• Matter’s Gusto Team Releases Its 2023 Guide to 10 Must-Have Brand Videos

    Matter’s Gusto Team Releases Its 2023 Guide to 10 Must-Have Brand Videos

    Agency’s Award-winning Video Team Reveals the 10 Videos Every Brand Needs to Successfully Support Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

    BOSTON, June 27, 2023 — Gusto — a Matter company and creative content house that brings brands to life with award-winning video and podcast production — today announced its 2023 Guide to must-have brand videos, helping companies engage audiences and create brand affinity at each stage of the buyer’s journey. The guide helps brands identify the strengths, weaknesses and blind spots in their holistic video-marketing strategies.

    The guide groups each strategic asset within a stage of the buyer’s journey – awareness, consideration, decision and nurture – outlining the following 10 videos every brand needs:

    Awareness Videos

    • Brand Anthems + Commercials
    • Live + Immersive Experiences
    • Mini-documentaries
    • Thought Leadership

    Consideration Videos

    • Product or Service Explainers
    • Event Coverage + Support

    Decision Videos

    • Customer Success Stories
    • About Us/Recruitment

    Nurture Videos

    • Original Series or Podcast
    • Milestones

    “Every business needs video to effectively communicate its brand messages,” said Mandy Mladenoff, President of Matter. “Whether you’re showcasing your leaders’ expertise, explaining the ROI of your products and services or giving audiences a glimpse into your company culture, there are strategic videos for each stage of the buyer’s journey that will help guide your audience’s decision-making.”

    Check out the Gusto team’s award-winning work – including two recent Emmy Awards!

    Learn more about working with Matter’s Gusto team by reaching out today.

    About Matter Communications

    Matter is a Brand Elevation Agency that integrates PR, marketing and creative services into content-rich campaigns that inspire action and build value. Founded in 2003, with offices spanning North America, Matter works with the world’s most innovative companies across healthcare, high-technology, consumer technology and consumer markets. For more information, visit https://www.matternow.com.

    Contact

    Matter

    Greg Amaral

    [email protected]

    www.matternow.com

    Matter

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  • How to Deliver an Engaging Event Recap Video

    How to Deliver an Engaging Event Recap Video

    Event recap videos are a great way to create quick and easy video content. It allows companies to showcase their collaborative, fun-loving culture whether its showing off their BBQs, beach trips, volunteer events or bike-athons.

    Too often, though, event videos resonate primarily with the people who were a part of the event. While that’s great for internal camaraderie to boost morale, it’s essential to engage a wider audience, like prospective talent and customers, with the same piece. With these three strategic tips in mind, you can elevate your event recap from merely an enjoyable video for the attendees to a creative piece of content to capture the attention of a wider target audience.

    • Every event has a story. The most common misconception of event videos is there’s no story to tell the audience. There may be some cool shots and an energetic song, but for the average viewer, there’s little reason to continue watching because there’s no deeper theme behind the onscreen fun. You can combat this issue and tell a more compelling story by including interviews with attendees or supplementary text overlays. For example, did you have a volunteer event where employees were giving back to the community or celebrating a healthy work/life balance? Pair visuals with the story to create a story the audience can resonate with, whether they participated in the event or not.

    • Don’t drag it out. It’s rare an event video should be longer than a minute or so. Unless you’ve taken the first point to heart and are truly weaving a compelling story from multiple interviewees together, longer event videos can be indulgent at best and unmindful of your audience’s time and attention at worst. In today’s era, shorter is almost always better. No one but you will lament the good-but-not-great footage that didn’t make the final cut. People only need a taste; they’re not going to stick around for a three course meal.

    • Capitalize on engagement with a meaningful call-to-action. So your event video has a great story and didn’t overstay its welcome – don’t miss your chance to engage with the viewer by fading to black. Determine what call-to-action best intersects with the event itself and your overall marketing strategy to leave the viewer with a message they can act upon. A call-to-action could be your social media handles, the date for next year’s event, a funny hashtag, or even a memorable tagline that ties in to the larger marketing goal.

    By keeping these few principles in mind, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness of any event recap video. So get out there this summer and enjoy your team activities while driving greater business impact along the way. Need a hand? We’re here to help.

    Gabe Gerzon

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  • Does your PR Agency “Do” Video?

    The statistics are everywhere: people are hungry for online video. Overall, research estimates that the number of video views among Internet users grows north of 25 percent per year. If you think that number is going to recede any time soon, you’re likely also banking on the fax machine as the future of lead generation.

