BizView Blog

The Making of our Christmas Exclusive, Son of Santa 2

2010-12-14T22:20:00.001Z

When we set out for Lapland, cameraman Matt and I were not very confident of what we were going to achieve and thought it might all be a gigantic waste of time and money. Our target was clear enough, an exclusive interview with the infamous “Son of Santa”, Nick Clouse Jnr. But finding the target, let alone hitting it was not going to be easy. We’d met Mr Clouse before of course, a year earlier just after he inherited what was then The Crimble Corporation from his much more famous, white bearded father. He had just announced the controversial re-branding of his Dad’s incredibly successful company as HO₃ to a rather shocked business world. We were granted access for a rare interview which unfortunately ended rather badly as Clouse stormed out after some fairly robust questioning of his employment policies.

So this time we were looking to get behind the corporate facade, to find the man behind the CEO and see if he would open up for us in the comfort of his northern lair.

The trip started badly with awful weather delaying our flights. When we did finally touchdown in Lapland, there wasn’t a taxi driver at the airport prepared to take us to the Clouse Homestead. Phrases like “North of the Arctic Circle at this time of night, you must be joking!” being typical of the responses we were getting. Eventually we found a minicab driver skulking around the back of departures who was prepared to drive us across the frozen tundra to the strangely named Grotto de Santa where Clouse was said to live.

When we arrived everything started to look much better. Instead of the expected re-buff from muscular security Elves, we were actually met by the beautiful Christella Bauble, who turned out to be HO₃’s new Director of Communications. She seemed to know we were coming and welcomed us like long lost sons rather than a scoop hungry news crew. She invited us into the inner sanctum of Grotto de Santa and guided us to what we soon realised was one of Nick Clouse Jnr’s many private sitting rooms. We were given carte blanche to set up our gear as we wanted, so we quickly rigged the lights, cameras and sound for what we could hardly bring ourselves to believe would be an exclusive interview with the man himself.

Above - The Result of all our Efforts

But sure enough, half an hour after we arrived, Nick Clouse Jnr strolled in looking relaxed and comfortable in his trademark red jersey and corduroy slacks. He greeted us like old friends, as if our last bad tempered encounter had never happened. Soon we were sitting in front of his welcoming log fire, the cameras were rolling and we were chatting amiably about his plans for the company.

Of course, it was all too easy and I should have been suspicious of the presence of Christella Bauble, hovering nervously in the background with her clipboard, and the fact that Clouse would not remove his earpiece should have alerted me to the highly controlled nature of this encounter, however natural and relaxed it may have seemed. This exclusive access, like most such encounters, was a double edged sword. Yes, we got the interview we so desired, but it was all very cleverly controlled by the brilliant Ms Bauble, so that we only got exactly what she and the company wanted us to hear. Of course we got our exclusive – the sensational news about HO₃’s plans for Christmas, but we were, if I’m honest, seduced by the mulled wine, and softly burning logs in the fire place, and were in reality, merely a vehicle for Mr Clouse’s formidable communications machine.

Giffords Circus Returns

2010-03-16T13:22:00.000Z

Great News: GIFFORDS CIRCUS have announced their 2010 tour dates. If you haven't experienced Giffords Circus yet, then please book now for probably the best live entertainment you will ever experience. Giffords Circus is an intoxicating mixture of old fashioned comedy, talent, inventiveness and costumed glamour. Delivered with panache and solid professionalism, you will leave the circus with a new zest for life and a realisation that the world is not grey, it is a technicolour wonder full of extraordinary people. Adding to the visual feast is a live band that uses acoustic instruments to create a fabulous and exciting sound track, complementing the wonder that is Giffords Circus perfectly. Don't miss it!

Web Video – Can I have one of those please? (Part 3 of 3)

2010-02-10T14:44:00.000Z

What Sort of Video?

There are many types of video and deciding what sort to choose can seem daunting. You can, for instance, pay someone to script a little drama for you, but beware, these playlets often end up looking indescribably naff unless you can afford real TV writers and good professional actors. Or you can produce the traditional corporate promo and wow them with a sales pitch, caress them with that cheesy music, impress them with special effects. However, this is exactly the sort of approach that so often fails the “So What!” test. Alternatively you can make a little documentary – This is a simple (and therefore less expensive) approach but can be extremely effective. This involves Interviewing the key players, the stakeholders – the Widget people, the designer, the project manager, the existing customer and letting them tell the story, in their own un-scripted words. A good interviewer will get the best out of people and the producer (often the same person) will be able to edit all this together in a way that tells your story with a beginning middle and end. It can still be short – you can get a lot of information across very quickly using this approach. (you can always link to a longer version elsewhere if you really want to tell a more in depth story).

