Anyone can buy the equipment but how many have 40 years of corporate experience?
It’s really incredible how technology today allows anyone to create high quality video and, if they study and are passionate, also create beautiful lighting, camera movements and great audio sound. Unfortunately, a really good Corporate Video, Corporate Interview or Video Resume isn’t simply a sum of its techniques, even though technique counts for quite a bit. What makes for a great Corporate Video, however, is not simply what is said and shown but how it is said and shown. The Corporate Story is not simply a series of events on a time line.
Every company has its priorities, but in my over 40 years of experience in corporate communication, rarely do the company’s priorities coincide with their communication needs. Sure, if you want to explain a product, you do just that. But if you want to explain a company or an activity, well, it’s much more than its products or its divisions. It’s about vision and people, it’s about obstacles and successes, it’s a human endeavour full of emotional value as well as commercial value.
It’s not simply a question of documenting what a company does, its various departments, products or services. It’s more about how people work within the company and how they do things of value. The passion of each worker is part of the company’s brand equity and it follows that their products and services are delivered with that same passion. If you don’t express that in a visual way, people will simply not be very interested in your work. And yet, it must be presented in an authentic way. Too many Corporate Videos are like good advertising, simply to slick to believe which creates a barrier between the company’s message and the viewer’s belief.
For this reason, the value of storytelling, as I have been teaching to business students at Bocconi University and to management at SDA Bocconi for over 18 years, is the foundation on which I create my Corporate Videos, Corporate Interviews and Video Resumes. Before technically organising a project, I have to understand the underlying needs of the company and it’s core values so that I can satisfy the true needs of each of my clients with a video where authentic feelings are expressed in a natural way. Technique is not experience yet experience without technique is simply poor communication.