FEED Autumn 2022 Newsletter

Jo Haywood Skylark Media Founder and MD

What are some of the best ways for businesses to use video? To simplify a message and give a clear overview to your mission or purpose. Then there’s powerful visual imagery and storytelling that will create an emotional connection with your brand. Give us your best corporate video success story. Buglife’s B-Lines animation (skylarkmedia.co.uk/case-studies/ buglifes-b-lines-campaign). Via a crowdfunding site, this animation attracted over $500k from

Which is your current favourite tool in your video creation workflow? Teams video chats have had a very positive effect. We can have brainstorms, review scripts and videos while sharing screens, all without the expense of time and travel. What word of warning would you give to a business hoping to expand its video offering? Get your planning right. Don’t jump into filming or animation until you have a clear understanding of the audience and how they should feel about you.

Klarna’s #GiveOne initiative. This will result in the planting of wildflower meadows as ‘insect pathways’ that run throughout the UK. Viva! Just Meat (skylarkmedia.co.uk/ case-studies/viva). This won silver at The Drum Roses Awards in May 2020 for best TV/digital campaign. It reached 7.3% engagement rate on digital and raised over its £40k target, premiering on Channel 4 on Valentine’s Day. Over the two-week airtime period, it was viewed by over 16 million and generated buzz among mainstream media and vegan press.

Guy Parry-Williams Imedia8 Founder

What are some of the best ways for businesses to use video? Video is such a versatile tool, it can be used by businesses in various ways to achieve different goals. At Imedia8, we work with global NGOs and humanitarian organisations, but also UK-based SMEs; this means we operate at both ends of the corporate video spectrum, delivering projects that suit each client’s needs. The most obvious use is as a marketing medium. It’s a quick and easy way to get key messages across. Today, there are so many platforms to deliver video to the right audience that can be targeted easily. Video innovation has been exciting recently. Since 2021, Imedia8 has produced virtual reality 360 video – we see this as a significant growth area. While it adds a degree of complexity to production, the end results can be great. Opportunities for location-based businesses are enormous, and we are finding there’s a ready market of consumers happy to pay for this type of content. Finally, if it is suitable for the subject matter, we advise our customers to get a camera in the air. Drone filming is now very accessible, with generic consumer drones able to capture amazing footage. It turns corporate video into something with a bit of Hollywood magic.

DRONES TURN CORPORATE VIDEO INTO SOMETHING WITH A BIT OF HOLLYWOOD MAGIC

Give us your best corporate video success story. When the pandemic struck in 2020, one of our clients – also one of the world’s largest cruise lines – was hit hard and their business was forced to completely close across the world. With a large archive library of corporate videos, Imedia8 helped them become an online video channel in a matter of weeks, so they could continue to engage with their customers. Like all of us in the spring of 2020, they were stuck at home. Which is your current favourite tool in your video creation workflow? As a specialist in managing video in the cloud, we are very excited about using AI tools to automate tasks that have previously been labour-intensive. This includes a speech-to-text service from AWS that is creating transcripts, subtitles and translations at the touch of a button – and with amazing accuracy.

What word of warning would you give to a business hoping to expand its video offering? Although video is easy to create because we all have amazing cameras in our pockets, like so many things, it’s about planning and preparation. Speak to someone with experience for advice – not just for the production and editing, but the delivery mechanism and, if relevant, security and rights management. It is imperative that anyone who uses drones to film is well-versed in the law about what type can be flown by whom and where, as the CAA has set strict rules that will change again in 2023. Finally, think about what you will do with the footage, both raw and edited. Who needs access to it? How is it backed up? How much space will it take up? We’ve dealt with clients that had files backed up on a hard-drive… but then lost it! If you are going to put money into creating video content, make sure the investment is protected for the future.

@feedzinesocial

Powered by