What is a corporate video?

Corporate videos are communication and promotion tools that companies can use to help customers understand and remember the brand, its activities, products, or services. They are also used to present and reinforce the visual identity and reputation of a company or institution.

Corporate videos can show how an organization operates in its different processes and departments: human resources, infrastructure, logistics, production, and so on. Corporate videos are also used to help define and communicate a company’s position in the marketplace: its mission, its values, its goals, its history. There are different types of corporate videos because there are different communication objectives that they help to achieve.

Corporate video vs product video: different communication objectives

The success of a video marketing strategy depends on how well the video content manages to capture and maintain the attention of viewers throughout the entire journey. This ability to create and cultivate a relationship over time depends a great deal on the investment in the design phases where the communication objectives are identified. Depending on these objectives, it is possible to distinguish between institutional videos and product video (Please note: this is only one of the many possible distinctions, the one we choose to explore in this particular context).

• Product videos show the use of a product in one or more contexts and concretely demonstrate its advantages. The description of the product features has no value in itself, it is not self-contained. Rather, it is functional in highlighting the product’s ability to solve specific customer problems.

• Corporate video, on the other hand, is a fairly generic term, referring to all video communications used for corporate messaging, internal or external. What distinguishes corporate video from traditional adv is the target audience. Corporate videos are intended for a specific audience rather than a broader audience. They might be created, for example, to present financial results to stakeholders or to raise awareness of a new initiative within the company. Corporate videos can also include training videos for employees and promotional videos for new product lines or services.

Types of corporate videos: how to best use them

A product video can be defined in different ways, depending on the communication intentions that guide its design: demo, explainer, tutorial.

If we look at corporate videos, according to Wikipedia, these are the main types, divided according to how they are used:

• Staff training instruction and safety videos
• Investor relations – financial results
• Company promotional – brand videos
• New product or service presentations
• Product features and benefits explainer video
• Video role play (often with actors)
• Client and customer testimonial videos
• Event videos
• Trade show coverage
• Corporate event filming (a new product launch or conference)
• Live and on-demand webcasting
• Technology and product demonstration videos
• Business television

This is an extremely detailed list that gives an idea of the numerous potential applications of corporate video. To focus on how corporate video can be used, we have identified 4 major categories that cross the company’s video communication from the inside (of the organization) to the outside (stakeholders, selected audiences, customers).

1. Internal communication video.

Once upon a time, in order to communicate general directives or changes to internal policies, to present training programs, to support recruiting activities, and to implement onboarding paths, companies relied on long-winded and redundant official announcements, on mostly incomprehensible memos (often written without taking into account the varied audience of recipients), and on excessively generic courses that did not distinguish between the different levels of expertise of those involved.

Digitization has had the fortune of forcing the limits of this antiquated, incisive, and often ambiguous communication. In this sense, corporate videos represent one of the most advanced forms of brand presence that is capable of constructing a coherent and inclusive identity, of informing employees in a transparent and timely manner, and of addressing incisive messages to specific customer segments (reaching, thanks to personalized and interactive functions, the goal of a one-to-one communication that was once unthinkable).

• Corporate training videos. Even today, many companies hire coaches or training consultants to teach their employees how to do their best work while aligning with the values of the corporate culture. Many companies prefer to spend some of their budgets on meetings and conferences where employees are told about safety guidelines, how to implement new customer service procedures, or how to practice sales techniques. A well-conceived and well-crafted corporate video can be associated with these types of initiatives, if not replace them partially or in their entirety. With this tool, a firm can leverage its internal resources to train employees in a concise, focused and engaging way, while cutting costs considerably.
• Recruiting and onboarding video. What about recruiting new talent and onboarding new employees? Corporate video is extremely effective in describing the opportunities the brand can offer potential candidates. It can document the company culture, provide insight and information about how the organization operates, and exert full control over the overall image that this narrative builds. Many companies spend a lot of time (days, even weeks) gathering and reworking information into a single document that must then be shared with each new team member. And many new hires end up simply never opening what eventually becomes a sort of massive manual, packed with complicated explanations of plans, organizational charts, procedures, and benefits. Corporate videos, thanks to their ability to summarize and narrative form, represent a much more attractive alternative: they can be informative and engaging at the same time.

2. Corporate communication video

In the case of corporate communication videos, we are still moving within the corporate structure, but we also add selected external audiences to the recipients. who are called upon to express their opinions on a project, a product, or a service before others. For example, think about the investors who could provide financing to various initiatives or for the start-up of a new program, or of stakeholders who need to be mobilized quickly so that the launch of a product or service has all the boost (including media coverage) possible, or even for employees who are invited to understand and support management decisions. In this case, the video message from the CEO, inserted on the homepage of the company website or even better, on a landing page built for the occasion, can convey even complex communication in an interesting and convincing way.

