Blog Posts About: Custom Video

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In late 2023, I shared the story of a custom video project with Francis Waller at ​Gap Management. Francis had a familiar problem: his organization is effective and has an impressive track record, but communicating that value to prospective clients is challenging. He came to Common Craft to solve this problem and create a video for the Gap Management home page.

A Classic Explanation Problem

Gap Management’s success was limited by how it was being communicated. According to Francis, prospective clients get lost in the details and aren’t able to easily see the big picture. Gap’s service concept is relatively simple, but feels abstract. This is a common problem that explainer videos can help solve.

We saw an opportunity to move from abstract to concrete. That meant talking about the pain that his potential clients currently feel. When watching the video, we want them to say: “That’s me! I have that problem!” In the video, we asked: “What if you knew your clients’ honest and unbiased opinions?” That's the value proposition of Gap Management. 

Visualizing Service

Service-based businesses can be a challenge to explain. Unlike a product, you can’t hold it in your hand, or see it in a photo. The value can be difficult to see or understand quickly.

Gap’s clients want to understand the honest perceptions of their customers. This information comes from Gap conducting dozens of interviews with the organization’s customers and analyzing the results. This can get complicated quickly, so we worked to visualize the interviews, the patterns they produce, and how that information closes a gap.

The video also provides an example of a Gap client. This person is surprised to discover that his biggest opportunity for improvement involves clearer communication.

You can see the final video on the ​Gap Management home page.

Kind Words from Francis:

The video you produced checks all of the boxes I had before we started: It delivers the key message clearly, is not technical, is in a friendly and personable style, and is well-produced.

It has been a great experience working with you. The video is timeless, direct, and warm. Common Craft is well-organized and friendly. You interviewed me in a professional and non-threatening manner, and each draft was an improvement that added real insight to the completed explainer video.

~ Francis Waller

About Common Craft’s Custom Videos

We work with organizations large and small on custom video projects. If your organization is struggling to relate an idea, product, or service, we can help. Learn more about our ​custom video services.

We recently completed one of our most comprehensive video projects to date: a series of eight videos for the Hawaii Department of Agriculture explaining the requirements for Good Agriculture Practices (GAP) certification. 

Background: Farming is an important part of Hawaii's economy and in recent years, food safety has become a priority. We were hired to create videos that help farms and farm workers understand food safety regulations and how farms can become GAP certified. These videos were designed to work with voice-overs in English, Chinese, Thai, Spanish and Ilocano. 

One of the talented project leaders, Jeri Kahana, recently explained how they are using the video series in education: 

We have shared it with our Cooperative Extension partners to use when conducting outreach education with our farmers.  We have also shared it with a Group GAP organization who is working with a group of farmers to become GAP certified under the Group GAP program. They were all impressed by the videos!

Along with working with the amazing team in Hawaii, we loved this project because it was a perfect fit for our style of explainer videos. The videos are educational and focused on solving a problem.

If you are considering a video project, contact us or learn more about our custom video projects. 

Below is the complete video series:

Introduction to GAP Certification

 

Understanding Microbes, Record Keeping, and Common Risks

 

GAP Part 1: Farm Review

 

GAP Part 2: Field Harvest and Packing

 

GAP Part 3: House Packing Facility

 

GAP Part 4: Storage and Transportation

 

GAP Part 6: Wholesale and Terminal Warehouse Receiving 

 

GAP Part 7: Food Defense

Find all translated versions of the videos at the Hawaii HDOA website. 

Learn more about our custom video projects. 

The world of education and training has seen its share of innovation recently.  After hundreds of years of in-person stand-up training, educators have new options. Products like GoToTraining now allow teachers to host classes online. While a number of teachers have made the jump to online training, there are many who have valid concerns about the impact on the training experience.  

This custom video is designed to introduce GoToTraining and outline some of the features that make online training a useful option - even for the skeptical educators out there. 

Big thanks to Kristen and Bob at Citrix for their hard work on this project!

As you may know, we worked with Dropbox on the video that appears on the Dropbox.com front page (when not logged in).  Like most in the video business, we’re always looking for data or other evidence that a video has a positive impact.

