Most products need a sales video demo, especially if the product has features and benefits that are outstanding, or are particularly visual, or perhaps poorly appreciated or understood by first time customers.

Whether it’s a fork lift truck or egg whisk, it needs to be seen. On video. On DVD. On stream.

And this even includes the new dotcom businesses which often involve a new but elementary concept. Consider: How would you explain the principle of eBay if eBay was your product and starting up tomorrow? Use a product demonstration video. Of course.

When there are large volumes of customers concerned (eg B2C), then every step needs describing in the product or product use video. In these situations, a small % failure to convert adds up to significant.

If the product’s winning processes can’t be seen, such as the inside of a machine, then you’ll probably need graphics too or, better still, 3d animation to illustrate the inner workings.

Use of captions is central to many product videos, yet they’re often underused. This indicates that there are still large numbers of corporate video production houses that don’t think graphically, though this has to be decreasing, as more and more video companies realise the value of prominent captioning to deliver their product message.

For example, when you see the fork lift truck voiceover video lift an amazingly large amount of stuff, have the caption “power” next to it. It adds more to the message, more than just saying the word “power” in the voiceover.

With the a demonstrator-led egg whisk analogy, you may want the words “speed” or “fluffier mix” to give support. Again a caption is the way to emphasise this in a product demo DVD.

Which means you need a professional designer to do your captioning.

One of the hallmarks of a cheap looking video is low grade caption work, usually by having a semi pro designer, or a video editor who doubles up as a designer (but shouldn’t!)

Consider that the font, its size and colour all need to be carefully chosen to fit in a given location on the video screen near your product, so that the whole screen layout looks perfectly balanced.

This takes design skill and experience.

The caption may also want to animate on in some way. Again this takes skill.

If this isn’t done quite right, the whole caption effect comes across as slightly “toy” or amateur.

Here’s some great caption work so you can see the point www.rossiterandco.com/instantcredibilitymarketingvideo.htm

Whatever product video style is chosen, it’ll need to be suitable for viewing online.

This means the video has to be a little slower paced, or at least less visually dynamic.
When streaming video, the faster the screens move, the more likely the video image will be fuzzed up.

In addition, small detail gets lost in a small online screen.

This means avoid very fast movement where possible, and opt for subtler movement instead, so the streaming bandwidth available can keep up with your product video storyline.

Back To Glossary