Jennifer was in dire straits. Not only her but her whole company. Things had gotten so bad for Clippard Instrument Lab that no one even knew who Clippard was or what they did. Their building may as well have been Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for all anyone knew. And it’s pretty hard to attract talented young employees if they don’t know who you are, what you do, or that you even exist.
Jennifer wasn’t the only one who saw this problem. The whole company knew they needed to rebuild their brand image, and rebuild it fast. But how do you make a manufacturing company interesting? How do you make it not only memorable but desirable both to potential customers and prospective employees?
Clippard Knew Their Brand Identity
For Clippard, those answers came easily. Their company has always been about people first. So rather than talking about the perks of the job or the fancy machinery, Jennifer knew she needed to tell the story of Clippard’s family.
But that’s much easier said than done.
Her team quickly realized that knowing a good story doesn’t always mean you’re equipped to tell it well. See, everyone at Clippard intuitively understood the company’s story, but they needed to make it more concrete.
They knew they wanted a brand video that wove the narratives of the employees together with that of the company. They needed to curate all that information into a simple arc that anyone could instantly understand and relate with. But they knew they couldn’t do this story justice on their own. They needed a guide with the expertise to help them accomplish it all.
Enter Brand Videos From Iron House Studios
That’s when Clippard started working with Iron House Studios to craft their message and use it to create a series of trustworthy, effective brand videos.
We started, as we always do, with the problem. Not the one that Clippard had, but the one their potential employees had. Their employees loved the fact that they all felt like one big family, and they wanted to preserve that feeling even as they hired lots of new people.
When you spend 90,000 hours of your life at work, you can be sure you want to enjoy the people you spend those hours with. The current Clippard employees certainly recognized that - it’s why they stuck around - and they wanted their new employees to recognize that too.
Brand Video Interviews
With the problem established, we then had to determine the content for the brand videos. This meant having a lot of conversations with a lot of different people and listening for the stories that we could distill into a single, unified arc. This is a time-consuming process, as it should be. You never know what kind of insights you might find if you ask the right questions and just let people talk.
The key to getting great stories for brand videos is asking simple, open-ended questions. Think ones that start with phrases like “Tell me about a time when…,” “Take me back to…,” or “How did it feel when…,” and so on. The goal here should be to let them talk, but also to continue asking challenging questions that force them to dig deeper into what’s going on behind the scenes.
That’s where you find the real impact in your story.
Brand Video Recording and Editing
Equipped with all this great footage, we started to edit together several brand videos. In the first, three Clippard employees recounted their experience with the more personal culture at Clippard. We cut another video explicitly about Clippard’s mission to build a business focused on people. We centered it on great technical performance as a consequence of that greater mission, rather than the core selling point. Finally, we cut a video of a single employee’s story to give an even more distilled personal touch.
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The goal here was to produce a series of brand videos that communicated Clippard’s vision with varying levels of depth. Our work gave them the most versatile set of tools to communicate their vision and recruit passionate employees.
Brand Video Results
Clippard saw an incredible lift after launching these three 90-second brand videos on their site and social media. In the months following their revamped marketing, total applications for their Engineering department alone went from 20 to 150 (a 650% increase!). Even their sales saw record-breaking improvements, for the first time broaching $30 million.
In only a year, Clippard took themselves from a mysterious, unknown brand, losing revenue and talent to competitors, and turned into a thriving business with more than enough engagement to hire top talent. Clippard earned enough revenue to invest not only in themselves, but also in the local community.
And all it took was a handful of short brand videos.
Are You Ready for Successful Video Marketing?
Do you want to see this same kind of success? Is your company caught in a web of obscurity, like Clippard once was? Or are you steadily growing, but have the feeling you could achieve even greater results?
If you want to see the same sort of success as Clippard, you need to do as they did. Get some professionally made brand videos out there.
Seek out an organic story that is true to who you are as a brand. Take the time to hone the message to the simplest, sharpest point possible. Then find a team that can artfully express that story in whatever media make the most sense for your company and your audience.
Welcome to Iron House Studios.
Getting Your Own Brand Videos From Iron House Studios
Are you itching to get your unique story out in the world, but not sure if you can do it justice? Wondering if you’ve honed your message as finely as possible? Not even sure where to start? Iron House Studios is dedicated to getting you past any obstacle you might encounter on your path story perfection with professional brand videos.
If you want to break free from the monotony of traditional marketing and reinvigorate your brand with a story that has real meaning and impact, you might want to check out our Storytelling Starter Kit for Companies and Personal Brands. Contact Iron House Studios for more information on this kit.
Related Post: An Inside Look at Our Process with Iron House Studios
Not sure if you’re doing your story justice, from concept to execution? Book a meeting with the team at Iron House Studios where we can give you the confidence that your story is the best it can be.
Feeling confident in your story, but not sure your video and editing skills are up to par? We’re experts at unifying your vision with stunning visuals. Book a shoot and let us worry about dissolve cuts, audio quality, and directing talent, so you can focus on telling your story.