Promotional films are sometimes also called corporate films and are usually commissioned by a business or other organisations to give an overview of what they do, who they do it for and why they do it best.

Before making a promotional film there are lots of things to consider, as with any other form of marketing – what are you going to put in the film – do you have lots of different products and services or a process that need to be highlighted? Who are your intended audience? What length should your film be? Where are you going to be playing it? How else can you make use of your film/how can promotional films help your business? What’s your budget? Lets address each of these points:

1) What you leave in and take out of your film is very important. The messages you include should reflect your other marketing materials and the value of your brand. This will also impact the length of your film and therefore the time it takes to shoot and edit, and the budget. We think its really important to ask you lots of questions about your business so that we can give you best advice about what should be included and left out. Pre production is also an important part of planning your shoot. What images need to go with what messages needs to be thoroughly thought out and signed off before the first shots are rolled.
TIP#1 Many of the businesses or organisations we work with are jargon rich. Stay away from using jargon in your promotional film, most of your customers will not understand what you’re talking about and will switch off
TIP#2 Make sure you talk about the benefits that your products and services give to customers and also the benefits of working with you.
2) Your intended audience is a huge part of how you will need to style your film and where you use it.
Have a look at 2 very different style of work we’ve produced:
MTV style for the 18-30 market who are interested in extreme sports

Slower paced, high end film for Cosmetic Rhinoplasty surgeon

TIP#3 Make sure the style of the film suits your audience – speak to us for advice on this if you’re not sure
3) The length of the film is also important. Long enough to get in everything you want to say but tight enough to keep your audience interested. The short answer it depends on the type of film it is and where its going to be delivered but for a promotional film, which is going to sit on your website, we would advise between 1 and 2.5 minutes. During preproduction a tight script will be developed, with approximations made for any interview responses and we have worked hard to come up with a formula for no of words, versus screen time.
TIP#4 1 location 2 or 3 interviews, shouldn’t be anymore than 2mins in length. Have a look at our youtube channel for more of our promotional films as examples http://youtube.com/FeatureMediaLtd
4) So once you have your film, what are you going to do with it/where are you going to use it? Most of our customers already know where they want to play the film but they haven’t always thought about all the other places they could put it and how else they can get a ROI. Here’s just a short list:
Send out to customers on branded USB pens
a link or thumbnail in e-mail signatures or e-mail marketing (even just to existin clients)
Your website
Other video channels, like youtube and vimeo
On social media platforms
In pdf proposal documents
Linked to QR codes on banner stands or other printed materials…
What other marketing tool is so versitile?
TIP#5 Make a list of all the places your promtional film could enhance your sales and marketing
5) Finally…how much do promotional films cost? It depends on the company you use, the length of the film, the quality, the complexity and the number of locations.
Basically the length of time required and the size of company, will impact the budget. We’ve put some packages together to help our customer with price ranges and examples. In advance of these appearing on our website, if you would like us to send these to you, please give us a call on the office number
0113 2205265

Video generally is one of the fastest growing marketing tools you can use to enhance your business, if you need any advice about the right solution for you and how to market your video, please just get in touch.

Tags: “How can promotional films be used in your business?” “promotional films” “Why use promotional videos?” “Why use video?”

Got your imagination going? Contact us at info@featuremedia.co.uk to talk to us about Augmented Reality.

We thought about this offer for a good 10 seconds. And then said “yes please!”.

We love new technology and playing with shiny new kit at Feature Media, so this was a great offer.

The camera is a SONY NX3D1, a full-HD stereoscopic compact camcorder which shoots to memory cards. It is a pretty small camera physically, it’s amazing how much is packed in there. Priced at around £2500 it is clearly intended as an affordable way into 3D for professional video companies or even an enthusiastic amateur.

The technical knowledge amongst the SONY guys was, as expected, very impressive. The presentations were excellent and I think we could have kept them there all week asking questions about 3D (much to their horror). We met some great people on the training and are looking forward to shooting some 3D footage in early April. Watch this space.

Many thanks to the brilliant Ben at Marlin PR who has pulled out all the stops to look after us. You can follow Marlin PR here: MarlinPR On Twitter. Thanks guys.

And just for a treat, here is the camera which met us in the SONY 3D Experience centre:

If you want to find out more contact us at info@featuremedia.co.uk, or call us on 0113 220 5265. You can also follow us on twitter here: Feature Media On Twitter.

Video generally is one of the fastest growing marketing tools you can use to enhance your business, whether that be to raise your profile, increase your page ranking or to increase sales and conversion rates. Increasingly customers are searching specifically for video, rather than coming across it accidently and if you can reach a number one page rank on youtube you increae your chances of being found in a universal search on Google.

Studies done in America have shown that putting good quality video on your site can do a number of things:

On e-commerce sites, it can increase your conversion rate by between 20-40% . Conversion rates even increase, although to a lesser extent if noone watches the video, because there is an assumption that if a manufacturer or distributor is so confident in their product they have taken the time to show you a video of it, it must be good and they must be reliable.

Existing or potential customers want to receive information in fast, engaging and easily digestible chunks – what better way than by video. Video has higher click through rates than equivalent text in e-mail shots; search engine searches and it is more likely to be shared.

You can use video across all your other marketing platforms; through blogs; social media; websites; video hubs (like you tube and vimeo); in e-mail marketing; in e-mails and video testimonials particularly are a great way just to keep in touch with existing customers – share your good news with them.

