Even if you’ve been working in marketing for years, the question of how to write a corporate video production brief can still be a challenge. What do you put in? What do you leave out? Where do you start?

Even for experienced marketing directors or marketing managers, it can be daunting. So here’s our guide on how to write a video brief that a video production company can understand and run with. And will result in a great business video, commercial, promo or animation.

1. Keep It Simple

First thing to say is – keep it simple. Think about your brief as an elevator pitch. It needs to be a simple explanation of what you need a video or animation for and what you need it to do. Some simple info about why, where’s it going and what you need it to achieve are good starting points. We would suggest:

  1. Requirement (eg Video, Animation)
  2. Deadline
  3. Brief Description (eg We need a video to sell more of X product/to train staff on new equipment/to recruit new employees)
  4. Deadline
  5. Platforms (LinkedIn, YouTube, Social Media, internal or paid advertising)
  6. Budget Ballpark (eg £5k-£10k. A trustworthy production firm like ours won’t overprice. Your figure maybe higher or lower than what you actually need, so this helps them to find a solution.)
  7. Examples You’ve Seen (links to videos are really really useful)
  8. Any other important information 

2. Stick To One Page

Try to keep the above info on your video production or animation production brief to one page. It’s tempting to include lots of information but you’re trying to make something creative here. So strip out the padding and focus on the simple elements above. Help a video production team to offer ideas by letting them fill in the gaps for you. Don’t feel you need to have all the answers at this stage.

3. Focus on the end result

Keep a clear eye on why you need this bit of video content and bring everything back to that. Only include information that is relevant to the video you need and cut out anything else. A good corporate video production company doesn’t need to be expert on your business, we just need to know what you want to achieve with that one piece of content and help you do that. 

4. Don’t Be Prescriptive

On a similar tack, when sitting down to write your video briefing template or document, you just need to tell your video producers what you need. They can earn their money by working out to do it for you – so don’t stress about that! You don’t need to decide how many cameras are required or how many filming days or hours are needed. They can work that out for you with their experience. Equally, saying “I need a 5 minute video” is a bad starting point. It’s better to ask – “What sort of duration works best for these things”?

5. Show Some Examples

It’s really helpful to show some examples of videos at this stage. Anything you’ve seen that you liked or were impressed with really helps a video producer massively. Include the link to watch it. Can’t stress enough how this really helps a video team see what you like and what impresses you. It helps us understand the level of quality and production effort you need on this.

6. Be Prepared To Listen

When contacting a business video production company like Holler, don’t be shy to ask for help and advice. We do this every single day for some of the largest companies going. So we know the trends, the tricks, what works and what doesn’t. Don’t feel you need to be the expert here. We’re happy to help and offer advice. Take suggestions onboard even if they’re different to what you originally had in mind. It will often give you a much better result.

7. Be Honest About Budget

“I don’t know” is often a red flag to experienced corporate video production companies. It signals you’ve either not made high quality video before or you’re not serious. So be honest with a ballpark figure. An bona fide production agency will always be honest about what’s achievable – and will tell you if it can be done for less.

8. Let Us Help You Write It

 

Time poor? We can help. Just call or email us and let us help you put a corporate video production brief together. If you want to get a head start, just cut and paste the bullet points from above into an email and add some basic info. We can jump on a call and get your video brief going – without you even having to open Word.

Get in touch with our team and let us help you with your video brief.

Need video brief help? Just Holler!