recalling a script from memory and (2) They lack passion in their voice when they read through their script. While you can cut away and use B-roll to your hearts delight for the first problem there isn’t a real solution for the second. Remember, flow is broken most easily by poor script and poor sound (and this is both) so you’re essentially giving your audience ample opportunity to tune out by enabling Script Clingers. Find the passion in the story for your Script Clinger and help them detach so they can make it their own.

We are constantly looking out for these personas in our video projects as we collaborate with a very large group of colleagues and external experts spread across the world. To counter these threats we’ve built a team of video “journalists” who obsess over better storytelling to build a constant connection with our audience. We do this for every topic and for any type or length of video.

Since most of what we produce is non-fiction and highly technical in nature we are constantly seeking ways to balance information with inspiration and entertainment. If you have any ideas, I welcome you to share them with us via this post or with me directly at sokothar@cisco.com.

—
Watch more keynotes from Space Camp: The Video Marketing Summit here!

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The Coles Notes of MarketingProfs 2015: Making Marketing Magic

Last week 954 of the world’s brightest B2B marketers descended on Boston for the 2015 B2B marketing forum, a three day event focused on offering practical advice on making marketing magic. I’ve been to a lot of conferences this year, but this one is unique in that it really aimed to unite B2B marketers, give them a home base and build aspirational CMOs. How? Through oodles and oodles of great workshops, keynotes, breakouts and by bringing marketers together to network and have fun.

Eager beavers could come a day early and take part in one of eight intensive, four hour workshops. Topics range from optimizing content for search and mobile to writing for marketers. Living and breathing in the video content world, I opted for a session on developing a content strategy to grow your audience.

Content Rules!

In this workshop we learned about how building great content starts with building trust. Trust is developed by providing value, and this means doing three things really well.

• consistently creating quality content
• proactively creating content before your reader needs it
• regularly offering content that’s both fresh and relevant

If you’re like me, this probably got you thinking about your content strategy. Is it consistent? Is it proactive? If it regular and relevant? And all this was just in the first 30 minutes!

We also learned about the types of questions that B2B buyers and researchers are asking at each stage of the buying journey and best practices for different types of content from blogs and photos to podcasts and video (my favorite, but hey, I’m biased!).

With Day 0 in the books, the conference could officially begin.

It’s Not the Ink, It’s the Think

After a terrific welcome from MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer, Ann Handley (which included an accordion performance with back up band – what?!), we were in for a real treat with opening keynote speaker, Avinash Kaushik, digital marketing evangelist at Google. This was my favorite session of the conference, hands down.

Avinash delivered a powerful and important message: it’s not the ink, it’s the think. That the difference between companies that survive and thrive and companies that die. The ink (the creative and the campaigns) is easy to change, but the think (the strategy) is far more difficult to iterate. Changing the think means challenging the traditional frameworks and disrupting what we know and accept today. And that’s exactly what Avinash’s talk went on to do.

He proposed that the traditional funnel framework is broken. That it’s selfish and focused on the brand, not the customer. He proposed that a better framework would start by looking outside in. That it would start by focusing on intent.

Intent is a powerful and beautiful thing. And it’s a signal we can only get through digital. Whereas demographics and psychographics say nothing about a person’s intention, digital marketing can tell us what he or she finds relevant based on all the things they do digitally – their behavior.

Avinash’s new framework for marketing strategy focuses on four clusters of intent.

1. SEE: the largest and most addressable qualified audience
2. THINK: the largest and most addressable qualified audience with weak commercial intent
3. DO: the largest and most addressable qualified audience with strong commercial intent
4. CARE: Current customers, with two or more commercial transactions

After defining the intent clusters, marketers can then go about the task of developing the content marketing and measurement that solve for the different types of intent. Different types of marketing excel at different types of intent. Finding the right match is key. Here were some of Avinash’s suggestions:

• Paid Search – Good at ‘think’ and ‘do’ intent
• YouTube – Good at ‘think’. Okay at ‘see’ intent.
• Facebook – Good at ‘see’ intent. Not much else.

So how do you get started with embracing this new business framework? Start by pivoting on intent. Focus on developing great content and marketing for ‘do’ intent first. Get good at it and then move to ‘think’ intent. Then ‘see’. And last ‘care’.