How Much? If you ask most producers how much to make a video they’ll say “how long is a piece of string”. Cost is a notoriously elastic concept in the world of arty farty film production. But it doesn’t have to be. If you have a clear idea of what it is you want, then any production company worth its salt will be able to produce a budget that you can all stick to. You can make professional video for around £500 or you can easily pay £50,000. It really depends on the style and scope of the project – a multi location shoot with writers and actors could costs tens of thousands of pounds, a 5 minute documentary can be achieved for less than £2000 and still look thoroughly professional.

Why are we doing this?

What is the real value of video on the web? Well it beats reading for most web surfers, it keeps people on your site much longer and it can be an extremely efficient way of conveying information in a compelling and memorable form. Google also loves video, so it helps to make your site easier to find. But remember, content is king, you must tell a story and you must do it in a way appropriate to your audience. If you and your video producers are clear about this you shouldn’t go far wrong.

To Download the complete article go to www.bizview.tv/articles

Hotel Rip Off Or Reasonable Charge

2010-01-26T13:01:00.000Z

I met a prospect this morning for a casual chat over a coffee at a country house hotel near the M4. Upon arrival the hotel informed us that because it was a business meeting they would charge us £10 plus the cost of the coffee (£2.50 a cup) to sit in their public lounge and chat. They justified this charge on the basis that lots of business people came in with laptops and used their wifi. We left immediately and had our meeting at Costa Coffee at the Leigh Delamere services instead. Is it just me, or is this self-defeating nonsense? I can think of no better way of pissing off potential customers than this. I would have thought hotels would want to encourage foot fall and casual visitors. Instead they now have two annoyed business people who will never go there again and may talk about it on social media sites like this one. What do you think? Should I name and shame or is this fair enough?

Web Video – Can I have one of those please? (Part 2 of 3)

2010-01-25T14:30:00.000Z

How To Commission a Video

Assuming you are sure about your message and your target audience then you have to decide if you’re going to do it in-house or use professionals. Here’s my very best tip – USE PROFESSIONALS!!! Now there’s a lot of “amateur” video out there, it’s the backbone of Youtube and many companies have used John’s brother in law with his handycam to produce a video (well he did a good job at Bob and Vera’a wedding didn’t he?) But my advice is this: Unless you have a really compelling reason for your video to look and sound appalling (in other words the shaky camera work, bad lighting and awful audio is somehow part of your message) then please don’t let Jim from accounts anywhere near it with his camcorder. Amateur video will damage your brand and make people think you couldn’t be bothered. It is usually worse than not having video at all.

Find the Right Production Company

There are loads of us out there just desperate to take your money and turn it into the next youtube megahit. A quick Google search will reveal just how many. But ask around your network, find out if anyone has been down this road before you, and once you have a few names, look at their websites and most importantly, watch examples of their work. If there is nothing on-line to watch then my advice is to surf away as quickly as possible. You want a company that understands web video, so if they haven’t bothered to put any video on-line then it’s a fair bet they don’t. Try and watch a real client video not a compilation show reel. Ask yourself the all important “So What?” question, bearing in mind you’re probably not the target audience. And be honest – does the video effectively communicate an idea or is it simply a sunset and cheesy music fest? This will give you a very good idea of the sort of outfit you are dealing with and whether they understand the importance of content and storytelling. Once you’ve made the film you then have to get it on to the web. With a good production company this should be easy as they will do it for you as part of the package. The video can and should be hosted by them, so you can easily embed it on your site and they deal with all the issues around streaming and storage. If they don’t do hosting then you may be stuck with Youtube or something similar which frankly is not good enough if you’ve just spent money on a professional production.

In the third and final part we’ll be looking at what sort of video you could make and how much it might cost.

To download the complete article click here.

Web Video: Can I Have One of Those Please? (Part 1 of 3)

2010-01-13T00:40:00.000Z

You can’t have failed to notice that the web is now bursting with video content. I’m not just talking about those surfing dogs and clips from the X factor that populate Youtube, or even the fact that you can now watch virtually any TV show when you like on your computer. No, what I’m talking about is the stuff that’s increasingly appearing on your customers and your suppliers websites, maybe even your own organisation’s site; the corporate video, the product promo, the customer testimonial or whatever other video incarnation you’ve stumbled across. So what if you’re faced with the task of researching, reporting on, or perhaps even commissioning a video for your organisation’s website – what will you do, where do you start and who or what are you going to put in it? Over the following series of 3 blogs we offer a brief guide to how to get your corporate video made and how to get it on-line. Let’s start at the very beginning Videos get made for all sorts of reasons and most of those reasons are wrong. For any organisation there really is only 1 good reason to make a video. Communication. That’s it. No hidden agendas, no complicated business or marketing theories – the only reason you could possibly want to spend time and/or money on a video is to find a better way to communicate with other people. And to do this your video simply has to tell a story, with a beginning, middle and end – in other words it has to have effective narrative content. Does it Pass the test? Before you try to produce a video you need to have a very clear idea of the message you’re trying to communicate and who are you trying to communicate that message to. These points really are fundamental and they are regularly ignored by most video producers. I know this because most web video fails a crucial and time honoured test. Namely, the highly respected and fearsome “So What?” test. This is the one great test that all communication (not just video) must pass with the intended audience. It goes like this: When you’ve watched the video, read the article, listened to the concert, attended the seminar, stared at the painting – you simply ask yourself the question “So What?” If the answer is “dunno” or worse “I don’t care”, then the message has failed, at least for you. Of course it may have worked brilliantly for someone else, and that’s fine, but it must work for somebody and preferably the person or people it was aimed at in the first place. In Part 2 we consider how to commission a video and how to find the right production company.... To download the complete article Click here.

