4 Surefire Ways to FINISH 2022 STRONG with 20/20 Visual Media!
Producer, Matt Allen, sits and interviews Dr. R. Scott Stephenson, President and CEO at the Museum of the American Revolution.
Well, it’s suddenly that time of year again when the kids are back to school, vacations are over and we start (or continue) to plan ahead for the remainder of the calendar year. If you’re like me, you look forward with optimism to holidays and the finishing of one year and new beginnings of the next. Providing my clients with the tools and materials they need to finish the year strong and start the next year on strong footing is what motivates me to get up each morning and hit the ground running. Although I always say that I might be biased, the last few years have proven just how valuable video assets are for any type of business.
Whether you’re using video for marketing, recruiting, fundraising, sales or education/instruction - video has the power to transform the viewers’ perspectives and be an experiential marketing tool. It engages the senses and, if done correctly, leaves the audience wanting more.
Looking back on the past several years (both pre-Covid and during the depths of the pandemic) here’s some of the ways that our clients have teamed up with 20/20 that we think you too can utilize to finish out the year strong:
1. Thank You/Holiday/New Year messaging
Year after year we get requests for holiday/end of year/new year content for businesses…in December… While it’s great to want to create content to get out there in front of your customers and prospects that puts a nice bow on the year or communicate gratitude for this past year or expectations for the new year, this is best done if you begin planning - now. Unless you want to spend more money on expedited productions and to feel the crunch to get things done and out before your audience makes their way on their holiday travels, it’s best to plan it out now and try and film sometime in November. This allows for the time to edit and deliver your content to you in time to distribute in early to mid December.
2. Create episodic content
During the “dead” of winter it’s not always the easiest to ignite that creative spark that shows off your best assets - nor is it great to capture if you’d like to see the beauty of exteriors of your locations. Use the next few months to film content that can bridge the gap between holiday communications and mid-March/April when more and more people come out from hibernation. Strategically planning your media production before year’s end can help your marketing, sales, learning and development teams to be ready to go as you start off 2023. Anything from testimonials to animation and everything in between can be filmed now and used as “evergreen” content during the winter doldrums.
3. Look at your “use it or lose it” budget
Many companies have set budgets that if not used fully is like Cinderella’s magic and goes poof at the stroke of midnight on December 31 or other ends of months (if your fiscal year is different than the calendar year). Think about what are some “nice to haves” that you have adequate time and bandwidth to be able to work with 20/20 to produce - even if it’s for something six to nine months down the road - to have in your arsenal of marketing/fundraising/outreach collateral. We’ve seen that getting ahead of the game on “nice to have” productions now before they become “need to haves” reduces your internal stress and limits last-minute videos. We have a few corporate clients who actually prefer to film in the final months and plan that post-production will happen in the early months of the new year.
4. Educational/Training content for your next year
Need to start from January 1st to implement educational/training content for your organization for accreditation or continuing education credits? Planning ahead you can work with us to scope out and film your next calendar year educational content so that it can be rolled out to your workforce or customers come January 1st. While this is probably the most aggressive to do in the remaining months of the year, it’s quite feasible that filming could take place in the next month or two and at least some of the training could be online and ready to go for your audience on the first of the year.
One word you heard a lot of in this blog is “plan.” It’s so vital to plan ahead so that you’re not up against a wall with pressing deadlines. If you plan ahead in these next few months you can get most of the hard work done now so that you can start 2023 off with strong materials to communicate best with your audience. Whether you’re in Philadelphia or other regions of the U.S. that we provide video production to, reach out to us today and we’d be happy to set up a time for a free consultation to understand your wants and needs and how we can best help you make the remainder of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 the best yet.
Ed Seiders
Director of Business Development