Two Key Takeaways: Storytelling & Authenticity

While there was no way to catch all the sessions live, a great conference app made it easy to keep a pulse on some of the key themes. Here’s what I took away:

Storytelling

Storytelling might be a bit of a marketing buzzword these days, but the fact that marketers are competing with TONS of content today means that the need for authentic, well-told stories is more real than ever. A number of sessions touched on storytelling including one from Bobby Lehew called ‘From Storytelling to Story-selling’. Bobby talked about how to use the classic story arc found in pretty much every movie we’ve ever seen to tell a B2B story that people can connect with.

Authenticity

Creating content that converts means creating content for real people. That means being interesting, being authentic and giving your audience what they want. To use a quote from Ann Handley, “take your brand out of the story, make your customers the hero’. I saw a really interesting comment relating to one session called ‘How To Build Your Content Marketing’ that read “You can trick people into clicking on content, you can’t trick them into sharing it”. A great reminder that people will only truly engage and interact with content that they find entertaining, valuable, or some combination of the two.

Off the clock at MarketingProfs

There were also a bunch of really fun off-the-clock antics to meet other marketers and recharge after long days of learning. I took in a photo walk around Boston with digital marketing pioneer and video blog pioneer Steve Garfield.

There was also yoga for marketers and Friday fun to get attendees energized and ready for the final day.

That’s a quick recap on my time in Boston at the MarketingProfs B2B marketing forum. Were you there, too? If so, what were some of your favorite sessions?

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Getting Marketing Humor Down to a Science …. or Something Like That

In grade 5, I did a speech on humor.

It was probably a sight to be seen. Little 4-foot-something me jumped on stage to share the history of jokes, why we love to laugh, and what makes a good one-liner. And yeah, I threw joke after joke in there and you can bet that this curly-haired young’un loved the feeling of a receptive audience roaring with laughter … well … at the very least, giggling.

And I’m not alone. Laughter and humor is a universal concept.

A lot of what I spoke about in that speech – back when I thought braces were a status symbol – can still be applied to my job today and using humor in marketing. Unfortunately – or more realistically, fortunately – I couldn’t seem to retrieve that speech out of my tote filled with crayons, oddly random scraps of yarn, artwork that proved I wasn’t cut out for the visual arts, and old schoolwork.

So instead I guess I’ll have to approach this like a real grownup. Let’s take a look at what you need to know to effectively add a dash of humor to your video marketing activities – and the science behind it all.

Why Do We Like to Laugh?

A child’s first laugh typically happens around 3.5-4 months of age. Long before children can even speak. Laughter is the (generally) physical manifestation of humor and humor, argues Scott Weems, author of Ha!: The Science of When and Why we Laugh and Why, is a state of mind.

But why do we like to laugh? Because it makes us feel good. Laughter emits dopamine in the brain, which makes us feel happy and less stressed. It’s the same release you get when you do something pleasurable – like eating chocolate. And according to Weems, “humor is really a natural high”.

The one thing that’s tricky about humor is that what one person finds funny, another doesn’t. People’s sense of humor differs. So while you may have clearly defined a target persona with a meticulous attention to detail, chances are that this one attribute isn’t the same across your whole target buying group.

What Do We Laugh At?

According to Bill Nye (yes, the Science Guy) and also an accomplished comedian, “Comedy is generally based on stereotypes and expectations. Some say that your unconscious mind is anticipating what’s going to happen and then the joke ends up being not what you expected”.

Weems agrees. As he explains, as we all probably know already, that there are no rules for humor. That’s part of what makes it so difficult. But according to Weems, there are some key ingredients that need to be present in order for something to be delivered as “funny” that can help us out. The three biggest components are:

1. Expectation: humor arises when your brain expects something but the actual result is something different. Of course, this alone, doesn’t create humor. You also need a destination.
2. Destination: this is what we would generally call the punchline. There has to be a firm destination where the expectation is confronted and quashed.  
3. Conflict: Weems says that the anterior cingulate, a region of the brain that deals with conflict, is almost always activated when humans listen to jokes. It goes hand-in-hand with expectation.

Just take this famous Groucho Marx joke as an example:

“One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. …

… How he got into my pyjamas, I don’t know.”

Hehehe.

The expectation here is that Groucho is the one in his pyjamas. But in reality, it’s the elephant. And the destination here: an elephant in pyjamas, is humorous in itself! Right?!