Why Music on Business Web Video is a Bad Idea

2009-12-16T11:12:00.000Z

The mistake that many web-based video productions make, is assuming that because music works so beautifully on film and television (and yes in commercials too) where it enhances the drama, deepens the emotion and generally transports us to un-dreamt of worlds (because it’s all about entertaining us) that by copying this formula to the web – the same dramatic results will occur to their sales figures. It seldom works. If somebody wants entertainment on the web they can use the BBC iPlayer or YouTube. If they come to your business website – they are not there to be entertained, they are there to learn about your product or service and unless your product or service is actually music or music related then using it (especially the cheesy library music on most web video) is annoying and disingenuous. Video can and does work brilliantly on the web – but don’t confuse corporate messages with award winning drama – they are different beasts entirely and music, most of the time, is entirely inappropriate for the business website video.

This is an extract. To download the full article click here

A Christmas Video

2009-12-07T18:22:00.000Z

Here's a little something we all need to see - the video they tried to ban....

The Caravan - 500th performance opens in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire

2009-10-03T10:46:00.000+01:00

You’re never going to be bored at a performance of The Caravan (Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury Fri 2nd Oct to Wed 7th Oct then Canterbury Festival Wed 21 Oct to Sat 24 Oct 2009) For one thing, at around 30 minutes, it doesn’t last long enough, but more importantly you are experiencing a piece of genuinely innovative theatre that keeps you spellbound for every one of those 30 minutes. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, the whole thing takes place inside a caravan in which you most certainly could not hope to swing a cat. In fact, so small is the performance space that by the time the full audience of 8 people (yes 8) is crammed in to one end and the four actors are literally nose to nose with you, a whole new meaning is given to the word intimacy. But that is exactly the point of The Caravan, a startling piece of documentary theatre from the Look Left Look Right company. The inspiration for The Caravan are the floods of summer 2007, that devastated large parts of the UK, and the stories of the thousands of real people that were left homeless by the deluge. Many of them ended up living in Caravans and this play uses their words verbatim, gathered in interviews conducted by the producers during research for the play. The Caravan was first performed to great acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival of 2008 then sold out at the Royal Court in London before going on this tour around England including visits to many of the flood affected areas. This was the opening night in Tewkesbury, a town that itself was ravaged by the floods of 2007. It was also the 500th performance of a show that the excellent cast must perform 5 times an evening to a maximum of 40 people a night. As with all good theatre the mood of the piece swings from amusement to pathos to exasperation and very effectively takes the miniscule audience with it. All the performances were excellent and it didn’t take long to believe that these actors were the real victims of the flood. This play strongly resembles a TV documentary without the camera and TV screen between you and the subjects. In fact there's virtually nothing between you and the characters apart from a few inches of stale caravan air. Like all good documentaries it weaves the narrative and the issues by jumping deftly between the victims contrasting stories. In the end the setting of The Caravan in a caravan is merely a device – the real meaning of this play is in the words – real words spoken by real people.

Web TV and Quilting

2009-05-19T12:31:00.000+01:00

I've recently been privileged enough to enter the world of patchwork, quilting and textile art thanks to some very nice people who are setting up a new website called Justhands-on.tv. The site is still at the pilot stage but should launch officially around July 2009, and will be offering the vast numbers of quilters and textile artists out there a valuable new on line video resource. Here at BizView.tv we're delighted to have been appointed as the producers of much of this material and as a result found ourselves last week, filming at Quilts UK '09 at the 3 Counties Showground near beautiful Malvern. Not only did we see at first hand the stunning beauty of the quilts on show, but we were also lucky enough to meet many of the ladies (and it is mostly ladies) involved in this difficult and highly skilled process. If you are part of this world then you don't need me to tell you how amazing some of this stuff is, but if you're a quilting virgin like me, then make a start by checking out our friends at http://www.justhands-on.tv/. The picture above is of Justhands-on founder Valerie Nesbitt and myself at Quilts UK '09.

