How to Write a Really Useful Video Production Brief
Did you know we retain, on average, 95% of a message when it’s watched on video, compared with 10% when we read it in text alone? (1) There’s no doubting video’s success as an engaging alternative to traditional media and as demand for video content continues to skyrocket it makes sense to engage a quality video production company to promote your services, products or concepts. Equally, as the expert in your business, there is key information you can share with your video production agency to ensure you achieve the most effective video possible. We take a look at how a useful creative brief for your video production sets the foundation for success and show how you can easily write one.
What To Include In Your Video Production Brief
Audience and Purpose
Why do you want to make the video? Do you want to promote your product, highlight your customer support, or demonstrate how you solve a problem that your customers experience? A well-defined purpose in your video production brief provides a clear vision of what the video has to achieve.
Who do you want to watch the video? Defining your target audience enables the video production team to create content that speaks directly to them. Consider your best customer: What are their demographics, behaviours, challenges and interests?
Objective and Background
What do you want the video to achieve in business terms? A clear objective enables the production team to understand what you want the video to achieve for your business, eg. increase sales of a particular product or increase traffic to your website.
What is the context for this video? How does the video link with your broader business and marketing goals? What does your company aim to achieve over the next year? How are you perceived by your customers? Providing this information in your video production brief will help to enable the production team to crystalise what particular type of video will help your business.
Key Message
This is your opportunity to engage with your audience and encourage them to respond. What is the one message you want viewers to take away having watched the video? What do you want viewers to do after watching the video? This could be a company brand statement or a message encouraging the viewer to learn more via your website.
How and Where Will The Video Be Watched?
List the different ways you will use the video and how your audience will watch it. The production style, video length and format will be determined by this information. A video for an Instagram feed post accessed by your customers via their smartphones will have a very different length and format to a launch video being shown on a big screen at a conference.
Tone and Styling
A consistent style and tone will connect your video with its purpose and your brand. Provide keywords in your video production brief that highlight your brand and the feeling you want to achieve from the video eg approachable, friendly, trustworthy, established. You may even have some visual examples that you want to use, which will better help to reflect the ideas you have in mind.
Mandatory Elements
Imagine you have just watched the completed video and it achieves exactly what you want. List the items this successful video must include: company logo, partner logo, brand statement or signature sound. Also, list items not to include, e.g. colours similar to competitors. Providing this information in your video production brief enables the production team to develop the correct structure and approach for your video.
Budget
It makes for a better experience for everyone if a budget amount is stipulated in the video production brief. It ensures everyone’s expectations are aligned and that the video production team can develop ideas that are effective and achievable.
Timeline
Communicate a clear deadline to ensure that your video is completed on time. Consider any constraints that may affect your deadline, for example, dates of key events you want to be filmed.
Choose A Quality Video Production Team
With the average person predicted to spend 100 minutes a day watching video content by 2021 (2), now is the time to engage with a quality video production team. At Clean Cut Media we excel in providing creative talent, high production values and the latest technology throughout your video production process. You know your business and what you want to achieve from your video. By providing a useful creative brief for your video you provide us with the information we need to create truly effective video content that will reflect the values of your business and help to engage with your target audiences.
To find out more, give us a call today 020 8973 0958 or alternatively, contact us here.
