Nobody talks about your brand more effectively than the people who live and breathe it every day. Putting SMEs, influencers, and employees in front of the camera and having them share their knowledge and passion with your audience delivers a level of authority and authenticity that’s difficult to achieve through other forms of content.
Of course, live action shoots have some notable drawbacks. Costs for equipment, your production crew, studio time, and travel add up fast. Add to that the difficulty of scheduling a shoot and the potential for unforeseen roadblocks—like travel restrictions, for example—and you might think that live action content is off the table altogether.
But it doesn’t have to be. We live in an age where just about everyone carries video production equipment in their pocket. Working with Centerline’s creative team, you can use our Community-Directed Content Solution to deliver high-quality, authentic, and visually engaging live-action content by tapping into the creators in your organization—without all the drawbacks of big productions.
We’re not talking about just setting your employees and executives loose with their mobile phones and uploading the results to Twitter. User-generated content is easy and popular, but today brands are moving away from it because it’s not always effective in terms of delivering a cohesive story. Without proper content curation and oversight, brands can lose control of the message. Community-directed content starts with a carefully-crafted narrative framework that we help you to build—and ends with the polished, engaging, on-brand content you’re setting out to create.
Here’s how it works:
- Centerline creates the story framework—interview questions and messaging mapped to your brand and campaign goals.
- We define the community—the contributors who will generate the content—and provide a shot list that maps out the content you’ll need to capture.
- Then, after downloading and installing an easy-to-use app like Cinebody that automatically uploads footage to our secure cloud, the contributors capture the required footage.
- Centerline’s content specialists and editors select the best clips to tell your story.
- And, from that footage, we produce authentic content that tells a cohesive, on-brand, on-message video.
Apart from cutting costs, we’ve found that this type of creative collaboration actually increases authenticity by allowing your viewers to (literally) see your organization from your point-of-view. Some of the stories that are perfect for community-directed content include:
- Influencers and advocacy. Videos featuring SMEs and brand advocates on a fresh look and feel when your subjects are communicating with your audience from their own space rather than being staged in a formal setting. Not to mention that you can capture footage from multiple SMEs around the world, adding variety and multiple points-of-view without blowing your budget.
- In-the-field. Whether you’re documenting a project or product lifecycle or conveying a day-in-the-life story, community-directed content is one of the most effective ways to draw viewers into the story and make them feel as if they’re really there.
- Behind-the-scenes. By putting the camera in the hands of someone on your team, a tour of your facilities or a glimpse into your operations and initiatives becomes a personalized back-stage pass for your viewers.
Community directed content creates engagement on both sides of the equation. It makes your biggest brand advocates an integral part of the creative process. And it hooks your audience with the authenticity of live action content without breaking the bank.
You have stories to tell and, fortunately for you, that’s our speciality at Centerline. Community-directed content is yet another innovative, engaging way we’ve found to bring our clients’ stories to life.
Example from CenturyLink internal education
