In today’s fast moving commercial world, a great marketing channel for B2B and B2C products and services, is the art of videography, bringing customers into your world and communicating key messages wherever they may choose to watch it!
The key for the best video is the briefing content and to start this process is often a daunting and complicated process.
Here I have tried to break down the most important information you need to get into an initial video brief, for your video agency or as a starting point for your script:
| Project Name | What’s the name of your video project? |
| Client/Department (if not yourself!) | Who is the video being produced for? |
| Number of videos | Are you looking for one main video, a few in a short series? |
| Total length of animation in minutes | How much animation you are looking to produce to the nearest 30 seconds? As a guide, a script of 150 words will equal around 1 minute of animation. |
| Project Deadline | When do you need your video completed by? |
| What is the purpose of the video? | What will this video do for you? Explain your business, increase website engagement, increase sales? |
| Who are the target audiences? | Every video needs to be targeted correctly at your ideal audience. Provide some details here of who your audience is. |
| What are the key messages? | What are the main messages that you want to convey to your target audience? Is there one key message, or a few smaller ones? |
| What do you want viewers to do after watching the video? (Call to Action) | When viewers have finished watching your video, do you want them to take any immediate action? |
| Where will the video be hosted/displayed? | Will you upload the video to YouTube or other video hosting, then put it on your website, or social media, or use at offline events and presentations? |
| How will you measure the success of this video? | Measuring the success of a video can be tricky. Do you have a good idea of how you will determine how successful your video is? |
| What do you want the tone to be? | Videos can be funny, serious, casual or informative, or anything else you like really. What tone best suits your video and message? |
| Do you have any requirements for how the script will be structured? | Do you want to get the message across in a certain way? Use case studies or testimonials, tell a character story, use facts and statistics? |
| Do you have any requirements for the visuals? | Visuals can be cartoony or more realistic, full character scenes or mostly symbols and icons. |
| Do you have any requirements for the voiceover? | If you need a voiceover for your video? Does it have to be male or female, young or old, or have a particular accent? Will you produce the voiceover or need it supplying? |
| Do you have any requirements for the music? | Is there a style of music that you want in particular? |
| Provide links to any brand guidelines or other marketing material that we should familiarise ourselves with. | Believe it or not, whiteboard animations can be quite well aligned to your brand guidelines, if necessary. It is a great idea here to supply a copy of your branding guidelines (fonts, colours etc). |
| Provide any examples of videos that you like. | It is also a good idea here to send links of any videos you like or don’t like. |
Once you have completed this brief, you should then be able to begin working with your agency or internal colleagues to put together the script for your video.
Happy writing!
LAB Marketing 