Our top 5 ways to create video content remotely

It’s fair to say when it comes to video, nothing beats being on a film set. But the reality is there are certain times where you can’t… whether that’s due to budgets, timings, or because the world is self isolating and you’re having to work remotely!

So, we thought it would be useful to share a few tips on how you can still create quality video content, even in the most extreme situations:

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1. Encourage more user-generated content

Asking your team or customers to contribute footage to the film you’re making can be awesome for creating something that feels really authentic.

When it comes to sourcing the best footage, start by asking people to share content they’ve already shot on their phones or search for hashtags online and reach out to those creators to see if you can use their content.

If you’re looking for more specific shots, put together some clear instructions with example references you can share with people just to ensure the footage that comes back is usable! We’d also recommend a webinar style briefing session with all participants just to make sure any questions they have can be answered in one go.

This is exactly what we did with Lovecrafts and our Paintbox campaign and it worked a treat.

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2. Use your assets

“Repurposing” for repurposing’s sake is not something we encourage, but if you are really struggling to create anything new, we always encourage clients to look back into the assets we’ve created on set together and figure out how we can create something new out of what’s already there.

Grants did this really well with our above the line TVC campaign, taking the opportunity to use the ad to create more social content to bring into the new year.

Give something worth remembering. The gift of together. #TripleWoodTripleGood #GrantsWhisky pic.twitter.com/r2HqhelEUp

— Grant's Whisky (@Grantswhisky) November 14, 2019

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3. Take Stock

The dreaded word for any self righteous filmmaker, but actually in today’s world, leveraging stock to tell a story can be really effective.

We’re big fans of this for start ups who can’t necessarily afford everything being shot live and once you add a decent soundtrack, voiceover and any other bells and whistles, it can come out looking great. The key is to ensure the stock matches the tone of the message…for simple educational films, use sites that have huge asset libraries and a subscription model…

We’d recommend: https://www.videoblocks.com/

For a project that needs shots that are of a high quality, you may need to pay a premium for specific shots so use sites like: www.filmsupply.com which hosts content shot by cinematographers around the world.

Or if you are creating something comedic or more forgiving, we’d say own the cheese (like we did with Hiyacar) and look for old school shots and cartoon imagery that can be found on most cost effective sites.

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4. Let’s get animated

Probably the most obvious way to avoid live action shooting is creating an animation. To keep budgets and timings in line, remember it’s a two stage process… a storyboard is created and then these “still” assets are animated.

So make sure you’re really clear what you’re getting at the storyboard stage and avoid having to make changes after the animation starts! On the positives though, this can all be managed remotely…and if you have a script, VoiceOver artists can easily record remotely now too.

Here’s an example of this kind of project in play with Cambridge Audio:

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5. Hangout with your audience and/or team

Whether it’s Zoom, Skype or Google Hangouts, you have an opportunity to create some epic content out the endless meetings in your calendar. There’s an even greater opportunity to involve your customers/staff/fans who are also stuck at home and get them to record a message.

The best thing to do is send them a list of simple questions to answer so you can edit them together to be used in various ways - whether that be to generate written thought-leadership pieces on some of your challenges or even creating bitesize cutdowns to be used further down the line.

Check out this film made a while ago which we think shows the power of digital UGC very well:

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BONUS TIP: A Moving Image

One of the things we’ve been thinking about recently is how to re-think what a film can be - getting creative is all about how you can expand on the resource you have!

So consider the other elements you have at your disposal right now, whether that be through using audio, photography, titles and still graphics, or even combining all of these elements.

A great example of this is from one of our extended Mattr family, Director Miles Langley. We loved this brilliant film he created for International Women’s Day, where due to restrictions with availability of the participants, he cleverly combined photos and simple animation with some really personal voice recordings.

There are lots of other tips and tricks but hope that gives you a little bit of inspiration on your quest to create epic content whilst working remotely! If you have any questions on what you’re planning, feel free to get in touch and we’ll happily give you our two cents…

The top things that mattered to us in February

We’re back with our take on what’s happened during Feb that we think matters, and there’s been a lot going on in the world of purpose-led brands.

1) Ecover’s Laundry Against Landfill campaign

We’ve seen a huge momentum towards the end of last year of brands producing more impactful rallying cries - like this one we covered by Friends of the Earth last month. 

This month the spotlight was shone firmly on the huge amounts of material waste in the fashion industry, by Ecover’s Laundry Against Landfill campaign. We loved how their awareness piece is simply non-preachy yet effective, and how they’ve scaled the campaign to be multi touch-point, providing supplementary ‘how to’ guides on how to properly take care of our clothes on their site. 

Sara Mendez, Marketing Director at Ecover explained that  “with this campaign, we wanted to raise awareness of the problem of fashion waste. But also show people ways they can lessen their impact by falling back in love with the clothes they already own, keeping them in use, and out of landfill”.

2) Cans for Equity by BrewDog

It’s always interesting to see brands explore the ways they can attract and engage their superfans.

Look no further than what Brewdog have launched during Feb, with their Cans for Equity campaign - with the result being you can recycle 50 cans to become an ‘equity punk’ in Brewdog. 

This is such a great way to not just encourage behaviour change in the short-term, but also to show they care about their product at all stages through partnerships with First Mile to give their cans a second life. 

This initiative has created a more intimate perk for their superfans by feeling truly part of the brand, and we applaud it.

3) Sanctus’s campaign for Children’s Mental Health Week

This particular campaign is proof of how a creative can really thrive in the long-term. Sanctus, a brand providing mental health coaching businesses and individuals, decided to flip the script and create a film a couple of years ago on their socials for Children’s Mental Health Week. 

