Feedvisor’s Recipe for a Talent Brand Video in 4 Steps

As a talent brand consultant for Feedvisor, I have had the pleasure of producing a variety of digital assets to show off the company’s vibrant culture. This past February, I had the opportunity to work in a new medium when I produced Feedvisor’s new talent brand video.

With thoughtful internal preparation and collaboration with a top-notch commercial filmmaking team, we ended up with a great product that is both visually sleek and authentic to the company. Here’s the “recipe” we followed to make a talent brand video that we are proud of:

1. Invest in quality. Job seekers, whether they are conscious of it or not, will expect a certain amount of polish from your video assets. It’s simply what they’re used to. These days, even a 60-second Instagram spot might have a $50k budget and a highly-trained crew. This means that investing in a professional film crew is worth it.

The filmmaker we hired at Feedvisor spends most of his time making commercials for high-end brands and enterprise companies, and it shows in the quality of the images he captured. That said, we certainly did not have a $50k budget, but what mattered was his technical expertise and eye for images that will look more like an Oscar-winning movie, than a boring corporate video.

2. Find your narrative and write a script. We didn’t shy away from outlining Feedvisor’s talent brand video much like it was a feature film. We talked about story arc, characters, problems, and solutions.  These elements helped us create a video that was specific to Feedvisor’s culture and didn’t rely on business clichés.

3. Talk to everyone and don’t rush the interviews. This is a lesson I learned from our film team, who persuaded me that we needed to talk to each of our interview subjects for at least 30-40 minutes, even though we might only use 5 seconds of what they said.

At first, I thought it would be a waste of time, but the first interview proved me wrong. It took about 15 minutes for most of our interview subjects to relax in front of the camera. It’s hard to describe how foreign and uncomfortable it feels for most people to have a camera pointed in their face, and the camera picks up every ounce of that discomfort.

The moments that made it into the final video were, almost invariably, from the last five minutes of each interview — after the interview subject had fully warmed up, forgotten about the camera, and opened up authentically about how much they love Feedvisor. The extra footage turned out to be well-used, too! We turned those 30-40 minute interviews into posts for the Feedvisor blog. We ended up with even more content to show off Feedvisor’s vibrant culture, and for job seekers to eat up.

4. Seek dynamic b-roll and follow what’s fun. B-roll, a term from the film world, refers to the important supplemental footage that breaks up the “main” shots. Your office culture is more than just people sitting and talking to a camera, and thus, your video should be, too!

We intentionally shot not only meetings, but happy hours, birthday celebrations, lunchtime meet-ups, and even followed two team members on their morning commutes to show off the beautiful cityscapes of Tel Aviv and Manhattan, where Feedvisor has its offices. When a team member mentioned that she sometimes kicks a soccer ball around the office to help her refocus during a long day, we immediately got it on film. All this footage gives viewers an unforgettable 360-degree view of life at the company.

Were there things I wish we’d done differently? Of course! Most of the things I’d change about this process come down to one thing: I wish we’d not just packed the schedule on our shoot days; I wish we’d overpacked it. Filming in a dynamic office, things will change on the fly. Business is happening, after all!

An exciting meeting that will look great on film is bound to get rescheduled. Your most talkative and telegenic team members are bound to get called away for a client meeting. Now I know to always have back-ups upon back-ups for good shot ideas. Make sure every employee is prepared for the fact that they might get called in to talk on camera, or at the very least – kick a soccer ball down the hall.

Check out Feedvisor’s new talent brand video below.