The Changing Landscape of Corporate Video

The new age of corporate video production is explored.

Jason Sirotin: All right, welcome to the Naked Unicorn Podcast I’m Jason Sirotin I’m here with the partners of ECG, Jason Marraccini, and Trey Gregory. How you guys doing this morning?

Jason Marraccini: Doing good. I could use a coffee, I’m kind of coveting Trey’s coffee.

Trey Gregory: This coffee is delicious.

Jason Marraccini: It looks good…..

Jason Sirotin: Today we’re going to be talking about corporate video, the new age of corporate video production. We had a brief conversation about it yesterday so I think that there’s going to be a lot of cool things to discuss. I think the number one thing that we should talk about is the perception of the way corporate video used to be, and how we view it.

Jason Marraccini: Absolutely. I think that that’s something that’s … It used to be a bad word. It used to be, “Oh, it’s going to be talking heads stuff, and it’s going to be things that people are going to be forced to watched.” Like the sexual harassment policy, or internal things that are going to be really dry. I think that that’s just a dead way of thinking. That’s not what cor-, at least good corporate video is about anymore.

Good corporate video needs to be just as engaging and entertaining and high quality and high production value as any other content that people are consuming. People have content in front of them all day long now. On their phones, on their laptops, when they get home, when they take a break and watch TV, it’s everywhere and it all looks pretty good. People are savvy, people know what good production value is and they’re going to smell shitty production a mile away and just tune out.

Trey Gregory: Boredom.

Jason Marraccini: Even if they’re made to watch it.

Trey Gregory: Boredom gets in the way of the messaging and if a video is boring people tune out.

Jason Marraccini: Absolutely.

Trey Gregory: After like thirty seconds they’ll tune out. If you sit someone in front of a talking head, even if the messaging is really specific to what they’re looking for, they’re going to get bored. They’re not going to watch it if it goes on, and on, and on, and on. Seven minutes of a talking head … Which are videos that we used to do way, way, way, way back when, nobody watches that, even back then I don’t think anybody watched it.

Companies are judged by their corporate video more than ever.

Jason Sirotin: And I think companies are judged by their corporate video more than ever. If somebody has a whack corporate video, then people just look at that company and go, “Oh they’re not cutting edge, they’re not on top of their game.” I think there’s a broad spectrum of where it’s going to go in terms of, I think you’ll see more comedies come out of corporations, more action adventure, it will be very genre specific.

Because that’s what it’s going to take to engage people, there are reports that say we are now getting thirty thousand messages a day put at us. Back in the ‘80s it used to be like three thousand messages a day. Thirty thousand messages a single day.

Trey Gregory: People have to be savvier about what messages they let in, and they’re not going to let anything in if it’s not entertaining and boring, if it doesn’t speak to them. I think that you see a lot of the old way of corporate videos starting to-, it’s starting to fall off. We still get calls where someone’s like, “I want to do a two hour interview with somebody and then send the video out to my entire company.”

Jason Sirotin: Who would watch that?

Trey: Right.

Jason Marraccini: But the smart guys, I mean the smart ones … I think there’s a lot of things that let you know that somebody who’s coming in and wanting to buy corporate video is savvy about it. One is the amount of control that they give up. They know that, okay we’re coming, “I’m engaging ECG Production; these guys do this for a living. These guys know how to tell a good story. I … “, you know whatever, “I sell insurance, or I …” Whatever they do, and they’re willing to let go a little bit.

Sometimes that’s a relationship that has to develop over a long period, but sometimes people even on the first job will be like, “Listen, you guys are the idea guys, you guys have the vision. Here’s what I want to get across you make it cool and entertaining. You make it engaging.”

Trey Gregory: That’s where we shine too. I think that a lot of time that people, they are excited by working in video. It’s exciting, it’s cool and they want to come up with a concept and pitch it. We’ve been doing this for our entire careers, all of our lives pretty much, and there’s-, not relying on us as a vendor to create a video, especially a corporate video is just a huge mistake.

We can’t guide people, we can’t force them to do something that they don’t want to do, but not utilizing us is like, I don’t know, it’s like buying a car and not using fifth gear … It’s just like-

Jason Marraccini: Even more-

Trey Gregory: …you’re not going the whole way.

