Video: Making the Most of Events

As technology becomes cheaper and the internet easier to access regardless of your location, people are now able to capture professional quality video and use it to promote their business.

Why should I use video at an event?

One of the main reasons to use video at an event is to build hype on the day, capturing and showcasing what it’s about in a creative way. Video is also useful for attracting the interest of people who couldn’t attend or those who weren’t quite sure about attending and convincing them to come to future events.

You might think this isn’t necessary as it doesn’t bring people to the event, but it’s simply another way of promoting your brand or organisation and the key messages you want to get across to your target audience. News releases, for example, allow pre-event hype to build as they can potentially reach a mass audience and give legitimacy to the event by being featured in the relevant media online and offline.

It’s also a good idea to issue a post-event news release that covers what happened on the day. Again, this is another way of promoting similar events and helps build positive sentiment around the hosts of the event. If a great story comes out, it’s linked to that company.

Video gives life to that story in a way that a news release or photography can’t. It’s also more flexible, allowing many short pieces to be created and published as well as more creative long-form pieces. These videos can be shared online and even used as paid advertising.

What kind of videos should I use?

Many people are familiar with Facebook Live or Instagram Stories. These can be great for certain things, such as live award ceremonies but for other events it is better to use clean, professionally produced videos. As an agency we do both, making sure the approach we use fits the client we are working with.

In many cases it is about featuring key stakeholders and local figures such as heads of businesses, well known names and even celebrities. All this presence adds to the brand by nature of association. It also helps build confidence and relationships with the stakeholders as they will feel more valued.

Good and bad choices?

The choices you make about how you approach event videos will determine how well they are received. Some poor examples would be CCTV-style footage that live streams crowds walking around. It may seem novel, but it says nothing and doesn’t make viewers feel anything. The same goes for videos that just wonder around an event.

These kinds of approaches are promoted under the assumption of “authenticity” but that is not the same as a good story or a well-crafted creative video. The two are not comparable in their effectiveness.

That is not to say you can’t capture random activity, but you must make sure the video is smooth, clean, high quality and not shakey. It should be edited properly to create the desired emotional response. A sports event would need fast cuts, great cinematography and a strong backing music track. Other events, such as a charity event would be quite different in tone, more reflective and emotional with longer pauses and more focus on the people involved.

The single most effective and efficient choice you can make with your events is to shoot more than you need. There is nothing worse than not shooting enough as you can’t simply go back and do it again. Editing can only do so much but with lots of footage, flexibility is greater, and an appropriate style can be created more easily.

Taste Lincolnshire Launch

We recently worked with Visit Lincoln to launch Taste Lincolnshire at the Lincolnshire Show. We built initial hype around the event with a pre-event news release in local news and trade media online and offline. We then supported the launch on the day by filming interviews with key figures and capturing the launch itself on video. The end results were several short interviews in both horizontal and vertical formats and a longer piece for use on social media.

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