Lush Digital’s senior producer, Ian Bignell, joins James and Nic to dissect the Department of Finance’s “Game Changers” video — which has gone viral for all the wrong reasons. Where did they go wrong? And how do you ensure your corporate video delivers for you and doesn’t turn you into a laughing-stock?

Here are the links you might need:

• • Watch the now famous “Game Changers” video, here.
  • And here’s that blog post James mentioned which suggests “not trying to be cooler than you are”.

Here are some key take-outs:

• • • Don’t try to get real people to act. Get them to tell their story naturally, by interviewing them, instead.
    • If there’s any moment in your video that people aren’t going to find believable, the audience is going to turn off.
    • If you’re in the process of making a video and it doesn’t feel “right”, stop and start again with a new creative idea.
    • Don’t cram your script with obvious key messages.
    • The client wants the best product they can get for their budget, but the video production company needs to be honest about what is likely to work.
    • Clients should always ask any video production company (or marketing/advertising agency) for examples of their work before engaging them.
    • Brief your video production partner about what you want to achieve.

On My Desk

• • • • Nic’s recommendation was Intelligent Editing’s PerfectIt software.
      • Ian’s recommendation was Vimeo’s Staff Picks.
      • And James foreshadowed next week’s discussion about the bizarre PR disaster that one Australian brewery found itself in.

Have you heard the one about…

Recently the Brand Newsroom team looked at how to break bad news well.

And here’s a discussion about how to SnapChat for business.

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