Les Brown of American Business Airways, one of the newest students in our Marketing Master Class, pointed out that we didn’t include examples of an interview video in the course materials.

Will Rogers once said “It’s hard not to like a person if you know their story.” Tell the story of how you got into the business you’re in. What were the incidents and decisions along the way that brought you to where you are now? Companies sometimes have great stories, the people behind them always do. Tell your story to the camera as if you were telling a customer or colleague in your office. If that seems awkward, tell your story in an “interview” format.

For the record, we did include examples in many other categories, including:

  • Demonstrating products
  • Employee features
  • Contests/Fan Videos
  • Photo “Slide Shows”
  • Presentations/Explanations of Concepts
  • Software Tutorials
  • Facility Tours
  • Capitalizing on News Items
  • Humor

But interview videos do come in a wide variety of types and styles and can be very effective, so we should have included examples.

An excellent point on Les’ part, and an oversight on ours.

To rectify that, we’ll post what we SHOULD have included in the course materials here:

Things we liked about these and other examples:

  • The interviewer has obviously done his homework. In both cases, the interviewer apparently knows a lot about the person he’s interviewing, even though the subject does most of the talking.
  • The interviewer “looks like he belongs there.”  Each is wearing something similar to what the person he’s  interviewing is wearing. If you’re interviewing someone at a casual airshow, a polo shirt and khakis would be perfect. But if you’re interviewing a COO at a conference (as Shashank is doing in the second video) you know your subject will be dressed in a suit. You might even touch base with your subject when you schedule the interview to ensure you will be dressed in a similar way.
  • Use subtitles to summarize key points
  • Both use microphones to get good sound.
  • Both had apparently reviewed questions before hand. The interviews didn’t sound “rehearsed,” but the ease and polish of the answers indicate that there weren’t any surprise questions.
  • On the other side of that coin – both interviews were friendly, spontaneous and “human” – the interviewer followed up questions and sounded like they may have strayed a bit from prepared questions if one answer led to an interesting  topic.
  • It’s okay to interpose other (relevant) video in the final film. (I.E. when the Aviat rep was talking about the features of the aircraft, the video switched to the particular features he was mentioning.)  This is much more interesting than two “talking heads.”

Interview videos can be very powerful – and much easier and more natural to create than many other types of videos. They can be used in many ways for marketing purposes:

  • Interview a client about their experience with your product or service (or have a third party do the interviews.)
  • Interview your sales or customer service people about their approach and philosophy.
  • Interview your suppliers about why the parts they provide are superior to the competition.
  • Interview thought leaders in your industry about market trends or other information your customers would find interesting.
  • Interview clients who win a contest or free gift.
  • Interview people at a trade show  – ask (volunteers, of course!) to share their thoughts on a topic related to your product or service.

Thanks for setting us straight, Les!   (Our best ideas come from Master Class members!)

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