After many years working in video, we’ve found that almost all effective video ads fit into one of three basic categories. They are either funny, beautiful, or make you cry. It may sound simple, but take a moment to think about your favorite commercial of all time. I bet it was funny, beautiful, or made you cry (or it may have checked multiple boxes, like one of my favorite ads).The thing is, there are real psychological reasons why the most memorable and effective ads are funny, beautiful, or make you cry. In this episode of Death to the Corporate Video, Guy explains how he formed this theory, and Hope shares psychological research on the relationship between emotions and decision making and what that means for B2B marketers.For anyone who wants to read more about the research linking emotions and decision making, we recommend these articles:Why emotion plays a critical role in decision makingEmotion and Decision Making

So you need a video

The three key ingredients for all effective advertising

It’s a running joke in the production world that if something goes wrong on set, we’ll fix it in post. In other words, we can use editing or VFX magic to get rid of that plastic bag that blew behind a person’s head, or cut that take when your talent flubbed. But there’s one thing we can never fix in post, and that’s authenticity. If it wasn’t captured on the day, it won’t be in the final video.When creating a video featuring real people, authenticity comes from letting them be themselves. It’s key in testimonials, recruiting videos, or CEO interviews. But so many brands make decisions that actively work against authenticity. Factors that work against authenticity:Scripting or using telepromptersForcing people to restate answers to fit brand guidelinesOverediting to remove filler words like “um,” “ah,” or “like”On this episode of Death to the Corporate Video, Guy and Hope discuss why authenticity is key in videos featuring real people, and how to make sure you capture it.

One key way to keep people watching your videos

Most marketers, especially in B2B, want to get the most out of their video production budget. One of the most common questions we get when a client has a limited budget is, “Can we just write it?” In this episode of Death to the Corporate Video, Guy and Hope break down why that is the absolute wrong question, and what brands should do when they need to trim video production budgets. The answer is think like Danny Boyle when he made 28 Days Later. (Hire Cillian Murphy? Listen to find out.)For more on choosing the right video production company for your project, read our buyer’s guide to hiring a video production company.

How to get the most out of your video production budget

Paul Cash, co-author of Humanizing B2B, believes that B2B marketing has lost its humanity. We can say “lost,” because, yes, it used to have humanity. In the early days, B2B marketing was done by knowledgeable, expert salespeople who made real connections with their customers. Then came the internet, minimizing the role of the salesperson, and over time the humanity leaked out of B2B. What we’re left with is the B2B marketing that many of us know today: product-centric, bland, corporate, and forgettable.What can we do to bring it back? On this episode of Death to the Corporate Video, we talk to Paul Cash about how we got to where we are today, the state of the B2B buyer, and what we can all do to convince the C suite that things need to change.Note this episode contains some explicit language.

How to humanize B2B with Paul Cash of Rooster Punk

B2B marketers are often dealing with tight budgets. To stretch their marketing dollars, they decide to make one video that can be used across the sales cycle. One video for the home page. Use it again for social media. Use it again in sales presentations.The problem with this approach is that it completely ignores the fact that prospects at different stages of the customer journey need different things. Early stage buyers need to be inspired. Late stage buyers need to be reassured. You can’t do both at once without ending up with a mullet video.Tailoring your video content to each stage of the customer journey allows you to support your prospects where they are, and to maintain control of your narrative.

How to use video throughout the B2B customer journey

Recently, we posted a new video on our LinkedIn page called “We need to talk.” It tells B2B marketers to be bold with their creative advertising. A viewer left a comment: "The challenge is convincing your executive team."He’s right. Many marketers and agencies can come up with amazing ideas, but then can’t get the boss on board. We’ve found that one of the biggest challenges that B2B marketers face is push back or conservatism from executive teams. On this week’s episode of “Death to the corporate video,” Guy and Hope sit down to talk about our silver bullet for convincing executives to take a risk.We’ll give you a hint: It has nothing to do with an amazing, knock-their-socks-off creative idea. It starts back in the strategy phase with the competitive analysis.

