If you want fantastic video content that’s engaging and inspires action from your audience, it’s really important that you take the time to write an effective brief. Whether you’re creating your video in-house, or approaching an agency to create your video for you, a clear brief is essential to ensure everyone is on the same page and you get the perfect video for your campaign.
If commissioning and planning a video project is new to you it can be tricky to know where to start. In my experience, there are a few important points to think about to ensure you cover all bases in your planning.
1) Why video?
The first question should always be ‘why?’ when you start thinking about using video. Think about the purpose of your content and the goals you want achieved. For example, do you want increased traffic to your website? Encourage lead conversion? Are you using video as an effective training tool? Make sure you’re clear and confident about your objective and ensure you are able to measure it’s success once the video is live.
2) Who is your audience?
Who are you targeting with your video? Whether it’s employees, consumers or stakeholders you need to be sure of who you want to speak to so that you can tailor your video content to them. Make a list in as much detail as you can about your target audience. The better you know them and what response you want from them, the more relevant the video will be to them.
3) What’s your inspiration?
Spend a bit of time doing your research into what's already out there. There’s no harm in this and it will really help get your creative cogs going when visualising what you want in a video. Don’t just stick to your sector when having a look around. You can get inspiration from anything you have seen on TV or on the social media channels – just think about how it could work with your objective and goals.
I would never go as far as to say copy something shot for shot so it looks exactly the same, but taking elements out of a few different things you’ve seen can give inspiration for something that aligns to your business. It can make it easier to communicate your vision and style if you can bring up some examples to base an idea off too.
4) What do you want to say?
This one is a pretty obvious one, but while video is a really effective way of communicating with your audience, it can be really easy to lose your message in the ether if you have too much information flying around.
Stick to one core message and then build your information around that to give a fully rounded piece of communication that is easy to digest for your audience. Finish off with your Calls to Action and how they fit into your message.
5) Where will your video be shared?
There’s a couple of reasons why this is important to think about. It links back in to understanding your audience as mentioned above because you want to be showing your video where they will find it, but also where you share your video informs things like how long the video should be and if any Calls to Action are needed at the end of the video to direct your audience.
6) Do you have a budget?
It’s really useful to have a budget in mind. When discussing a video project, I’ll always ask what the budget is. I know it can be a little uncomfortable to talk about how much you’re prepared to spend, but being clear about this helps ensure I can give you value for money. The more guidance you can give on budget, the better advised you’ll be of what’s realistically possible within that figure.
7) What’s your deadline?
Just as important as budget is deadline. Videos take time to make. As a videographer I need to allocate enough time to storyboard and plan, go out and do the filming to ensure I have all the footage I need to make a great video that will fulfill your brief and once that’s done I’ll need time to edit too. Start the conversation for a video or animation as early as you can to ensure you’re getting the most out of it.
Once you’ve got all this down, we can start on all the good stuff - production process! Working with you to develop a creative idea, storyboarding and scripting. Remember, the more detail you can give in your brief, the more successful your video is likely to be.
Got a video idea you want to talk about? Get in touch.