Jason Marraccini: …I’ll stick with your car metaphor, it’s kind of like … I mean, you don’t go hire a mechanic and then get under-, get the car lifted up and then get under there with him and be like, “Well let me look. No, I think, let me what parts.” You’re paying the mechanic because he’s a mechanic, this guy knows cars.

It’s weird that sometimes… I think that the good thing is that type of thinking seems to be going away a little bit. But there are people who come in and they’re like, “All right, you guys just hold the cameras, and I’ll tell you everything else to do.” Those are usually not the best corporate videos.

Jason Sirotin: I think that corporate video, when people are making it for them; it’s like the most exciting part of their job, so they want to be heavily involved.

Jason Marraccini: Oh yeah, some people that’s the only time they get out from behind a desk all year and they get really, really excited about it. That’s awesome, that’s fun to see. We get excited when they get excited.

Jason Sirotin: Especially when they are more collaborative. I would say the collaborative clients who are into having a discussion about what the messaging is on the video, the videos always turn out better. You don’t want a client that’s completely not involved, but you don’t want a client that had their hands in everything and is dealing with, “Oh, well what color should this outfit be?” Or, “Who should we cast in this position?”

They should really rely on us to do that. Let’s talk about corporate video budgets for a second. In the late-, the early 2000s corporate videos were in a really good position budget wise, and then the economy crashed and then it became like a big cut, “Let’s cut video.” Of course they cut it right before it really becomes super, super important. Where are video budgets at nowadays in your guy’s opinion?

Jason Marraccini: Well, there’s no one black and white answer for that. I think what’s interesting is, because we’re a company that does a lot of different types of projects, we do music videos, we do feature films, we’ve done some broadcast stuff. We’ve done a little bit of everything, and sometimes corporate video is the biggest budget stuff we do in a year. Which is interesting because you’ve got more resources than for a feature film, or for a broadcast commercial, sometimes those are the higher paying things.

It just depends, it runs the whole gamut of, there’s some people who are used to the old agency system who think that if it’s video it should be very expensive and there’s large budgets, and there’s some people that want to spend really ambitious amounts of money on things that are just internal, which I always find to be interesting. Then on the other side of it, there’s people who think that it should cost very little, and that, “Oh, I can shoot it on my phone, or my kid shoots video, and anybody can do this.”

Jason Sirotin: What does that kind of behavior get people?

If it’s a cheap video on a phone, that’s what people think of you.

Trey Gregory: People don’t think ahead when they want to do something like that. That’s when you see a video like that, or when you show a video like that to your entire company, that’s your image now. That’s what people’s perception of you is going to be, and if it’s a cheap video on a phone, that’s what people think of you.

Jason Sirotin: You are now a cheap company.

Jason Marraccini: Mm hm. (affirmative)

Trey Gregory: You are now a cheap company that shoots video on a phone. If you see something that’s really polished and nice, that’s what people remember. That’s the message people take away, that’s the subtext of the message.

Jason Sirotin: What would you say to a client who was like, “Well parts of Wolf of Wall Street were shot on an iPhone.”

Trey Gregory: I would say, “Show me what parts of Wolf of Wall Street were shot on an iPhone.” It probably … I don’t know about-

Jason Sirotin: It’s a seat belt buckle.

Trey Gregory: It’s like one little shot where it clicks?

Jason Sirotin: Yeah.

Trey Gregory: Oh yeah, and I’m sure it’s up res’d and it’s color graded and you could never tell, but that’s … That’s fine, you can shoot it with an iPhone but it’s probably still lit with thousands and thousands of dollars of lights.

Jason Marraccini: That’s cherry picking, that’s like, “Parts of this office are made of paper.”

Jason Sirotin: Right, absolutely.

Jason Marraccini: Yes, that is a fact but …

Trey Gregory: I’ve recently-, I’ve pushed back on some corporate clients who they wanted to, they didn’t have a very big budget, they wanted to shoot something on an iPhone. They sent it to us to the post production on, and I had to push back and say that, “If I was presenting this project to my company, I wouldn’t show them this video.” Because it’s just-, it sounded bad, it looked like it was shot on an iPhone.

