Corporate video: highlighting the voice of your leaders

Interviewing your employees is good but getting your managers to talk too is even better! In fact, if you are looking for ideas for questions to ask your employees, don’t hesitate to read our article on this subject.

For a very long time, companies had the reputation of being cold and impersonal, from which managers hardly ever came out to see the light of day, communicate and address their customers. But those days are over as nowadays, many companies (from small start-ups to large international groups) give their executives a voice, in the form of corporate videos. In addition to social networks and recruitment sites, these short films, which are a real resource for your reputation, can feed your blog.

Why interview your managers and produce this type of content? What questions should you ask them? What are the main benefits? We tell you more here through top examples and winning tips for your business.

The briefing and preparations are fairly quick before producing. Your managers should simply :

• speak clearly,
• smile,
• stand up straight,
• look at the lens if you are filming from the front.

Pitchoune’s advice to create emotion among your audience: if you are making an effective corporate film to present your company and business, remember to choose the most attractive places in your company: this allows you to link the sequences together and create dynamism. This should be the most effective approach.

As you can see in this video, the interventions of Benjamin (2:43) and Lionel, the other co-founder of Pitchy (0:11), highlight the location of the shooting, to include and create perspective. The different sequences follow one another, presenting different places: offices, relaxation room, coffee room, etc…

A presentation of the company in the context of a recruitment

Nowadays, with the increasing number of recruitment websites, such as Welcome To The Jungle, many companies need to create a corporate page to exist on the Internet, integrating reports, clips, as well as interviews with employees and managers, to present the company’s history.

As you can see in this testimonial, Benjamin Chouraqui, co-founder of Pitchy, presents the concept of the platform, namely, to create one’s own corporate videos, without any particular technical skills or professional filming equipment: 

This approach allows candidates to learn more about the company they are applying to, to meet their future leaders. This transparency also helps to break the ice, to show that the co-founders are human beings like any others.

Pitchoune’s advice: note that these interviews with managers can also be used in videos intended for the training of new recruits. In the current context, it is also a way, despite the distance, to get newcomers and co-founders to meet each other (while waiting for total deconfinement).

A new product or service launch announcement

Has your company just developed a new service? A new platform? A new product? Who better to speak than your executives?

Note that, if you wish to adopt a lighter tone, and if your co-founders agree, you can even encourage them to film themselves with their Smartphone, in selfie mode.

This approach allows you to: 

• Give a professional image, i.e. leaders who believe in their project,
• Reinforce the importance of the event, the product release,
• To have a detailed presentation of the new product by the most legitimate people to talk about it,
• In addition, you don’t need much equipment, except for a tie microphone, to get good sound.

Crisis communication and goals to overcome these issues

As the Covid period has shown us, companies sometimes find themselves caught up in issues that are beyond their control, and then have to report back to their target customers in a convincing way. Some have had to announce the closing of their shops, a different recruitment policy, or reassure their customers of the continuity of their service.

Crisis communication can also occur outside the Covid context. For example, if a product is deemed defective, if the service is criticised, or if a scandal affects your market in some way.

For this, there is nothing better than the video interview, to bring a solemn side, and reassure the public. In this crisis communication video interview, your managers (or other concerned officials) can : 

• specify what will change in the weeks to come if the health situation deteriorates,
• or recall the facts that led to a crisis communication, to reassure the audience,
• reaffirm the company’s commitments,
• to reassure the audience, to reaffirm the company’s commitments, to deal with criticism and to understand consumers’ concerns.

What questions should you ask your managers in the video interview?

Here are some elements for you to get all the benefits of this type of content.

For recruitment sites

• You can start by devoting the video interview to substantive questions: 
• How did you come up with the idea for the concept? The tool?
• How did the co-founders meet?
• The product/application/service in question: what is it?
• Did you ever have doubts?
• What were your main difficulties?
• Did you learn from your failures?
• What qualities do you look for in your future recruits?
• What career opportunities are available to candidates?
• Do you have any advice for candidates?

Don’t hesitate to give dynamism to your interview, by adopting other binary and lighter questions, like Fast and Curious (a format, initiated by Konbini, which has been very successful during periods of quarantine): 

• Morning or evening?
• Tea or coffee?
• Routine or unexpected?
• “Good morning” or “Hi”?
• Social or solitary?
• Formal or casual?
• Manual or intellectual?
• Wifi or Wifi?

Once the videos have been made, edited and posted on social networks (or other channels), don’t hesitate to use the tag in the post to identify your managers: this way, they will share it, and make their network, which is often vast and qualitative, benefit from it.

If some of your clients are international, provide a French version, but also a second version, after translation, with English subtitles. You will be understood in Paris as well as in London! In France or in the UK!

For new product or service launches by your brand

Your managers are usually the ones behind these strategic changes. These new products have been developed with a specific aim in mind: to facilitate the customer experience, to provide new functionalities, to succeed where competitors are struggling to progress, etc…

These questions asked to managers can even serve as a small guide for those who would like to test as soon as possible.

• What is the new product called? The new service?
• Why was this new product developed?
• Was this new product developed as a result of customer feedback?
• In concrete terms, what is new about it?
• How can it be used?
• When is it due to be released?
• Can we have an exclusive demo?
• Are there any other projects in the pipeline?

For crisis communication

In this context, audiovisual production will have to be hurried, because clients and prospects expect a rapid response: the longer you delay, the more you will be accused of running away from the problem.

• What message do you want to send to customers?
• How do your teams best handle the situation?
• How is the company dealing with this crisis?
• What have you learned from this crisis?

Would you like to do a video interview with your managers yourself? Request a demo of the Pitchy solution. Discover our amazing device.