Diving Into Video: What We Learned Year 1 and Changed Year 2 — WistiaFest 2017

Ryan VonBerger and Erica Hanna discuss the biggest mistakes most agencies are making with video as well as misconceptions video producers have about other agencies. As the creative director at Media Junction, VonBerger shares what they’ve learned doing video and the changes they’ve made to make their videos more effective.

In reality, although Media Junction was excited to jump into video, they realized video was a bigger time and money commitment than they anticipated. VonBerger and his team took a step back to develop a script writing process that eventually helped them to create and continually improve their video production. Soon after, they partnered with an outside production company to make their team video, but were left feeling like something was missing. Giving her input, Hanna told Media Junction things can technically look right, but not feel right because the heart was missing from their story.

This led to Hanna’s first misconception, which was to stop doing what everyone else is doing, and find your own story to tell. We always assume people want to steal everything from us. However, your secret sauce is your creativity, not your process.

Media Junction’s second mistake was forgetting who will be watching their video and what they care about. They learned better production value does not equal better video. Immersing yourself in the “why” before shooting one frame is crucial to reaching your audience.

They also faced problems finding qualified employees, creating a connection across the world, and explaining and simplifying a complex new idea. To create better connections, they found personalization and re-phrasing goes a long way. When trying to find ways to simplify complex ideas, get someone in the room who doesn’t understand the subject at hand to ask questions. These changes resulted in improved close rates on all growth-driven design proposals.

Watch VonBerger and Hanna’s presentation to learn all about what they learned and changes they made to their video process.