Jason Marraccini: This was for a Fortune 100 company.

Trey Gregory: Yeah, this was for a big company, and they … I had to push back, and eventually they made the decision to spend a little bit more money and get a shooter and actually do it properly.

Jason Marraccini: The problem there too is a company like ours, we’re going to-, if we get engaged to do a project we’re going to make it the best we can possibility do. Things like that end up creating a lot of work for us. Then we’re cleaning up your shitty stuff.

We’re going to work really hard anyway so a conversation like that is really good to have on the front-end, where you push back, because if they go forward with that and do it-, shoot it on phones, then we’re going to-, it just creates work for us. The resolutions aren’t the right way, and the expectation is still, “they want it to look good.”

Trey Gregory: Yeah, and it’s something no one can [crosstalk 09:20]

Jason Marraccini: It doesn’t matter to them, once it comes in it’s like, “All right, well make it look good.”

Trey Gregory: Yeah, yeah. So it’s on us if it doesn’t look good when it’s done.

Jason Marraccini: Precisely.

Trey Gregory: Yeah, so-

Jason Sirotin: And that’s never a good thing.

Trey Gregory: No, and it’s frustrating for us too because we have high standards for ourselves and that’s something that we pride ourselves on. We don’t want to put out anything that’s boring and looks like crap.

How do you find a good corporate video production company?

Jason Sirotin: If someone is making a business video, or a corporate video, what steps should they take in terms of engaging a company like ours? What steps would you say they should follow?

Jason Marraccini: I think the main thing is: know what the video is for. You’d be surprised how many people walk in the door and know that they need video, and then if you were to push them any further than that, they’d be like, “Well I don’t know what we’re going to use it for.”

Trey Gregory: Yeah.

Jason Marraccini: Like, “We just want to get it, and then we’ll come up with what the purpose is.” I think that creates problems. The stuff that’s very, very focused and very like, “This is how-, this is what we’re going to use it for, this is what we want to get across, this is how we’re going to deploy it.”

That stuff we can really strategize, really dig into and make something that’s really effective. Whereas if it’s very limp and kind of, “Oh well, we don’t really know exactly what we’re going to do with it, or how we’re going to deploy it.” It’s a lot harder to … We’re fumbling through it together, and that’s on the clock, that’s costing them money. If they come with something that’s at least a little bit more baked-

Jason Sirotin: So who’s-

Trey Gregory: Yeah, no-

Jason Sirotin: …the target audience and who is it being distributed to?

Trey Gregory: That’s what I want reiterate. That’s a really great point. It’s who’s watching it, what’s the messaging and how are they going to see it? Those are … I feel like … Are we missing anything?

Jason Sirotin: And how-

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, those are the three.

Jason Sirotin: And are they being forced to watch it, versus is it something that you need them to opt in on? Which I think is very important because if you are forcing people to watch a three minute video, then obviously they’re going to have to watch it, but if you’re trying to get somebody to opt in, it’s a whole different kind of video that you need.

Trey Gregory: Let’s talk about compulsory viewing for a second; because I think a lot of our corporate stuff, people are forced to watch it. I don’t think there’s a lot of stuff that’s optional, whether or not they do, but they get the link and they’re supposed to look at it.

Jason Marraccini: Oh yeah, I think-

Trey Gregory: I think-

Jason Marraccini: Go ahead I don’t want to interrupt you.

Trey Gregory: I think that a lot of our stuff, I don’t know if we want to mention clients specifically, but a lot of our stuff for some of our bigger corporate clients, it’s very entertaining. We’ve done stuff that’s with comedy troops and Improv groups, and stuff that’s like a spoof of famous television shows. That’s entertaining, if I was compelled by my boss to watch it, I’d be psyched, but if I’m compelled to watch a guy sitting in front of a wall talking about what our goals are for the next quarter for fifteen minutes, I’m tuning out like that (snap).

Jason Sirotin: You’re flushing your money down the toilet.

Jason Marraccini: Not only that, you resent it. Then you-, it feels like work, it feels like something that you’re really being forced to do and then-

Trey Gregory: That you feel like a break.

