A video production brief is a summary of what you want to achieve with the video. A one page document that covers what it is you are looking for and what needs to be delivered. The more detail you can provide at this stage the better.
The first step to achieving high quality video content is to make sure you’ve gathered all the information and armed your production company with a detailed brief so they can begin to understand and answer your needs. A question we’re often asked by prospective clients is – What do you want to know? The answer is – Everything! In reality, the more information we have available to us, the more quickly and efficiently we can achieve your objectives.
So what is it exactly that a production company needs to know? Let’s break it down.
Tell us about your brand
Set the scene. How would you describe your brand? What is your brand culture? Your brand tone of voice? What is your mission as a company? Here we want to understand the background of the brand (not specifically the project) and therefore your brand values and what it stands for. All of this drives the way you conduct your business and how you communicate and therefore should drive the content that you create with us.
Tell us about your project objectives
Are you looking to improve brand awareness? Perhaps you want to boost sales of a particular product? Are you looking to establish your brand as thought leaders? Whatever it may be, try and distill these objectives into singular focused sentences that you and your Production partner can revert back to regularly to ensure that every decision made will move your project forward to reach this goal.
What’s your budget?
This might seem like a difficult question to answer and your initial reaction might be to respond with your own question – Well, what does it cost? and that is understandable, but doesn’t help move things forward. The reason it’s useful to have a budget in mind is it will immediately give us an indication of what will be feasible in terms of video production and therefore we won’t waste your time (or ours) coming back to you with proposals and budgets that would never be achievable.
Who is your audience
Understanding your audience is vital to ensure you tailor your output to suit how they consume video content. Creating a picture or avatar of that person is really helpful. The key things you needs to detail in your video brief are:
- Who do you want to view your video?
- How much understanding will they already have of your product/service/brand?
- What do you want them to feel when they watch your video?
- What do you want them to do when they’ve watched your video?
What platforms will you use to distribute your video
Not only may the answer to this impact the content that you should capture but it will also inform exactly how your final files will be delivered. For example YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn videos will all need different file formats and frame sizes. They’ll also likely want different end messaging or call to actions.
Give us some background
Sometimes the smallest detail can unlock a brief and providing the context to video is vital. Where does it sit within your wider marketing or sales campaign? Have you produced similar videos before that have performed well in the past. Providing examples of videos you really like or really don’t is very helpful too.
Show us your brand guidelines
Are there different versions of your logo? What is your colour palette? Do you have a brand tone of voice already established and a brand culture that we should communicate? Your logos, colour pallets, fonts and image treatment are key tools that drive brand recognition so don’t forget to impart this important knowledge upfront.
Whatever the project we can guide you to establish a clear brief and ultimately a successful project plan. Get in touch and let’s start that discussion.