Video Marketing

2009-05-06T12:22:00.001+01:00

I received an e-mail today offering some advice about on-line marketing. One of the suggestions, which of course as a video producer I was delighted to see, was to use more video on the web. However, where I felt less inclined to agree was in the suggestion that "With a digital camera, it is easy to shoot, edit and upload the content". On the face of it this statement is true - cameras are cheap and readily available, editing software is also easy to install and use, and anyone can upload a video to Youtube, Vimeo or other such sites. However, this is not the whole story. It's a big mistake to just use video for the sake of it. Like all creative content, the more thought and effort that goes into the process, the more watchable the outcome. The same with technical quality - anyone can point a camera and edit a simple sequence but it takes experience and patience to create that broadcast style professional look. If you go down the point and shoot, amateur route, you run a serious risk of damaging or undermining your brand's hard won professional image by associating it with very obviously homemade video. There are circumstances where user generated content can work, but for most businesses it's a serious mistake to attempt the DIY approach with video marketing. Please, at least talk to a professional and get some advice, even if you don't end up using them.

Empathy Training

2009-04-20T15:34:00.000+01:00

We discovered a very interesting training method the other day. It's called "Empathy" training and it basically teaches you to treat people (your potential customers, fellow workers, associates etc) in a way that they will respond well to. In other words to be empathetic towards them. The technique introduces you to about 6 or 7 basic personality types, of which we are all a combination, so that when dealing with someone in person or over the phone, you can form a judgement as to the way you should treat them to get the most positive response. It's a fascinating idea, and one that many skilled salespeople, for example, will already use unconsciously. As a professional interviewer I think it's something I have unknowingly developed over many years in order to do my job properly, but I'm very keen to attend a course and refine and develop the ideas further. If you want to know more then check out the film we made for the Empathy Training Company at http://www.bizview.tv/examples/bv081-empathy.php

Becoming an Exhibitor

2009-03-19T13:56:00.000Z

We attended our first two exhibitions as actual exhibitors in the last 3 weeks. The first was the Best of Bristol event at the beautiful Lakewood Centre at Blagdon and the second was the Andover Business Expo held at The Lights in Andover. These were both quite small events but still professionally run and excellent for dipping toes in exhibition waters. For a young company like BizView.tv, the expense of exhibiting can be daunting, and a stand at the NEC or Earls Court would blow our current marketing budget to smithereens. These smaller local events though are a great way of meeting a lot of new people very quickly and they do give you a chance to show off that spanking new pop up banner. Of course in our case we have to show some moving pictures as well, so a decent sized flat screen TV must be hauled onto the stand as well. One area in which these small exhibitions are identical to their larger cousins is in the effect they have on your feet. At least these local events last only a day. My feet were seriously aching by the end of my measly 8 hours on the stand. One interesting point of contention was the claim of one of the exhibition organisers that many of the best visitors/prospects will visit your stand in the last hour of the show (between 5 and 6pm in this case). This turned our to be nonsense as there were virtually no visitors left by that time and most of the other exhibitors had voted with their very sore feet and packed up and gone by 5.15. You live and learn.

Presentations - That's Snow Business

2009-02-10T10:39:00.000Z

Has the snow scuppered any of your plans recently? I naturally chose last week and this to give a number of presentations to various fellow business people in Bristol and Swindon. Alas the weather had other ideas. On Friday I struggled into Bristol (actually the struggle was out of my drive, Bristol was fine and virtually traffic free because of the snow) to give a seminar on the power of the broadcast interview at a posh hotel in the centre. The rather low attendance at the meeting (7 including me) was of course a result of the weather not a comment on the quality of my presentation skills - that's what I'm telling myself anyway. Unfortunately, it happened again this morning in Swindon. After horrendous forecasts for winter storms bringing blizzards, snowdrifts and flooding, I found, after my relatively easy journey in, that others had heeded the forecasts and attendance was once again a lot lower than expected. I have another one tomorrow and if the same thing happens I might start to take it personally - especially if it's a sunny day.

My Very First Blog

2009-01-28T14:07:00.000Z

Well here I am at last - blogging - whatever that means - still not sure why anyone will be remotely interested in my posts, but I've been persuaded by the wiser members of my circle that blogging is THE thing and if you're not doing it then what are you doing? - The reply "working" or "trying to earn money" cuts no ice with the modern web aware business community - if you're not in cyber space telling the world you've just cut your toe nails or taken the cat for a walk, then you might as well give up and go home. So what, I asked them, should I write about? - I'm not a journalist or an opinion former. - Keep it real, they said. OK, so no fiction then. Talk about your own experience as it relates to your industry they said - well OK, I will and don't blame me if nobody reads it - they assured me they wouldn't. So that's settled then - over the coming months I will write about.... well something.... anything and I promise I will try and keep it interesting... if only to me and the cat.