Jason Marraccini: I think that for compulsory viewing, to me the gold standard is the safety videos on Delta Airlines right now. They are so brilliant. Think about the last time that you actually looked up from your Kindle or your phone when somebody was-, the stewardess was actually showing you how to buckle a seat belt. I watch every second of those safety videos.

Trey Gregory: They keep updating them with the ‘80s one?

Jason Marraccini: They’re fantastic, they have holiday ones.

Trey Gregory: It’s hilarious, yeah. I think it’s great.

Jason Marraccini: That’s what good compulsory videos should be. It’s so much fun that you-, the message gets through I could tell you every safety fact in there. I could probably recite them all back to you, but I’m enjoying it, I’m retaining the information. That’s exactly what you want to do for something that you’re forced to watch.

Trey Gregory: Yeah, instead of somebody sitting up there looking bored to tears and plugging a seatbelt in and pointing to the exits, it’s like people who are excited to be there because they shot it one day, way back when.

Jason Marraccini: The cool thing is, like on my flight back from Aruba a few weeks ago, they-, you hear the laughs. You hear other people-, it’s not just me that’s engaged. Other people are on the plane, and people are having-, experiencing it together.

That’s what we want for-, if somebody has to watch, I threw out a sexual harassment video before, but something like that, where you … It’s something that as a matter of policy you have to watch. I think that’s awesome if people are talking about it, if people are sharing the experience, that’s a homerun.

Trey Gregory: That’s our goal too. That’s what we want to do; we want anyone to enjoy what we watch. I think you said it earlier Jason, I think the most successful corporate projects are the ones that come in and they really-, all they have is the messaging and who’s going to watch it, and they let us bring that entertainment value in because that’s what we want to bring. That’s our-, that’s where we shine.

Corporate video or industrial video? What’s the difference?

Jason Sirotin: The Delta conversation leads nicely into this industrial video. Corporate video used to be called-

Jason Marraccini: Does anybody use that anymore? Do people still say “industrial”?

Jason Sirotin: According to Google only two hundred and ten people a month search for it, compared to corporate video which six thousand six hundred people search for a month. When you have … But it is still a term, and when you’re working with older agencies you’re really-, you really have-

Jason Marraccini: Thirty thousand messages a day? Thirty thousand and one.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, I just got another message.

Jason Marraccini: [crosstalk 00:14:23] checking a text.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, there’s a-, our 10:30 is here early.

Trey Gregory: With industrial-, did you look up the definition? Is industrial video; is that just another way of saying corporate video? I’ve always thought of it as something different.

Jason Sirotin: Here’s the-

Jason Marraccini: I think it implies internal.

Jason Sirotin: Here’s what Wikipedia says, Wikipedia says, “An industrial video is a video that targets industry as a primary audience. An industrial video is a type of sponsored film, such as an educational film, which prioritizes pragmatism over artistic value.” I think that’s where the shift is, right?

Jason Marraccini: Well this is-, that’s like what not to do. That definition is, “How to make a bad corporate video.”

Jason Sirotin: That is. It’s true, that should be the heading of this Podcast as the example of what not to do.

Trey Gregory: That is exactly what not to do.

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, as soon as you … Pragmatism isn’t important, but as soon as you prize it over entertainment value and engagement, then yeah you’ve made something that people are going to resent watching and that’s not entertaining and that’s-

Trey Gregory: Yeah, you might as well just type it in a Word-

Jason Marraccini:…shitty.

Trey Gregory:…type your message in a Word doc and send it to them.

Jason Marraccini: Oh yeah-

Trey Gregory: They’ll read it, they won’t absorb it.

Jason Marraccini: …or make them watch a Power Point.

Trey Gregory: Right, yeah exactly. I’ve always thought of industrial video as focusing on industry, I’ve never really thought about it by the definition that Wikipedia gives. It’s interesting to hear it that way. Is that an outdated term? You don’t see a lot of that; even in the industrial sector you don’t see a ton of that.

Jason Sirotin: I do get that a lot, especially when talking to actors because they have a separate billing rate for industrials.

Trey Gregory: Yeah.

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, and usually it’s the older ones.

Jason Sirotin: And that-

Jason Marraccini: Or it’s the agency that’s putting them out.

How does corporate video work with SAG? Why are corporations moving to animation more and more?