    So what has this to do with public relations? Here are three ways engaging video can help with any public relations efforts:

    1. On social channels, posting videos increases engagement by 100 percent or more, depending on which survey you read. So, if 50 people click on your text-based post, on average, then you can expect 100 clicks if you include video. More clicks means more chances to attract buyers of your products and services. More eyeballs is good PR.
    1. News outlets are always hungry for great video content that their readership will click and share. If you understand the media landscape for your company, and actively identify the sites and blogs that accept video, you can essentially develop a syndication network for your content. That’s powerful, but the key is that the video has to be entertaining or otherwise add true value. Sales pieces aren’t going to fly.
    1. Quality video can effectively humanize a brand by bringing the viewer “into the fold.” When fans, prospects and others are able to see your culture, hear your thought leaders talking and experience a slice of life from your company, they feel more invested in your success and are more likely to buy from you – or want to work for you.

    The key to all of this is the quality of the video. More is better, but quality always trumps quantity when it comes to using the power of visual imagery for public relations.

    What other ways do you use video for PR?

    Scott Signore

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  • 5 Tips for the Traveling Videographer

    5 Tips for the Traveling Videographer

    If you are a professional in the Video industry, chances are you find yourself spending a lot of time in airports, hotels, and rental cars. Traveling is my favorite part of my job, mostly because of the sense of freedom and opportunity to see new places. With that said, I do not think there will ever be a time when I can travel as light as my PR colleagues, who show up to the airport fully prepared with only their laptop, a notebook, and a couple changes of clothing. I have spent a lot of time over the past few years flying around the country conducting shoots for our clients, and wanted to share a few tips that might help ease some of the stress you will inevitably encounter during your next voyage.

    Pack Heavy and Keep your Baggage Minimal: In the video production world, “traveling light” is not in our vocabulary. Practically every shoot will require multiple cameras, tripods, lights, and a steadicam rig. Right away, a two-person crew’s hands are filled with cases of necessary gear. Since most of this is going to be checked at the gate anyways, we always try to cram jackets, toiletry bags, or extra pairs of shoes into whatever spare room lies within these cases. It helps alleviate the weight that would be otherwise carried around the terminal in a backpack and stuffed into an overhead compartment, or underneath the seat in front of you. Once you arrive at your destination, send someone to get the rental car while the other waits back at the terminal with the monstrous bags of equipment. Your arms and back will thank you later.

    Keep your Commute Short: When booking travel arrangements, be sure to look up the address where the shoot is taking place. Once this information is confirmed, see where the closest (halfway decent) hotel is. If it’s available, book it! You will thank yourself the next morning when you’re spending a few extra minutes sleeping off the jet lag, instead of fighting off the morning rush hour traffic.

    Find a Window of Personal Time: Many times the destination cities are places you may have never been to before, and who knows when you’ll have a chance to make it back there. Try to spend a few minutes before traveling to figure out when there might be a little bit of down time. If you don’t need to be on location until 10 or 11 AM, go get coffee near that landmark you’ve always wanted to take a photo of. If you flew in around the dinner hour, then it may behoove you to find a restaurant that specializes in local cuisine. As I grow older, it also seems like more and more friends are moving away. Business trips give you a great reason to make an after hours pit stop to catch up with those you haven’t seen in a long time.

    Bring Something Else to Work On: As refreshing as it is to break the day-to-day routine and spend a little time out of the office, that first day back at home base is just around the corner. When this day comes, there will be a mountain of unread emails to go through and reply to. While it’s not possible to bring all projects with you, see if there are a few things laying in your queue that are close to the finish line. You’ll feel better knowing that something can be checked off your to-do list upon your return. For a three-day trip, I always try to bring at least two projects along with me, as well as some tutorials or brain exercise for the flights.

    Don’t Overstay Your Welcome: Get in, do what you need to do, and get out. There’s nothing worse than wrapping your shoot and then having to wait an extended amount of time before your flight home. If your company works with a travel service, its always smart to see what other flights are available around the time you’re scheduled to depart. Find one that’s on the early side, and one on the later side. Depending on how the shoot is going, you should be able to sense if your day is going to run a little early or late. I always keep the 1-800 number for our company’s travel partner in my phone in case an issue comes up. Typically, they can book you for another flight in the time it takes to hail a cab to the airport.

    It is my hope that some of the tips listed above will help keep your blood pressure in check while on the road. In less than 24 hours, I’ll be keeping these ideas in mind while traveling to North Carolina. I’m scheduled to land around 4; I think I’ll have barbecue for dinner. 

    Fill out the form below to schedule a free strategy call with our team.