• Company profile. These are the company’s presentation videos that are aimed at somewhat qualified leads and potential stakeholders. Short in duration, they offer a broad overview of services or products. They can include information about the mission, history, and even the founder’s biography. They aim to introduce people to the institutional world of the brand. They represent, in other words, a kind of business card. Although they usually have a certain formal tone, it is possible to include interactive ways of access and interaction (such as chatbots) in these videos.

• Industrial video. Are aimed at customers who operate within a particular industry. They are designed to be informative about products or services and are distributed across a variety of different media. They are often used at trade shows.

• Social responsibility videos. These videos are gaining in importance. They are designed to show what the company is actually doing to return wealth and well-being to the community. They are charged with communicating a vision that is beyond the contingencies of business. They can play an important role in building brand awareness and identity.
• Launch video of a new product or service. Located at the intersection of corporate communication video and corporate marketing video, launch videos for a new product or service are promotional videos in the sense that they convey a specific, targeted message. They are effective both online – since they take advantage of the profiling possibilities offered by digital channels – and on traditional broadcasting platforms such as television – if they are programmed on the networks and at the times when the target audience is most likely to be in front of the screen. These videos also help promote brand recognition and familiarity and raise consumer awareness.

3. Corporate event video

Corporate event videos are created to enhance the resources – not only financial – that a company has invested in the organization of a corporate event: the salient moments, the speech of the main speaker, the details that describe the atmosphere, the guest interviews. All of this is captured in video and can be used in clips with different cuts, such as video-invitations for future events or video-messages to obtain sponsorships.

• Conference videos. They present consumers with seminars, meetings, and conferences on issues of interest to them, highlighting trends, challenges and solutions, and future plans for the company. The recording of the event – properly edited – can be used as premium content, enriched with information that was not presented at the conference itself; while live streaming expands the audience’s ability to participate and at the same time makes it possible to capture of viewer data through registration forms.

4. Corporate marketing video

Corporate videos can be used as marketing tools at different moments in the funnel by inserting them in the touch points that customers use to access the information they consider relevant. The clarity and authenticity of the message is associated with a multichannel or omnichannel design: differentiated editorial calendars, consistent design but tailored to the target audience, specific metrics to measure the performance of the individual content produced and of the individual initiatives.

• Social media videos. These videos tend to be short, even very short. Their length, in any case, depends on the technical limits of the specific channel and the “typical” language of social media that tends to immediately trigger an emotional reaction. It is the brand, rather than the product or service, that is the true focus of communication, and it’s placed at the center of current and newsworthy stories and linked to events or news headlines that are capable of capturing the attention of viewers.

Corporate videos on social media target much more profiled, often niche, groups of consumers: this makes them a decidedly effective marketing tool.

• Branding videos. Tell stories in a way that resonates with the viewer. These stories, with which the viewer is asked to identify and onto which they can project aspects of their lives, tap into common sensibilities and end up producing increased brand awareness and also a domino effect that leads to a series of intended actions such as downloading a piece of content from a product landing page or sharing it on their own channels. Branding videos need strong visual themes, and consistency in color and design.

• Video testimonials. Here, someone who has already used the product or service speaks in the first person. They have a great symbolic impact, because they make it possible to establish an immediate emotional connection with potential consumers. In cases where the protagonists are celebrities, video testimonials use the allure surrounding them to convey authority and build trust, increasing the desirability of the product of service.

Corporate video and digital transformation: a revolution in the system of brand communication

Before the rise of online video, corporate video was primarily used for internal communications or broadcast television. Faced with high production and distribution costs, budget constraints tended to limit the amount of corporate video that could be produced. Digital transformation has produced a real revolution in the communication system of brands.

Two factors above all have allowed organizations, in their various business functions, primarily marketing, to employ very sophisticated forms of corporate video storytelling with increasing frequency (which sometimes even boast a cinematic quality):

• the cost of recording and editing equipment (HD cameras above all) has begun to fall, becoming more affordable
• the possibilities of distributing content on digital channels have multiplied

The reasons that corporate video represents an extremely useful and effective tool cannot be traced back to economic calculations alone. Corporate videos:

• can significantly improve both the quantity and quality of traffic if embedded within a website;
• can increase engagement (people tend to spend more time on touch points where videos are embedded),
• are perfect for explaining complex projects or products because they convey a large amount of information in a relatively short amount of time.

Corporate videos can be made with different visual styles, different narrative structures and tone-of-voice, and different types of video formats. They can be infographic videos or short form videos depending on the business needs they need to support. But whatever the need, corporate videos not only provide significant return on investment but also help establish and maintain a vital relationship with the audience and increase the power of brand narratives.

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