Jason Sirotin: …that’s an interesting topic too is the fact that SAG is changing the way that they want to do their corporate or industrial video pricing. It used to be if you wanted to bring on one guy for a SAG role, you would have to pay everybody on set the SAG minute for the corporate. It’s like, “Oh man.” More and more of our companies are going towards animation where they don’t have to use-

Trey Gregory: Any actors.

Jason Sirotin: …any actors.

Trey Gregory: Just voice actors.

Jason Sirotin: Right, so let’s talk about corporate animation because we’ve seen a huge uptake in corporate video animation. Why are corporations, other than the talent issue, why are they moving towards animation?

Trey Gregory: So many corporate videos focus on metrics. A lot of times it’s touting metrics; it’s showing where they want things to go and how they want finances to work. It’s a lot of numbers, and I think that the easiest way to get people to absorb that information is for them to hear it and see it and graphics allow that. If you got-

Jason Marraccini: It’s just charts and-

Trey Gregory: …sitting there talking about it-

Jason Marraccini: …spreadsheets, it’s very dry. I think the other thing is, the fact that it is metrics and it is numbers, animation is way easier to update. Making an Evergreen product that’s animated, you can get in there, you can change those figures you can alter that stuff.

Whereas if you’ve shot something, you kind of, you’re locked into the large part of it, you don’t want to have to reshoot usually. I think people get a lot more shelf-life and I think they get a lot more bang for their buck out of animated stuff. There are certain messages that just don’t work as well. What Trey was saying, I think is very accurate, yeah it definitely-, it spices up the dry stuff.

Trey Gregory: I think that it does, it’s interesting that it’s-, that we’re talking about industrial video because when you do it with animation it is kind of the industrialization of video in that it’s-, you have replaceable parts. You’ve got all these little sections, and say you want everything to say “2015” instead of “2014”, well that’s one hour to go through and fix a couple of dates in an animation, but if you’ve got somebody saying that word, then that is not a replaceable part. That’s a new video.

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, or worse it’s on a banner in a shot.

Trey Gregory: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that the flexibility that animation allows is one of the things that‘s really beneficial to our corporate clients.

Jason Sirotin: If you had one sentence to sell our corporate video services to someone, how would you sum it up?

Trey Gregory: Our corporate video is not boring, it’s entertaining. People are going to remember it, and they’re going to absorb the message. I think that’s what it’s all about anyways.

Jason Sirotin: We always say, “Attention equals retention.”

Trey Gregory: Attention equals retention, absolutely.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, but I think it’s-, at the same time we’ll do what you want us to do, but we’re always going to be … We’re not going to be the “yes” men who are like, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” We’ll tell you, “Hey there might be a better, creative way to do it.” What about you Jason, what would you say about it?

Jason Marraccini: I would even go a finer point on that. I would say, “You can’t afford to have bad corporate video.”

Jason Sirotin: That’s great.

Trey Gregory: That’s good.

Jason Sirotin: You know what, I was reading an article and I think Coca-Cola does an amazing job marketing, and expressing their message and giving away information to other marketers, but they had a big thing in their latest content 2020, talking about how it’s risky to not be edgy. It’s risky-, it’s more risky to not be risky.

They have an interesting thing where they split up their budgets by sixty percent goes to content that they know will give a return on investment, thirty percent goes to content that they’re working on that they know shows results, but it hasn’t picked up full speed, and ten percent in experimental. I think-

Jason Marraccini: That’s right in line with Seth Godin too, that’s essentially a line out of The Purple Cow. The riskiest thing you can do is to play it safe.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, absolutely you … We … I think that’s the thing is, if you’re looking for edgy, corporate video that is going to have an impact and get people to pay attention, then we’re the company for you. If you’re looking for that standard dry stuff, we’ll do it, but we’re going to tell you the ROI on it is not going to be huge.

Because at the end of the day, the ROI on a corporate video is-, could be so huge because it’s the messaging that’s going out to your entire staff, or your entire client base. That’s a big thing. People are not reading, we say Google the bots read-

Jason Marraccini: Oh yeah-

Jason Sirotin: …but people don’t.