It made a comeback during the past month, and we wanted to highlight how much making this tonal switch on such a sensitive topic matters… it’s so great to see this from a brand with a more corporate audience. 

We spoke to George Bell, the brand and marketing lead at Sanctus who agrees that the power of the film also lies in the script. It’s comedic but authoritative on a subject when “all too often mental health is associated with images of someone sitting in a dark room clutching their head - this is, of course, part of mental health but it's not the full spectrum.”

“Although it's a couple of years old now, we still re-use it and still have a great response every time, which shows that it still remains uncommon for people to see mental health presented in this way.”

4) NHS x Notes to Strangers 

#notestonhs with @imalilo

411 Likes, 1 Comments - Andy Leek (@notestostrangers) on Instagram: "#notestonhs with @imalilo"

We’ve all seen these notes pop up around London over the years and one of our team is a huge fan, so we had put this in our highlight. 

Notes for Strangers started as an Instagram account by ex-creative Andy Leek, writing random notes on telephone boxes and bollards, spreading positivity and kindness where he noticed it’s severely lacking. 

This month we saw the launch of a collab with Notes to Strangers and the NHS, creating posters and notes for hospitals UK-wide to show support for nurses under severe stress. 

Hospitals tend to be a pretty bleak place and these notes are intended to spread positive messages at a time where political conversations are taking up much of the discourse around their work - it’s just a lovely thing to see.

5) ‘Meet the New Joby’ by Joby 

And finally in our roundup we wanted to include this really simple but effective repositioning campaign by Joby. If you don’t know who Joby are - they’re a tech brand that sells tripods for all different devices. 

We love how instead of putting their product front and centre, they hero their creators interacting with their product, weaving in UGC to add a mixed media element. 

It’s great to see Joby are exploring a new creative angle, becoming more experience-focused - so we’re looking forward to seeing their creative progression down the line!

Like what you’re seeing and want to create content that matters?

Email josh@mattr.media and let’s see what we can do...

BBB tips: sit down with your customer, use your mission to empower your colleagues & how to acknowledge your competitors

It’s a brand new decade - and what better way to start than to share learnings from the last Brand, Bitch & Brekkie roundtable to add to your list of OKR’s and personal goals for the year ;) 

In this edition, we delve into how to get your customer more involved in your brand journey, why being vulnerable with your colleague will build trust, how to approach bigger competitors in your comms and the holy trio of truths to abide when defining your purpose. 

Take the time to sit down with your customer

A couple of our attendees confessed to getting carried away with what they assumed their customers wanted from their brand, without actually having the data and proof to back it. They also confessed to relying on their analysis of social and digital engagement with their content, which can be easily subjective and interpreted differently from person to person.

Ultimately, meeting your customers face-to-face and eliminating screens is the answer. One marketer found that by bringing together people in small focus groups, they discovered unique audience quirks, commonality in things they worried about all of which the brand hadn’t considered based on digital data.

And if time is lacking, one top tip was to create a quarterly brand health checker to distribute to your community online. Ideally, the survey lists up to 10 questions to understand what your customers love at the moment, but also where they think your brand needs to be in the future. It’s this data that will help you get your comms to be working as efficiently as you need it to be.

Be more transparent to better your company culture

At Mattr, we’re always encouraging our clients to showcase their brand authentically in their external comms. But one of our guests raised a great point that it is just as important to be vulnerable and authentic when communicating internally too. 

We’ve seen that the start-up world is particularly prone to being an emotional rollercoaster, especially as many start up brands today may not be around tomorrow. The conversation around the future of your company is difficult to face, so being honest and transparent with your employees is vital to making sure everyone is fully on board and know how important their roles and responsibilities are to make the mission succeed. Our guest recommended “Radical candor” ( a book by Kim Scott) as a great tool to read when approaching difficult conversations.

Another great approach was to initiate monthly OKR’s to help track the progress of your specific role and responsibilities in terms of the bigger picture business goals. This is really rewarding for all involved and certainly something we’re embracing as a team in 2020.

Taking on bigger companies negatively in your comms isn’t always the way forward

For those who read our content regularly you’ll know we’re all about supporting the challenger brands who are changing the status quo. But doing this successfully in your comms doesn’t need to come from by attacking what’s come before. 

Your product might be disruptive, but displaying an ambushing attitude in your external comms makes your customers think you’re focused on beating the competition and not about addressing the bigger picture about what the future could look like. 

Instead, by empowering your audience to make a change in their habits and spinning a positive light on the future and respecting competitors who’ve come before you, you will earn more respect in the long term.

Know your human truth, organisation truth and sector truth  

This sentiment came from one of our guests who revealed that identifying these truths had helped them navigate a tricky organisation wide re-brand. 

To dissect this into three parts: 

Interrogating their human truth (essentially what their audience thought about them) helped them face their realities of how their products/services weren’t performing, and what they could do better, for their community directly.

Their organisation truth (focusing on what the needs of the internal departments are) opened up conversations with stakeholders at every level of the brand, to establish what needs to change to enable the business to do what it says on the tin. 

And using these two truths finally looking at their sector truth (the position of the brand within their industry vs the competition).

While their re-brand isn’t finished yet, revealing all of these hard-hitting facts and truths has helped break down the brand’s values and purpose into digestible goals for all internal stakeholders, not just the brand + marketing team.

Feel like these conversations relate to your challenges you’re facing at the moment, and want to get involved? 

Join us at our next Brand, Bitch & Brekkie roundtable in February. Email sunnii@mattr.media or call her on 07772343952 to book a place!