A final note about what makes us laugh is that we are remarkably more likely to laugh when in a group setting. Generally, we find things funnier when we experience them with other people and the closer we are to those people, the funnier we’ll find it. But even laughter, alone, is more likely to produce laughter in someone else, even if they aren’t aware of the source of your laughter. (Did I say laughter enough times in that sentence?) Consider the last time you said “I’m just laughing because you’re laughing!”. It happens. Even to these traveling gigglers that spread across the web a few months ago.

Be honest now. Did you laugh? Crack a smile, at least? I swear I do every time!

How Can We Deliver Humor in Marketing?

So now that you understand a little bit of the science behind humor, how can you apply it to marketing and why would you want to?

The two greatest reasons for using humor in your marketing activities is (a) a positive feeling while interacting with your brand (thank you dopamine) and (b) building trust. In a 2013 Nielsen Survey of Trust in Advertising from 58 countries, 47% said humor resonated better than any other content approach.

When trying to brainstorm ways to add a laugh to your video marketing, consider these 6 common types of humor.

Slapstick

This style is defined more by funny actions than by what’s actually said. Like the nerf dart to the face in our recent campaign video at 0:47-0:50 or Jon kicking the ball out from Stark in our Video Marketing Handbook video at 1:10-1:15.

Potty Humor

This type of humor focuses on being really gross. That’s literally the extent of it. There’s a time and a place for it, but Goodwipes does a pretty good job of this – if you’re into this kind of humor!

Topical Humor

Topical humor is just that – topical. This is when you make fun of current events. This is pretty much evening talk shows in a nutshell. This is Jimmy Fallon’s jam.

Parody

The art of parody is mocking something through imitation. You know, like Miley Cyrus’ wrecking ball in our Marketing Maven Melissa video at 0:10-0:25.

Surreal Comedy

Surreal comedy involves defying logic and showcasing absurd and non-sensical situations.  A good example of this is Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

What’s the Secret to Humor in Video Marketing?

At Vidyard, as you’ve probably noticed, we believe strongly in using humor in our videos. I spoke to three of our creative team members: Katie, Blake, and Mat who play key roles in producing our videos to see what they recommend for adding humor in video. Here were their 5 top tips.

1. Hire for emotional intelligence. If you’re outsourcing your video production, make sure you hire a videographer who has a strong sense of emotional intelligence and a good sense of humor themselves.
2. Avoid inside jokes. Test your video concepts and final videos with a few people outside your organization to ensure that you’re not cracking yourselves up on inside jokes that no one else is going to find funny.
3. Start with the content first. The basis of your videos should still surround a message you want to convey to your audience. Layering humor in over top of the base messaging means that even if your jokes fall flat, the main message will still come across.
4. When in doubt, go with off-the-cuff. Sometimes the best way to deliver funny content is just to keep the camera rolling and allow your on-screen talent to take some liberties with the script. Some of our best moments on camera were unscripted moments in between scenes.
5. Just go for it. Sometimes you don’t know if your work is going to be funny or not until it’s a finished product. So just go with it!

Who Else has Nailed Humor in Video Marketing?

Check out these other examples for some funny inspiration.

Haynes Beans

New Kinexions

Adobe Marketing Cloud

Toyota Camry

Poo-Pourri

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The State of Video Marketing 2015

You’re hungry for more.

That’s why you’re reading this blog post. Working in a field where things are always changing –  technology, best practices, indicators of performance, you name it – there is always a constant challenge to improve and chase down that next big win. Some might call you crazy. But us as marketers, we know this challenge is what keeps us charged up, excited, and doing what we do.

This hunger is what steers you to constantly read words of wisdom throughout the web and gather more ideas for your ever-growing spreadsheet. But nothing compares to looking at what your peers are up to and seeing how others in your field are finding success. In video marketing, you might look at what types of videos your peers are producing; how frequently they’re publishing videos; what kind of metrics they’re tracking; or if they’ve been able to crack the video ROI code. And that’s why, for the second year in a row, we’ve partnered with Demand Metric to offer a new, in-depth research report on how B2B marketers are using video and the state of video marketing overall.

Want a quick taste? Snack on this video appetizer first!

Chew on these Key Findings

Demand Metric’s research was thorough and there’s a lot of important information to digest. Before you dive in, here are some high-level findings just to wet your whistle!