     

    Matter

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  • 3 Things to Look for When Watching a Video Sizzle Reel

    3 Things to Look for When Watching a Video Sizzle Reel

    At year’s end, most video production houses should be recapping their latest and greatest work into a short video for the world to see. Also known as the “sizzle reel,” this video showcases said video house’s best work and truly provides good insight into the group’s production value, quality, aesthetics, and knowledge in industry. This best-of-the-best video is ultimately edited very intentionally to project or parallel the type/style of video the House wants to be creating in the future, so I’m offering some tips of what to look for when watching a video house’s sizzle reel. If you’re a B2C or B2B content marketer or business in need of a video and researching production houses, keep an eye on these key elements within a sizzle reel:

    1. Production Value

    A simple quality control check, ask yourself this question: does this look good to me? From drones to jibs and image stabilizers to dollys and sliders, there’s nearly an infinite amount of production gear readily available to video producers to create dynamic video that help craft your story and detail your message. A professional video house should be using ALL of them, and not resting on the laurels of any given one. The sizzle reel should exemplify all facets of production tools and techniques. And two major things that are equally as important as the video quality are the lighting and audio. Lighting sets the tone and mood of the picture so working beyond just natural lighting is important. And many splashy sizzle reels tend to omit audio clips and soundbites, choosing to let the music bed do the talking, but we all know that audio can make or break a video so it’s important to provide examples of professionalism.

    After these essential fundamentals, it’s important to dive a little deeper and acknowledge the editing choices and techniques showcased in the sizzle reel. Shot selection in a sizzle reel is important to acknowledge because every video editor should be very deliberate in any video project; each shot should tell it’s own story in some way. In a sizzle reel, each shot should highlight some facet of the video house’s production value: camera movement, framing, lighting, audio, video coverage type, and/or industry knowledge. Lastly, bonus points for advanced editing techniques such as timelapses, transitions, overlays, color grading, motion graphics, animation, etc.

    2. Industry Knowledge

    In a 1-to-2 minute sizzle reel, there’s plenty of opportunity to showcase one’s expertise in any particular industry. Especially when, to reiterate, the sizzle reel is a video house’s opportunity to present the type of work they want to be doing. As a content marketer, it’s important when reviewing a sizzle reel to note what type(s) of industry said video house has produced work with/for because each has it’s own opportunities and challenges. Primarily working with an industry that’s based mostly outdoors vs. working indoors is probably the most obvious, but others include: product vs. service, people vs. places, and action vs. static.

    Working with a creative services group that’s in-house of a PR and social media agency offers a wide berth of industry perspective and knowledge that ultimately translates cross-businesses. Not being stuck in just one industry can open up possibilities for how you look at other projects, and allows for fresh perspectives as well as best practices when creating different types of videos.

    3. Story-telling

    A video house’s expertise can fall under any number of arenas: company explainers, thought leadership, company or product launches, testimonials, recruitment, lifestyle, event coverage, social media, live broadcasting, etc. And obviously a sizzle-reel is a compilation of many such individual stories. But it’s important that the sizzle reel should tell a story within itself as well. A content marketer should be able to watch the sizzle reel and have a good understanding of the video house’s service offerings as well as the expertise they can bring to the table.

    If you’re a content marketer who plans to produce engaging and compelling video, we’d love to brainstorm your ideas. What types of video do you intend to create? Check our Agency Reel:

     

    Tim Bradley

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  • 6 Best Practices for Creative Content Marketing in 2016

    Here at Matter Communications – and likely similar to PR agencies globally – all of our PR professionals are busy wrapping up 2016 planning with and for their respective clients. But what separates our group of PR pros from the competition is the fact that they’re able to efficiently and effectively incorporate creative content marketing into said plans because of our in-house creative services, Studio-C by Matter Communications.

    Having a written creative content marketing strategy is important, as it will inform the creative content you’re producing, and ultimately the effectiveness of the strategy overall. Here are 6 steps to ensure your business has a successful creative content strategy in 2016:

     
    1. Have a clear objective
    Direct and simple is the key. You should be able to say the objective in one sentence.

     
    2. Know your target audience
    “Consumers” or “everyone” are not your audience. You have to target your audience – hence the term. Deliberate demographics are a must.

     
    3. Know how your audience engages with content
    Facebook, right? Maybe. But with the plethora of social mediums (Instagram, Vine, YouTube, SnapChat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), there’s likely a better way that just throwing your content up on Facebook and hoping for the best. That, and most companies have an intranet. Or they may collaborate with spokespeople and brand ambassadors. Or they might be hosting or attending an event. There’s certainly a number of ways to engage with your audience – you need to figure out what’s best.

