In order to achieve this, it’s important to understand the roles interviews can play in setting up the structure of your corporate video. Like all aspects of video production, having a great plan is critical. Deciding the tone and purpose of your interviews is no exception. In this article we will explore why interviews are so important to corporate videos and how to best utilize them in order to set your production up for success.
INTERVIEWS BRING PRODUCTS TO LIFE
Video provides visual context, but when you’re trying to inform your audience about something new and unknown, you often need more. Educating through the use of animation, graphics, and diagrams can be a great way to visualize a product or service. However, those methods lack a personal perspective. Interviews allow experts to explain and educate audiences about a product or service. They also touch on elements that can’t be reached through visuals alone.
Interviews are often seen (and heard) doing this in product videos. Historically, product videos were used to highlight a good you could hold in your hands. Now they have also grown to include things like apps, software or any service your company provides. Frequently, you’ll see them featured on company landing pages, YouTube channels, social media accounts. There they are used to launch a product and introduce the audience to something new.
Interviews are especially useful with products that are hard to understand at first, either because they are complicated or so new that people haven’t been exposed to something like them before. Reading a textbook can convey information, but seeing and hearing someone talk about the subject in an entertaining way can often make retaining and understanding the information simpler. The same is true for interviews in product videos. Listening to experts, employees and consumers talk about a product often adds a level of human touch that would otherwise be hard to replicate.
THEY BUILD TRUST WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
Video endorsements in commercials can risk coming off as disingenuous. Putting faith in the hands of actors to build the audience’s trust in a product requires a lot of faith. Luckily, in corporate videos, actors are often jettisoned for real people with real stories. Gaining the trust of the viewer begins with interviewing a subject that the audience can identify with.
In testimonial videos, your interview subjects are the heart and soul of the production. The goal in these videos is to remove the company who is trying to sell their services from the equation entirely, and allow happy consumers speak to people just like those watching. By interviewing real customers and allowing them to tell their story, testimonial interviews aim to connect with the audience on an emotional level.
Accomplishing this requires more than just choosing an interview subject that feels strongly a particular product or service. These interviews must feel authentic and genuine. Helping the customer deliver a heartfelt and compelling interview is a big reason that a professional production team can add a level of value to your project that is otherwise hard to obtain.
A relaxed and confident interview within a testimonial video can charge it with an authenticity that, if done right, will gain the viewers trust, and inspire them to action.
TIP: Preparation is vital in getting exceptional sound bites from your subject. Coming with bullet points and a script is the first step but listening to the subject and building a genuine conversational tone will make your testimonial video interview a memorable one.
INTERVIEWS CAPTURE THE MOMENT
Whether your company is throwing an event for its employees, using your office space to host a panel of speakers or holding a launch party, corporate events are special occasions. It takes a lot of time, money and energy to plan and throw these events, so more and more often companies are choosing to document them with video.
Interviews in event videos play a critical and double role. They allow those who were not in attendance to feel as though they were part of the action by hearing from those who were in attendance, and help the attendees relive the emotions they felt while they were there. Capturing that moment in time for all parties is a great way to cement a great event in everyone’s memories.
Having sponsors, attendees, hosts or speakers of the event on camera allows everyone to tap into the emotion that was being felt that week, day and moment. Even if you attended the event, it’s great to hear how others’ experiences may have been different than your own and is often a great marketing tool for future events and a way to approach potential speakers and sponsors in the future.
In the long run, attendee interviews play well for social media stories; while, the more substantial interviews with the faces of the company are conducted as more formal pieces. A great corporate event coverage video interview manages to speak on the event with authority, and to a corporate video, that can make a powerful difference. A production crew can leave a minimal footprint filming interviews at your event but can provide an immense value to your corporate event video.
THEY HUMANIZE A COMPANY
Delivering facts is important. But far too often companies only focus on the technical aspects of what they do and forget to highlight the human element of who they are and why they do what they do. Stats about how many sales you’ve made, where you stand in the marketplace and the benefits you often are all important, but the stories of your employees and company culture can often be more effective for attracting clients and talent. The best way to do this is with interviews.
Once example of these kinds of interviews can be seen in corporate recruitment videos. These videos are used to help attract the best talent to your team as the fight for exceptional staff becomes more and more competitive. Employees today are looking for more than just a place who will write them a paycheck. They are searching for a place they can grow, feel at home and find the ever-elusive work life balance that they crave.
Interviews in recruitment videos are critical, because they can be conducted with anyone at the company from the CEO to the latest hire. By hearing from the employees who were once in their shoes, it gives a potential employee a brief window into their own future. When done well, a recruitment video interview will feel like asking a friend’s opinion on why working for a company has been good for them, and if they think you should sign up too.
TIP: When planning these interviews, it’s good to think about not only the company culture and perks, but also the passion employees have for their jobs. Talented people want to share their days with employees who feel as strongly for the work as they do. Telling these stories can often help people envision the kinds of people they will be surrounded with if they decide to work there.
VIDEO INTERVIEWS TELL STORIES
As we see across all platforms these days, especially on digital, story is king. Audiences want to feel an emotional connection with the brands and companies they use. Even if they don’t entirely know why, people are more likely to pay attention to a message if it is being presented through the lens of a compelling story.
There are two great ways to accomplish this. The first is to hear directly from the people who started a business and learn the big picture of why they do what they do and who they set out to help in the process. The other way is to speak to a specific instance of how they helped someone or a group of people. That one story can serve as an example for the overall goals of the company as a whole.
The best way to get to the heart of these stories quickly is, you guessed it, interviews. Being able to read the emotion on someone’s face as they talk about how important their work is cannot be replicated through any other medium. In the end, people want to see and hear first-hand how the company was built. Letting the voices of those who built it share their stories is the most compelling way to relate to the audience.
CORPORATE VIDEO: DRIVEN BY INTERVIEWS
It’s hard to imagine a corporate video without interviews. That’s probably because when it comes down to it, corporate videos are about highlighting people and the work that they’re proud of. Whether sitting down with a CEO at a corporate event, or interviewing a software engineer about their latest system, one thing remains the same: the voice of the subject is at the video’s core.
Seeing and hearing the excitement come across the face of someone that’s passionately speaking about something they love to do is a special experience. Allowing the voice from that interview to come to life and inspire viewers often yields amazing results, and video content that will carry a lasting impact.
It should be obvious by now that while interviews fall into different categories, they do not have to live entirely within those boxes. It’s important to distinguish your main goals when planning your corporate video project. But the best interviews are able to achieve more than one of the stated roles seen above.
The most important thing when setting out to create great video interviews for your business or event is to speak from the heart and be yourself. When you accomplish those two things, the rest will fall into place more easily.
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