Our silver bullet for getting executives on board with bold creative

Everyone always wants to know the secret or the top 4 steps to getting the best work out of your agency. As we planned this podcast episode, we originally wanted to give tips or tricks to get great creative work. But as we sat down to talk about what we’ve learned from our best work and our best clients, there was only one common denominator: Trust.The only way to get the best work out of your agency is for you to trust them and for them to trust you back. Trust leads to more creative work, more on brand work, and more effective work. When there’s trust in the relationship, your agency feels safe and motivated to push the creative envelope.In this episode of “Death to the Corporate Video,” we discuss why trust is essential in the agency-client relationship, how to find an agency you can trust, and how to develop trust as you work together. Metaphors include airline pilots and those death traps known as hot air balloons.

The secret ingredient for great creative work

Most B2B marketers love to draw a solid line between B2B and B2C marketing, and pretend that never the twain shall meet. Smart B2B marketers, on the other hand, peek over that wall to find practices that work and can be adapted for their marketing and advertising.TV commercials are considered firmly in the realm of B2C, but there’s a lot that B2B marketers can learn from the best practices honed by TV advertisers over the past decades.4 things B2B marketers should learn from TV commercialsStay short and sweet.Assume your audience is disinterested.Know you’re making an ad.Invest in good writing and original ideas.

What B2B marketers should learn from TV commercials

Most B2B videos start with a marketing team saying, “We need a video!” There’s very little discussion in the early project stages about where you’re actually going to put the thing beyond “our website” and “YouTube.”Making a video is only step one. Step two is distribution. You need to make sure that people see your beautiful new asset. These eight tips will help you develop a distribution plan for your B2B video.Learn more: https://umault.com/podcast/b2b-video-distribution-plan/

8 tips for distributing your B2B video

A very common piece of feedback we get from our clients is to add more information, add details.Usually it's coming from a very good place. It's coming from a place of not wanting the audience to feel left out and removing any ambiguity to make a very clear and comprehendible ad.And while that sounds, and it can actually feel, like it's less risky, adding all those details is actually riskier and it's usually not a good idea.

How details can ruin your ads

Big news: We’ve changed the name of our podcast from “So You Need a Video” to “Death to the Corporate Video.” Regular listeners may recognize that as the name of Guy’s book. But in addition to some consistency there, we wanted to update the podcast name to clearly show what we stand for. Our goal is to rid the world of bad corporate video.We want our listeners to generate growth with their video marketing, and to do that we must end the corporate video.Join us on our crusade. Like the new name? Think we should change it back? Talk to us.

Introducing Death to the Corporate Video

Marketing Week recently published a report claiming that 75% of B2B advertising is ineffective. In a study of 1,600 B2B ads watched by a whopping 6 million people, 75% of ads scored one star or lower on an emotional engagement scale. None of them reached the highest level of five stars. In this episode of “So you need a video,” Guy and Hope break down what makes these B2B ads ineffective, why that matters, and what you can do about it. We’ll discuss mullet videos, judging wine by its label, and our favorite report from the B2B Institute.

Why your B2B videos are ineffective, and what to do about it

Whenever you have a new or risky idea in marketing, there is going to be someone at your company who says no. Maybe they are risk-averse, maybe they just personally don’t like it. Either way, we all need strategies in our tool belt for how to defend great ideas, and how to push back on bad ones.In this episode, Hope and Guy give overview of our recommended strategies on pushing back on bad video marketing feedback. Plus digressions on The Weeknd, Southwest Airlines, and mullets.For full episode notes, visit us at umault.com

Defend your creative marketing ideas from being ruined by your boss

As we talked about how to wrap up 2020, we didn’t want to focus on the negative. While a lot of 2020 was an anxiety-fueled dumpster fire, it also was a year of empathy, innovation, and reevaluating priorities.Looking into 2021, we decided to focus on our wishes and goals for the new year. Some of our wishes are things we’d like to see happen, and others are silver linings from 2020 that we’d like to see continue.

21 wishes for 2021

Like many marketing materials, the testimonial video appears deceptively simple. Go interview a happy customer, cut it together, boom, done, wonderful, slap it on the website!But we’ve seen plenty of bad examples of this format.  This episode will walk through 7 tips for how to create a testimonial video that works.Read the tips and access all the resources on our website: How to create an effective testimonial videoReady to shoot your own testimonial? Start with our buyer’s guide on hiring a video production company.

How to create an effective testimonial video

The only podcast (that we know of) about simplifying your brand's sales message with video. Hosted by Guy Bauer, creative director and founder of Umault, a creative agency dedicated to making entertaining videos for companies with complex offerings, Hope Morley, chief operating officer, and Tory Merritt, head of client services.