     

    4. Have a clear call-to-action
    Why are you creating this piece or pieces of content in the first place? To gain “likes” or “comments” or “shares”? Or to “sign-up” or “call” or “join”? Going back to your objective, decide on the call-to-action at the beginning stages of the project and make the plea obvious to the audience throughout (or at least of the end) of the creative content.

     
    5. Have more than one creative tactic
    Go back to your objective and ask, is this video/infographic/microsite/mailer the best way to achieve it? Yes? Even so, it needs to be part of a larger strategy if you expect results. Having a wide birth of creative content targeted at your audience will allow you to compare/contrast results and ultimately see what’s the best tactic to move towards your objective. The average number of tactics used by B2C marketers in 2015 were 12.

     
    6. Know how to measure success
    Ultimately there isn’t an exact science for measuring creative content ROI, but at Matter we’ve created a framework to benchmark for ROI success for clients. This framework will help define what success means to your clients and how to measure it – either against the competition or against individual pieces of creative content:

    6a. Clearly define 3-5 measurable goals

    • B2B Examples: lead generation, sales, lead nurturing, brand awareness, engagement, customer retention/loyalty, customer evangelism, upsell/cross-sell
    • B2C Examples: sales, customer retention/loyalty, engagement, brand awareness, customer evangelism, lead generation, lead nurturing, upsell/cross-sell

    6b. Select Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you can track

    • General performance: traffic, new leads, reach, subscriptions
    • Channel-based: website, blog, social networks, search engines
    • Source-based: direct traffic, organic search, referrals, email, ppc
    • Campaign-based: demand gen/lead nurturing, opens, click-throughs, conversions
    • Sales funnel: new leads, opportunities, customers
    • Direct impact on sales: qualified leads handed off the sales
    • Revenue-based: cost per lead, marketing contribution to pipeline

    6c. Create and use content that’s going to move the needle

    6d. Gather data and calculate your investment

    6e. Use this data to make better decisions

    Research shows 60% of companies who have a documented strategy rate themselves highly in terms of content marketing effectiveness, compared to the 32% effectiveness of those who only have a verbal strategy. The takeaway: it’s important to have a written strategy for creative content marketing in 2016 so you can measure successes and ultimately make better decisions.

    Tim Bradley

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  • How Brand Videos are Like Your Favorite Song

    How Brand Videos are Like Your Favorite Song

    Producing a successful brand video is like creating a piece of contemporary music. Generally, with a simple brand video you’ve got the introduction, the verse, the chorus, maybe a bridge or solo, and the conclusion. As video creators, this is how we initiate creating any number of brand videos for our clients. You’ve got about 10-15 seconds in your introduction to hook the audience to keep watching – do this by presenting “the problem,” a unique situation or location, or by showing stylized video with high production value. During the verse, we present the meat of the video – the who, what, where, when, why and how. The chorus is when we celebrate the brand’s achievement. The bridge may circle-back to “the problem” before reemphasizing how said brand is the right solution. And finally, the conclusion is the takeaway – the one piece of information (or a feeling) the brand wants the audience to walk away with. This will often include a call-to-action.

    These holistic elements are the structure of a basic brand video, but a successful brand video works with a deeper understanding of music, taking into consideration the seven elements of traditional music:

    1. Melody: a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit.
    2. Harmony: the relationship between two or more simultaneous pitches.
    3. Rhythm: the variation of the accentuation of sounds over time.
    4. Timbre: the quality of a sound.
    5. Form: the structure of a particular piece, how its parts are put together to make the whole.
    6. Tempo: the speed of communicating an emotion in a particular piece, how fast or slow it’s played.
    7. Dynamics: the volume of all parts as a whole and every layer in the structure.

    Look at any number of the videos we’ve created for our clients and you’ll see what I mean. Maybe it’s the melody in the way the video tells a compelling story:

    Or perhaps the video showcases the harmony in which the brand works towards a better tomorrow:

    Or maybe the brand is keeping in rhythm with its company mission:

    It could simply be the timbre in which a brand continues to produce quality products or services:

    Explaining a specific line of service of a business is similar to the form of a song:

    The tempo in which a brand communicates can be very powerful – whether fast or slow – to emphasize emotions:

    Lastly, and arguably the most ambitious to achieve, is the dynamics – the parts as a whole. We achieve this by creating a series of videos for a brand; each video individually elicits a specific element, but when combined, the dynamics tell a complete, compelling, and engaging story:

    Need to strategize how to breathe energy into your next video project? Drop us a line via the form below!


    Tim Bradley

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