How many megapixels is that camera?
In terms of ‘production value’, this is the lowest quality video we’ve made in years. The cameras are shaky, the angles weird, the colours don’t match the audio is all over the place.
But who cares?
But we love it! https://vimeo.com/108328728
Real people, authentic stories
This clip works because it’s about people who genuinely love Wordcamp. Why make a slick commercial when you have this going on for your brand?
Video production value – does it matter?
People in our industry can get a bit carried away with focussing on making really slick looking video, but does that mean the content is effective? Video production value is important in many contexts, but there’s no substitute for showing a community of people who love your brand. That’s when you really start cooking with gas.
Trust is about what the notes we don’t play
Miles Davis once said that jazz is about the notes you don’t play. Communication around building trust is not about more information: that will just overwhelm our audience.
How we decide who to trust
The people we want to connect with make decisions about who they trust based on what seems to be very little information: a short story, a few non verbal and visual cues. How does that work?
Thin Slicing
Thin slicing is the ability to find patterns in events based only on “thin slices,” or narrow windows, of experience. Studies have shown that brief observations can be used to assess outcomes, at levels higher than expected by chance. 
How this applies to video
An interesting aspect of visual content is that we are surprisingly good at assessing someone’s skill level and intelligence. The research is mind boggling; humans can fairly accurately assess someone’s intelligence and personality just by looking at someone’s photo. We’re not describing prejudice here; this is measurable and the experiments have been repeated with similar results.
People behind the brand
We can use thin slicing and our ability to assess personality by communicating around the people behind brands. Staff profile videos are a great application of this; a 20-30 second video will give our viewers enough information to assess whether they’re a good fit with your culture and values. https://vimeo.com/99794385
Authenticity – you can’t control the outcome
To stick with the jazz analogy; if you write out the whole composition, it stops being jazz. Staff profiles can backfire if they’re overly scripted and contrived. If you do profile videos, you have to allow for variation and deviation. As long as you everyone on board on values and your brand essence, diversity of delivery and opinion will only further strengthen your brand and the communication of purpose. https://vimeo.com/102607249
LinkedIn profile videos
Once you have the staff profile videos in place, you can greatly improve the impact you have by adding them to everyone’s LinkedIn profile. Here’s a tutorial on how to add a video to your LinkedIn profile.
