Making videos for your business doesn’t have to be a lone venture. If you’ve got the vision, determination and time to put in to a project then you can definitely do it alone. However, working with other brands, industry professionals or local entrepreneurs can offer some great benefits to the process, as well as help make it a little easier on yourself. Here are a few plus points to making collaboration videos….
Increase creativity
Working within the confines of the same four walls can end up with stale ideas, or employees who are too quick to say no to new ideas. Working with other people in your field will open you up to new opportunities you didn’t think about before. Steve Jobs was well known for encouraging spontaneous collaborations between Pixar employees. He designed the building so that the staff had to pass through the main Atrium to go to the bathroom, meaning that different departments were forced to meet others face to face regularly, leading to partnerships and new ideas amongst employees who otherwise may never have existed. Say your business makes a lot of wedding stationary and decorations, you could collaborate with a local florist showcase what you can do together on a budget. You will no doubt find out more in depth knowledge about what trends are happening with wedding flowers which could inform your designs for your own company. You will certainly make new contacts and could recommend each other to new brides.
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Both parties benefit
If we’re looking at big brand collaborations, one of the best in recent years has been the relationship between Jamie Oliver and Sainsbury’s. Between 2000 and 2011 Oliver was the face of the well known supermarket brand, and although he was paid a sizeable cash fee for his appearance TV and radio advertising as well as in store promotional material, he gained other benefits too. The marketing campaign was a chance for him to showcase his likeability along with his recipes, some of which were available for free via Sainsbury’s. This of course just whetted the appetite for customers, who undoubtedly were sold on his brand and then bought several of his cook books which were on sale over that 11 year period. They may even have bought the book in Sainsbury’s, meaning everyone’s a winner. The supermarket benefited greatly from the partnership, in particular from the “feed your family for a fiver” promotion, which is said to have seen sales of featured lines leap by up to 200%. Obviously there was a serious amount of money injected into the campaign, but the principal that both parties mutually benefit remains clear.
Split the workload
The great thing about working in a team is that you can play to everyone’s strengths, and you might get to avoid doing some of the jobs you were dreading in your video production plan in favour of someone with more experience. You might find someone who is more comfortable in front of the camera. In return you could offer to spend time writing the script, finding props or looking for more extras to star in your video. Sometimes you will need to be the star of the show, but often another person will be able to sell your product even better than you. For example, a qualified hair dresser will be more confident and charismatic demonstrating hair styling techniques than the person who created the styling tools themselves. You might collaborate with a local salon and film the video on their premises, giving you a location, people to be in front of the camera and the start of a relationship where you could both benefit.
Here’s an example where a personal shopper teamed up with a local boutique to talk about styling scarves. This splits the workload because all the boutique had to do was supply the venue and the products, while the stylists could focus on creating looks for the camera.