Jason Marraccini: …robots read our website. That’s pretty much it. That’s why you’re listening to this Podcast right now, because you don’t want to read.

How long should my corporate video be?

Jason Sirotin: Right, because reading is-, it’s very time consuming and you can listen to a Podcast or watch a three minute video … I still think three minutes is a little long for a corporate video.

Jason Marraccini: No, ninety seconds-

Trey Gregory: Ninety seconds.

Jason Marraccini: …is the sweet spot.

Jason Sirotin: If you can get it to ninety seconds, you’re in a really good place. Let’s talk about corporate video editing. What makes us really great at editing corporate video? Is there a certain technique? Is there a way that we do it that makes us stand out and it’s different?

Jason Marraccini: I think that what makes it different is that we don’t treat it differently. I approach a corporate video the same way that I would approach a pilot television show, or a music video. As far as-, nothing is out of bounds, there are no techniques that I’m going to say, “Oh this is corporate, I can’t use that.” Like, “I don’t want to use that pasting, or that editing style.”

Everything is on the table for corporate, because it should be just as entertaining, and I think that that’s important in the approach, is that we don’t … Let’s go back to the industrial thing, we don’t approach it like an industrial. We are not going to make it pragmatic only. That’s just not how we roll.

Jason Sirotin: And we want to make it fun because it’s got to be fun for us.

Jason Marraccini: Absolutely.

Jason Sirotin: We have the luxury of being able to pick who we want to work with these days, and so I don’t want to do something boring. I want to cut something fun and cool.

Jason Marraccini: I don’t want to do something that’s going to fail. I don’t want … Even if it’s just failing internally for some company that we’re maybe never going to interact with again. I want them to win. That’s … We’re trying to put together tools that are going to let people win.

Trey Gregory: Yeah, we want to hear that our video is successful in what it’s supposed to do.

How much does corporate video cost?

Jason Sirotin: And it’s about relationship building for us. We don’t want to just take a bunch of money and do a video and never talk to people again.

Jason Marraccini: Oh, absolutely, we’re not just going to “yes” you and be like, “Okay, this large budget, very poor idea that we think is going to flop. Oh, we’ll just do it. We’ll just take the paycheck.” That’s narrow minded, that’s not good business thinking. We’re much more effective, even if we pitch …

Well, I’ll throw out random numbers, but say they come in with an idea that’s thirty thousand dollars, and not very good, and we come back to them and we pitch an idea that’s way better and it’s twenty. It’s ten thousand that-, it’s a third less, but that video gets deployed and it’s a phenomenon and it’s viral, and everybody really loves it and it’s very engaging.

That client is going to come back, not only did we save them money, we hit a home run. Then that relationship grows. That’s more important to us than just collecting checks.

Videography is not a full corporate production. Videography is one part of corporate video production.

Jason Sirotin: Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that really bothers me is a lot of the corporations that call, and they’re usually smaller corporations, but they use the term, “I need to videography.” Videography is a section of corporate video, how would you expl-

Jason Marraccini: I like that they’re using it as a verb.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, yeah-

Trey Gregory: I want to videography.

Jason Sirotin: I want to videography.

Jason Marraccini: Are these Russian guys?

Jason Sirotin: No, but you’ll get a call, maybe they don’t say, “I want a videography.” But they’ll be like, “I need a videographer to do this.”

Trey Gregory: Yeah.

Jason Sirotin: Then it’s like the whole production process. The videographer, I think that also is an old term.

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, it’s like a catch-all.

Trey Gregory: Yeah, because they want … Usually when someone calls up saying that, what I hear is they want a guy with a camera. They just want … When I hear “videographer”-

Jason Marraccini: Well, they want the one man band.

Trey Gregory: They want a one man band type thing. That’s usually what it sounds like. We just-, we’ll send a one man band if we have to, but it just-, you just don’t get the same results. If somebody wants … A lot of times too when someone asks for a videography, they are … It’s some sort of event coverage or something that was usually thought of at the last minute. It’s like, “Well, oh, we should get video of this, we’re going to be at this trade show, and we should video our booth while we’re there-

Jason Sirotin: “We’ll need a videographer.”