Feature Media produce a catch up e-mail every month, which says what we’ve been up to and asks our customers and networks to let us know what they’ve been doing, sometimes we include our video testimonials – what better way to remind people what a great job you did for them or what a great job you’ve just done for someone else – it constantly reinforces confidence in your products and services and shows case studies, which remind contacts of the variety of work you do – avoiding the “I wish I’d known you did that…” conversation.

If you have other videos on your tube, you can also add a customers video testimonials as video response to the work that you’ve done for them, which give you brownie points with you tube.

Video testimonials can range from the DIY and very simple to more involved case studies, shot on location – your decision on the right one for you will be based on budget of course but be aware that studies have also shown that quality also matters.

Please have a look at one example, we’ve produced for ourselves and one on location that we’ve shot for a customer of ours The H2 Company.

Feature Media’s video testimonial

H2 Company’s Video Testimonial from Space Architecture

For more information about video testimonials and how to use them please get in touch today by calling the Feature Media team on 0113 2205265 or e-mailing julie@featuremedia.co.uk

Augmented Reality Game In Action, photo (c) Rick Harrison / fortybelowzero.com 2011

CheckIn CheckOff was an ambitious project which combined digital trickery with lesser-known parts of Leeds and aimed to show people the potential in both the under-appreciated parts of the world of technology, as well as of the city itself.

Four teams of six people needed smartphones, a basic mobile web knowledge, a QR code scanner and warm, practical clothing to take part.

Feature Media created an Augmented Reality game which started with team members holding markers up to cameras. The markers generated 3D spinning cubes onto which QR codes were displayed. The final step was to use smartphones to scan the ‘virtual’ QR codes and reveal the next clue in the game.

The technology worked perfectly and the teams absolutely loved it!

Feature Media were proud to be a part of this innovative and highly technical game combining mobile phone apps, QR codes, Augmented Reality and one of the spookiest venues in Leeds!

Think you can do better? Drop in and see us for a coffee. We might even have a prize for the best attempt….

As a company, we have supported the hospice throughout 2010, filming many of their events for their 20th anniversary year. We have grown to know the hospice and some of their staff really well and seen what a huge difference they make to the lives of people with terminal illnesses and their families and we wanted to do something more to help them.

Wakefield Hospice have a fantastic ‘Business Buddies’ scheme, which facilitates networking for all businesses that support them so we were part of the ‘Business Buddies’ crew- and a motely crew we all were!

Some fit; some not so fit; some old; some young and some hung over!

We were lined up with another boat crew and shown the ropes. Then we boarded. We got in a quick practice as we rowed to the starting line at one side of the lake and got ready to go….

When we got the signal, the Haiwii 50 music blasted out from speakers on the bank and we all rowed as quickly as our little arms would allow us to go and soon got into our stride. We did really well and won the first race, even if it was only by luck that we hadn’t capsized, with half the lake having been dug up by our oars and dumped all over who ever was sat behind us.

After early optimism, it was clear that those who had attended the event the previous year and had crew who knew each other well and were fully paid up members of a gym were the ones in with the best chance so we just sat on the bank with our families and enjoyed the sunshine our picnics and the company.

Fantastic day out and thank you to everyone who sponsored us. Check out Wakefield Hospice’s You tube channel for more events that you can get involved with:)

http://www.youtube.com/user/WakefieldHospice

http://www.annecy.org/annecy-2011/take-part/youtube-contest

Thanks again,
Andy and Georgina

Georgina says…

The theme was “Animation, land of freedom” so we thought what better way to reflect this than show the limitless ways that you can be creative with stop motion! We wanted it to be fun, energetic and most of all enjoyable to watch.

Here comes the grovelling bit… So for our animation to get through to the finals where the judges will cast their eyes over the top ten entrants and decide the winner we need to get as many votes as possible.

If you like our animation and would like to back us then you have from the 11th May- midnight 22nd May to vote. You can VOTE 1 VOTE PER VIDEO PER DAY, so that would be amazing if everyone could just click the green thumb in support of our animation every day for those dates.

Here is the all-important link:

http://www.youtube.com/annecyfestival

Scroll through the thumbnails or search for and ours is the one titled ‘hmm…’ with James looking up with lightbulb’s behind him! (see above pic to see exactly which one)

And SPREAD THE WORD! If you have enjoyed our animation then tell everyone you know, as it would be pretty great if we won.

Thank You!

Georgina and Andy

Not going to lie, I was not anticipating enjoying work experience. Not just the making tea and coffee ordeal, but I thought it was going to be quite a drag and I was pretty nervous for it all. Having never worked a day in my life, I had no idea what they were going to throw at me.

Tasks I never thought I could be trusted with were on my list to do at work. I got to see and take part in the experience of filming off and on-site all, from green screening to interviewing. Here is where I got to put my journalism skills to use, interviewing those who were being filmed and making them feel at ease. Then I got to observe and have a go at editing voice overs, cutaways and more. Of course, there was the other things like the few bits of business card inputting but hey, it wasn’t actually boring like you might believe.

What I’m trying to say here is that Feature Media have provided me with a long list of different experiences just from two weeks of working with the welcoming team. I would strongly recommend anyone else to do their work experience here if it’s their chosen line of work and would love to thank the whole team for offering me the opportunity of working at such a enjoyable, remarkable and professional company.

Emily Gibson, Age 14

Pudsey Grangefield, Maths & Computing College