• 74% of B2B marketers say video content converts better than any other medium (Click to tweet!)
• 1 in 4 B2B marketers don’t know the ROI of their video content (Click to tweet!)
• The most common types of videos used by B2B marketers are explainer and product feature videos (Click to tweet!)
• Only 15% of marketers have actively integrated video data into the rest of their tech stack (Click to tweet!)

Get the Full Story

Find out where today’s video marketers are spending their time and receiving value as well as Demand Metric’s predictions for the greatest opportunities in video marketing in the coming year. Download the 2015 Video Content Marketing Benchmark Report.

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Copywriting vs Design: What Comes First, and How to Manage Creative Personalit– Um, Processes

Me, a copywriter…well, I’m a cashew…

…Roasted, a bit sweet, high in fat. Raj, one of our graphic designers, is a walnut. Hard shell, a little bitter, loaded with fiber. We’re different, but the point is…we’re both nuts.

The relationship between copywriters and designers is often considered…let’s just say “challenging”. Writers think the words are the important part of any marketing asset, while designers think “Who’s gonna read that? It’s the design that matters!”

The truth is, copywriters and designers are two sides of the same coin. We’re inseparable, and that’s how it should be. The creative team at Vidyard includes two content marketers (myself included), two graphic designers (Raj included), a web designer, and two video experts. How do we all work together? With a large portion of magical fairy dust, muscle relaxants, and chocolate.

I kid, I kid. But if you’re a marketer who wears one of these hats, or who has to work directly with the creative team, this post might help you define how your team could work together to achieve its full potential and wow your customers. (Note: for the purposes of this article, I’m loosely referring to our two content marketers as writers, and those who take those words and turn them into visual awesomeness – through graphics, web, or video – as designers.)

It might feel like it’s your baby, but it’s not.

If you’re a creative marketer, you know that creating something awesome, powerful, and inspiring takes equal amounts hard work, imagination, and passion. So we creatives can get a little, shall we say, possessive of our work. Whether a project takes you a week or a few months, you’re probably proud of what you’ve created, and you’ve grown attached to it. It’s your baby.

Here’s the thing: It’s your customer’s baby.

That may be a weird way of putting it, but let me explain. Your work may be your pride and joy, but you didn’t actually create it for your own enjoyment and consumption, did you? You created it for your leads and customers. Whether you’re a copywriter or a designer, that means your creative process has to be ruled by one thing: The user experience.

A strong creative team will think about what the audience will care about, and that will be the focus. An audience doesn’t “see” how well a page is designed. In fact, a very talented designer-friend often tells me that you don’t see good design (you only see it if it isn’t working!). It’s simply a natural, pleasurable experience that you don’t consciously take notice of.

Same goes for writing. No one reads anymore, right? People don’t have time to be bombarded with words; they just want the bottom line so they can make their decision and move on. So the trick for a writer is to tell a story while keeping a balance between writing a novel or just a bunch of bulleted lists that lack power or inspiration.

Combine writing and design that have been created with the end user in mind, and you’ll get a landing page or video or brochure that isn’t just a landing page or video or brochure, it’s an experience. Because that’s the point, isn’t it?

But what comes first, design work or copy?

That’s the age-old question. How can a writer know what to write, or how much room there will be for copy until a designer designs something? How can a designer begin to design anything when they don’t have any content? It’s the chicken or the egg. It’s the catch-22. It’s the awkward back-and-forth shuffle when you try to move aside for someone but they move too, so you’re both blocked again, and going nowhere.

The answer to who begins work on a project is simply: It depends on the project. (Don’t kill me for saying that!)

For example, with content marketing assets like downloadable ebooks or printed sell sheets, content would likely come first since these assets are heavily content-based. With a landing page, however, design greatly impacts the audience’s experience. In this case, the final product can be stronger if the designer creates wireframes (like a rough sketch) or mock-ups (with the already-agreed-upon key messages in mind) before final copy is created.

Can you guess which Vidyard landing page this was an initial wireframe for?

At Vidyard, Raj and I have worked together on a number of landing pages, and I have carried his wireframes with me everywhere as I’m writing copy to figure out how much room I’ll have for certain messages, and how the different pieces or sections will fit together as a whole. For example, knowing in advance whether a section will be displayed as one long blurb, or broken into clickable tabs will help me determine how to start sentences to avoid redundancies or to heighten clarity. Of course, wireframes aren’t carved in stone, so writers and designers have a perfect opportunity to discuss and rework things before any more time and effort is spent in creating a final product.