Trey Gregory: …so let’s get a videographer.” That’s usually the thought process. I find that a lot of time that will be … They’re a little less thoughtful, they don’t-, a lot of times they don’t even know how they’re going to deploy the video. They just want to cover it. They want event coverage, which is fine, and event coverage is good but again thinking your process through is critical and knowing, “Okay, so we’re going to have-“

Let’s go with this trade show example, “We want to shoot our trade show, but what do we want to do with the video afterwards?” Let’s just think through, “Well, do we want to show it to everyone in our company?” and be like, “Look at how successful this trade show was. Look at how busy our booth was, and how many sales we made.” If that’s the method then the videographer needs to know that going into it. It can’t just be, “Come and shoot us at our trade show.” You got to know what the story is and a videographer can only go so far before they’re just shooting B roll.

Jason Sirotin: Sometimes just a videographer is somebody who’s good at taking pictures with a-, moving pictures with a camera. They might not be the best storyteller and can capture the moment. I think that team approach to video is so important. Just hiring a one man band, you don’t really get much out of it.

Trey Gregory: That’s an awesome point, and I think it’s something that you … A lot of times people forget in corporate video is that this is collaborative art. That’s what we’re making here. You need multiple parts; you need gears in your machine, multiple gears in order for everything to work.

Jason Marraccini: Oh yeah, just like your scenario that you’re talking … We’ll run with the trade show thing, add a field producer to that equation and already then you’ve got better storytelling. Because maybe while you’re looking through the eyepiece something really interesting is going on over here, or you walk the floor while you’re covering-, while you’re getting pick up shots and go and try and find people who are going to be on camera who will say engaging things.

Trey Gregory: Right.

Jason Marraccini: Then you’ve upped the value. A lot of people just don’t take the long view on that; a lot of people are just like, “What’s the bottom line price?” Like, “How cheap can I do this?”

Trey Gregory: Yeah.

Jason Marraccini: Thankfully I feel like where we’re at in our-, the lifecycle of this business is that we don’t take a lot of that stuff anymore. It’s not necessarily just because we have a certain threshold of job we go beneath, it’s just if you’re setting up a poor product and you’re not doing it right, and you’re not giving yourselves all the tools you need to success, we don’t really want to get involved. We’re not in the business of making videos that are going to fail.

Trey Gregory: Let me ask you something Jay, when you are talking with a new corporate client that comes in and you start to push back on an idea a little bit, which I know you do very comfortably if you don’t think something’s a bad idea you let them know right away. Do you find that people respond positively to that? Or do they respond negatively to that? What happens when you push back and you’re like, “This isn’t a great idea.”

Jason Sirotin: It really depends on the person. If it’s their idea, and their baby, the goal will be to take their idea and figure out a way to make it more dynamic, because most people who are working in a corporation they’re understanding what their message is and they just don’t know the best way to get it across so you can say, “Oh, well what about this?”

They seem to be very responsive, and then if not I always leave it open to say, “If that’s not what you want, we’ll do exactly what you’re looking for, but I think it will be more impactful if we do this.”

Trey Gregory: Do you find it frustrating when people don’t take your advice?

Jason Sirotin: I’m used to it at this point, but I think as we’ve grown as a company we’ve been doing this, we’ve been in Atlanta doing corporate video for seven years now?

Jason Marraccini: No, more than that.

Jason Sirotin: Eight years?

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, eight.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, almost eight years.

Trey Gregory: Eight years of Atlanta corporate video?

Jason Sirotin: Eight years of Atlanta corporate video.

Trey Gregory: It flies by.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah. That’s a lot of experience and I think the past two years we have rarely had a client who is not coming to us because they know that we’re experts in the corporate video space. We’re so lucky to be doing corporate video in Atlanta, because there are so many gigantic corporations and we get great budgets, and we have to opportunity to do really cool things.

If I am making a corporate video what should I ask myself?

I think that’s just amazing. In closing, if a client is looking to do corporate video, Trey what are the three things that they should ask themselves before they come to us?

Trey Gregory: They need to know what the message is, they need to know who the audience is, and then they need to know who they going to display it, how they’re going to deploy it to the audience.

Jason Sirotin: Jase, what do you think?

Jason Marraccini: Exactly, that’s actually-, I said that earlier on the Podcast.