From time-to-time I check with Dropbox about the video and how it’s impacting their business.  Recently, I received an email from Albert Ni at DropBox that provides a look at the role the video plays and how it’s performing.  I’ve copied his points here:

- During the week, the video gets nearly 30k hits a day (that threshold should be crossed soon)

- In the past month, the video was viewed 750k times

- On the referral register page (the page people see when they are invited by a friend to join Dropbox), the conversion rate goes up from 30.0% to 33.2% when the video is viewed, this is probably an underestimate of the video's actual impact (see the next note)

- In general, measuring the absolute impact of the video is a little tricky, because there are always going to be people who already know they want to sign up for/install Dropbox, and thus won't bother to view a video. The video's true value lies in convincing someone who wouldn't have otherwise signed up to do so - thus I think the actual boost provided the video is even greater than the 33.2/30.0 that the previous stat might suggest, since a decent chunk of the 30% who didn't view the video but still signed up were probably already predisposed to do so

- Overall I'm positive the existence of the video increases conversions by a hefty margin, and probably gets us several thousand signups a day that we wouldn't have otherwise

- The video is definitely considered a core part if not the core part of our strategy for introducing people to Dropbox ... I've personally heard from plenty of friends who said that the video helped less tech-savvy people like their parents understand the basic concept of Dropbox much, much better.

So, the anecdotal evidence is there, but the actual impact is hard to quantify. Let’s take a closer look. It may seem like the conversion rate rise from 30.0% to 33.2% is minor, but it’s actually a more than 10% increase in the rate of conversions. And as Albert notes, that probably underestimates the value of the video overall.  

I’m also excited to know the video is getting 750k views a month, which is a factor of Dropbox’s incredible growth and popularity. The video has been on Dropbox.com (and in their App) for over a year, which likely means (after adjusting for growth over that time) that the video has been viewed maybe 5-7 million times.  

Aside from the data, the video is doing what it was designed to do: introduce Dropbox to the less tech-savvy population - an audience who is often evaluating the technology vs. downloading it as fast as possible. If a video can prompt thousands of people a day to sign up, I think it’s a win.

The Dropbox video strategy is similar to that of BitTorrent:

 

They both have very popular products and a lot of traffic.  The goal with a video was not viral marketing. It was not getting people to blog about it.  It was focused on providing an on-site resource for people to get turned onto the product.  

If you’re thinking about how to use video for your business, think about the difference between a video that markets and a video that educates.  If you have people coming to your website, but are having a hard time converting them, it may be worth your while to provide a short video that makes them feel confident that they’re going make an informed decision. Where you do that is important - and in the case of Dropbox, it was on the front page of the site, just above the download button.

If you’re like most people of my generation, you grew up with LEGO bricks. The little snap-together blocks became anything you could imagine.  That’s because, as we learned recently, LEGO isn’t just a toy, it’s a medium, a platform, a language. It occupies a special place in the world.

Recently we had the opportunity to learn a lot about the company through working with them on an internal-only video project with the goal of explaining to LEGO employees how the company will innovate in the future through a philosophy called “System In Play”.  It was no small challenge, but one of which we’re very proud to have been a part.

I spent a couple of days at the company’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark and worked with Per Hjuler, Senior Vice President of Brand, Communication and Concept Development  and Paal Smith-Meyer, Senior Director, New Business Group. Despite being very busy, Per and Paal were among the most responsive and engaged clients we’ve had. And of course, we made a great video together.

 

Lee, this is perfect. Thanks to both you and the team around it. It came out exactly as I had hoped it would thanks to your ability to listen to our input and translate that into your well working format.

- Per Hjuler

I came away from this project with a new respect for LEGO. Not just for the toys they make, but the amazing culture of the company and how they approach their product. I could go on-and-on. It was truly a privilege.

While I can’t share the video, I have provided some photos and screenshots below. (More photos on Flickr)

This is Per, yours truly and Paal in front of the LEGO logo.

The LEGO logo above is made entirely of LEGO mini-figures

 

The lobby of LEGO Headquarters, which opens onto the distribition and packaging facility. I was able to tour the facility, but pictures were not allowed inside.

 

While licensing our videos is still the focus of our business, we have taken on a few custom projects this summer. The first to be published is a video we were hired to produce called "SharePoint in Plain English," about Microsoft's enterprise collaboration tool. The focus of the video is to introduce Sharepoint and illustrate the old way (project info exists on multiple computers) vs. new way (project info lives in SharePoint).

Updated: Microsoft has made this video available for download so you can share it easily on Intranets, presentations, etc.

One of the things that attracted us to this project was the potential to expose our work to SharePoint users. We were so happy to work with the SharePoint team, who was flexible and very open to our interpretations.  It was one of the smoothest projects we've completed to date and we appreciate their focus and dedication. Plus, it's always nice to work with local organizations.