My cat, Molly, making clear her stance on one of Raj’s proposed wireframe layouts

Video scripts, on the other hand, often involve writing a script before designing images, and finding music and voice-over talent. For example, to announce Space Camp 2015, the video marketing summit, we wanted to create a teaser video. Our Creative Director, Blake, knew he wanted to keep the video’s design and animations simple, involving basic dots and dashes (and keeping the focus on the words on screen) so it would feel in keeping with Space Camp’s overall simple and imaginative brand. The rest was up to me as the script writer. Once I created the message and story, Blake used his creative powers to bring it to life with visuals and music.

Watch it, you know you want to!

So have you noticed what really comes first? The concept!

Really, before either writer or designer can start anything, a concept for the project should be agreed upon. It’s important to remember that writers should never just write down empty words and cliches, and designers don’t just make things pretty. Think about the goal of what you’re trying to create. What’s the story? What’s the message? What would the audience care about and how can you bring that to life? Maybe a creative brief needs to be completed, or meetings held, or key messages documented. However it’s done, a concept is how you’ll create a strong final asset.

A concept is what essentially creates an experience. For example, this year when the name of our annual video marketing summit was changed from Ignite to Space Camp, we knew we needed a concept to tell a story and make it a powerful experience. In this case, it was actually more like creating a whole brand, because it was a quite distinct experience from Vidyard’s own brand.

There were a number of directions we could have gone, but Raj and I both wanted to achieve a very inspirational, awe-inspiring, and imagination-provoking experience (while avoiding cheesy or too juvenile camp references). Raj’s visual experience, with a dark, mysterious, edge-of-the-universe (with moving constellations!) look-and-feel, topped off with the “impossible object” (yet imagination-provoking) Penrose triangle logo, and coupled with my text-based brand and story of Space Camp, created what we think was a pretty powerful impression on our audience.

But copy and design, sitting in a Word document or in design software, don’t jump onto the web all by themselves. That’s where the pecan of the team, Karel, our web designer, came in, bringing designed constellations to moving life, and animating buttons and other visual elements to truly power a breath-taking user experience.

Space Camp website above the fold, with video

Space Camp ‘About’ copy section

A concept is perfect for creating clarity during a project. It keeps writers from throwing up random cliches (“Hit it out of the park!”, “The gloves are off!”, “It’s time to double down!”) If your concept isn’t about baseball or boxing or gambling, why add language that won’t have any impact? Copywriting without a concept creates confusion in design as well: if a designer doesn’t know how best to tell an arbitrary story, he could end up presenting a visual of someone eating a pie followed by a bird flying over the moon.

But for any of this to come together, we have to talk to each other. All the damn time.

This is the part of the blog post where I talk about how important communication is to the creative process between copywriter and designer. You might think it goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway because it’s. Really. Seriously. Important.

Too much advice out there suggests that copywriters and designers can be on different teams or work independently of each other before passing off the project to the other one. Um…NO. It may sound like a drag to always check in with each other, or to have to deal with each other’s input. Copywriters don’t want to hear that their copy is too long, and designers don’t want to deal with “What would that button look like if it was purple instead of green?”

Do I need to explain this face? I think not.

Yes, maybe sometimes you want to smack each other upside the head, but it’s important to remember that creatives are all creating the experience together, so we all need to communicate often to not only save time and effort, but to share ideas. Designers have great ideas about copy, and once in a while, a copywriter might even have something useful to add about web design! A team that is built on honesty and trust can feel comfortable sharing even dumb ideas because it’s those ideas that might just take you down a path to awesomeness that you might not have discovered on your own.

At Vidyard, the whole creative team sits together and, often when we have collaborated during all the stages of different projects we have worked on, Raj, Karel, and I have even shared a monitor (whaaa??!). That way, we can see how the copy and design and user experience are all coming together. It’s a pretty awesome experience for us, as we bounce ideas off each other and improve assets in “real time”, like changing text sizes, cutting down copy so it fits on more or less lines or columns (since you can’t tell from a wireframe), changing the layout of a table or tabs to better communicate a message, and so much more! No matter which creative team members are coming together on any given project, our combined strengths only mean great things.

When all creative roles work together, that’s when the real magic happens. Do you have any tips to bring your copywriting and design together for a powerful experience? Let us know!

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