Trey Gregory: He did, yeah.

Jason Sirotin: The exact thing?

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, I did.

Trey Gregory: Those exact words.

Jason Sirotin: Well, I’d like to also add that it’s good to know your budget.

Trey Gregory: That’s also good.

Jason Marraccini: That’s a good one-

Trey Gregory: That’s good, we didn’t mention that.

What’s your corporate video budget?

Jason Marraccini: …we could probably spend a couple minutes talking about the-

Jason Sirotin: Because when we get something where we know what the budget is, it’s so much easier for us to work around a concept that’s going to be appropriate. If somebody’s only got ten thousand, there’s obviously things we can’t do.

We can’t build a set, we can’t have crazy 3D animation, there’s a lot, but if they have seven hundred thousand it opens up a whole new realm of possibility where we can make something really, really impactful.

Jason Marraccini: The approach is totally different, from the first time you put pen to paper. If you-, knowing where you are in the budget changes the approach. I think a lot of people just-, they’re used to how you approach other things. Say it’s buying a used car where it’s the first guy to say a number loses. That’s the mindset. Just … I wish people would treat it more like how they say you should go to Vegas, which is just don’t put anything on the table that you’re not prepared to lose.

If you are telling me … Say I ask you to say a number, and you say, “Twenty-five thousand is what I have to do this video.” But really you want to spend twenty then say twenty. Don’t say twenty-five and then we circle each other and fight about it. Once you get money out of it, once we know what we’re dealing with, then we can start making something awesome. Sometimes that’s the hardest part is getting past that.

Trey Gregory: People think of us as a … They don’t think of us as a service industry, which is what we are. They think of us as, like you said, going to buy a car.

Jason Marraccini: Yeah, like it’s a Widget.

Trey Gregory: Which isn’t the-, it’s not the case at all. The budget dictates everything, from how many cameras, how big the crew is to how complicated the edit and the post-production is and if-, it just saves time. I think that-, the main thing about the budget is it’s going to save back and forth and it’s going to save everybody time.

Because we can scale our production to fit the budget no matter how big, or small, it is because for us we just want it to look amazing and that takes money. I don’t know, that’s a good point though, knowing the budget ahead of time and being honest with your vendor about what your budget is, is going to save everybody time.

Jason Marraccini: Absolutely.

Jason Sirotin: And we … I think if we know the budget is, let’s say thirty thousand, a lot of times if we come up with an idea that should be forty, or fifty, we end up doing it because we want the video to be awesome.

Jason Marraccini: Exactly.

Trey Gregory: Mm hm. (affirmative) Yeah.

Jason Sirotin: And we put the extra effort in, especially if the client is nice. The attitude of the client is so important, because we want to have a great relationship. We will throw all of our resources at something if we’re passionate about it too.

Which is why the talking head video, corporate videos don’t really do anything for us, but the other ones, we’re willing to like, “Oh you didn’t pay for the dolly, but we really want to bring it, so let’s bring the dolly.” Or, “There’s no steady-cam budget? Don’t worry we’ll bring the steady-cam.”

Trey Gregory: Yeah, we’re going to bring it anyways because we really need it for this shot.

Jason Marraccini: Once you’re past that then it’s … I feel like that’s when the exciting part happens. That’s again, to go back to what I said before; I think that’s more of the reason why we don’t take the lower budget stuff. Because we know we’re going to kill ourselves to make it anyway, so it’s really hard to take a couple thousand dollar thing, because we know we’re going to do a twenty thousand dollar job anyway-

Jason Sirotin: Absolutely, right.

Jason Marraccini: …so we’re killing ourselves trying to do that stuff.

Jason Sirotin: Yeah, we’re in a really good place and I want to thank you guys for your time today, and if you are looking for a really amazing corporate video, you can reach us at ecgprod.com, there are contact forms and phone numbers. You can call 678-855-5169 and speak directly to me, Trey Gregory, Jason Marraccini thank you for your time today.

Trey Gregory: Thank you.

Jason Marraccini: Thanks man.

Jason Sirotin: And thanks for tuning in to the Naked Unicorn Podcast, stay tuned next time. Visit the blog at www.ecgprod.com/blog.

Jason Sirotin