Being able to connect your message through video is no piece of cake!

As a small business owner, is it you that has to think of a theme for a video for your business?

If so... are you creative enough to carry off what the video is trying to tell or sell to people?

Truth is that videos are fast becoming the way for businesses to engage with the public and their potential clients, and as such.... videos which are created have to ideally stand out or have some sort of catch or hook to them which provide them with the potential to go viral.

Now, there is simply no way that you will catch the attention of everyone, and a large amount of the ones you do - will probably think that your video is a rip off of something or could be done better by them in one way shape or form.

We recently came up with the need to create a video to enter into the Barclays ‘Take One Small Step’ competition. Part of the application process offered the option in submitting a video which was not to be any more than 2 minutes long to explain a bit about the business, its idea and its benefits.

Here is our video

The purpose of the video was twofold, firstly to help the public who view the competition applications to understand, and secondly to provide the judges of the competition extra information which they take into consideration with a more detailed written description regarding the business/idea.

We felt for this we needed to create a video in the form of an advert, the style of which if successful would make people associate it with the real better known style......the real McCoy if you like!

Millions of pounds are spent on advertising by companies and there are only a few adverts which capture a recognition following, such as - ‘Tango’ ‘Marks and Spenser’s’ ‘Cadburys’ to name but a few.

The problem for us was, how do we do it, do we go totally off the wall, do we go for outside visual shots.....exactly how do we tell people about the Connect WM idea without going too high tech and complicated because many small businesses would not have the facility to create or enlist the help at an affordable price to do such a video.

We decided to go down the smooth, cool, calm approach of one of the old Marks and Spenser styled ads – which allowed music, images and words to inter mingle to create the story and understanding.

The old adage is true in that you never know who you know, and we’re lucky that one of the Connect WM team is heavily into music, so armed with the style we wanted - off he went and created our own unique sound track.

We looked at what our business was, and thought how the hell through close up shot images can we explain what it is that we do, the idea of photos was mentioned which we decided to run with so it was then a matter of looking for and taking the right images.

Then we required a verbal explanation to tie the music and pictures together, because of the style we chose was relatively easy - it didn’t allow us to ramble on and confuse things, so it was a matter of trying to write something which is short, explanative and informative.

Once this was done, it was a matter of editing - ensuring the images matched to the verbal commentary.

For instance in our video we say things like

Six counties: and you already see an image of Warwick Castle (Warwickshire) on the table, with an image of Iron Bridge (Shropshire) dropping down

Seven metropolitan boroughs: you see an image of Birmingham’s iconic Selfridges building and St Martin’s Church (Birmingham) dropping down

Bringing Businesses and Consumers together: you see a video shot of a hand using a calculator and then receiving some money

Business Growth – Consumer Awareness – Members: we show images of a man with a megaphone and a newspaper with jobs listings to portray business growth. There’s an image of a newspaper with the word money on it along with a keyboard to portray consumer awareness, and an image of a group of people to signify members

This isn’t any ordinary website: we show an image which has been cut like a jigsaw to portray how we are as a business trying to fit the six counties and seven metropolitan boroughs of the west midlands region under the Connect WM banner......

In our view we totally achieved what we were trying to with this video and hopefully you will feel the same, but there will be some out there who will always say they can do better and some will say “do you know what? I just don’t get it”...

Truth is trying to connect through video is no piece of cake, however unless you try and move with the times your options in being able to connect in this modern day age will be reduced.

We offer a video package with our showcasing listing, as well as offering a video filming service for West Midlands based business with extras like creating unique tunes.....if you’re interested in any of these services then let us know.