What Your Team Should Know about a Video Kickoff Call
Regardless of where you are (or think you are) in the creative process, don't ever skip the kickoff call. This is where the success of any video project is determined.
Lightswitch has a tried and true set of question we go through, and we thought, why not share our trade secrets with the world?
What is the project deadline?
Yes we know it's ASAP, but when is it really? Part of a good pre-production process is preventing projects that can't be done well, or that aren't the most optimal use of a creative team's limited resources.
Sometimes the answer to this question is "We can't do something we'd be proud of in the time allowed," which is why we ask it first.
If it passes that test, we need to know the drop dead date it has to go live and the stakes of that date. Is it just an executive goal, or is there an ad buy starting? Real deadlines are always met more than artificial ones.
Build in buffer time for every party and stage involved.
Do I need to do this at all?
Stakeholders and clients come to us with ideas, good, bad, and ugly. It's our job to push and ask why. Is this just something you think is fun? Did you see someone else doing something similar? Is it "trendy?" Or is there a real clearly defined goal associated with this video. If there's no clear outcome, it's our job to tell you no. Sorry bub.
What is the goal of this video?
You might think the answer is obvious "We want to drive people to your website so that we can make money," but we need you to be more specific.
We want to get to something like
"I want young men aged 18-22 who attend 4 year public universities to know my online course can help them pass their finals and that it's affordable"
We want you go to even further and "define" intangibles likes feelings.
"I want the viewers to feel warm and fuzzy and cared for"
If you can't clearly define what you're trying to achieve - don't start.
Who is the audience?
Who are you making the video for and do they want to see this type of video from you?
Who do you want to reach? New customers? Old customers?
What do they care about? What kind of content do they like? Hate?
What do they want to see from my brand?
The trap many fall into is creating content that they want to show their customers, not the content their customers want to see from them
Is this video part of an existing strategy or campaign?
If your video is part of an existing strategy or campaign we need to know about it from the start.
We don't want to get the the editing room floor and then find out your print ads are leaning into an entirely different message or aesthetic.
If the video is intended to be the first in the series we want to design with that in mind. What elements can we create that are repeatable and recognizable? How can we design the production process to make it most likely to continue.
What should be the video’s key takeaways?
Thinking about the videos' key takeaways can be a secret backdoor way to help discover the goal.
Think of one sentence you want your viewers to know after watching the video that fits the structure "BRAND is BLANK"
"Subarus are reliable"
"Ford are made in America"
"Lightswitch Video is the best video producer in America"
How will you measure if the video is successful?
We all know this is the hardest one, especially when we there can be a disconnect between the video creator and the marketing team that deploys it. The results of a video don't always drive an action. Often a video reenforces an idea, provides social proof, answers questions, or explains a new concept.
We find one of the best way's to assess a video's effectiveness is through comparison. This can be A/B tests like - Does a landing page with this video perform better than one without? Does it perform better than the one with the other video?
Or it can be, does it drive better outcomes than the alternative. After using the video in our intake process, am I receiving fewer questions than before?
The important part of this step isn't necessarily about determining a goal CTR or engagement rate. The important part is getting your stakeholders on the same page and establishing a baseline for comparison.
Put a statement together along the lines of "This project will be a success if X" with "X" being some quantifiable measure.
Where is the video going to live?
What are the requested deliverables and does that match where you want to use the content?
A red flag at this step is if the client or stakeholder does not know. A video without a plan for deployment is a video no one will ever see. At a recent meetup of agency in-house leaders "content and channel mismatch" was mentioned as a top mistake in the short form video world.
People have different expectations about a video in Instagram, Youtube, landing pages, Linkedin, etc. We need to establish up front all of the places the video will be seen for things like licensing purposes, but also to be sure it "fits in."
Who needs to approve the final video?
The goal is always to get as few cooks in the kitchen as possible, and if that's not possible, to at least know who the head chef is. Review limbo is the enemy of every video producer, agency, and in-house team since the dawn of time.
We do our best to figure out who that is up-front so we can make sure they've got final say before each round of revisions. This helps us get better feedback, get more videos approved, and more videos seen.
For a few tips on how we do this in more compliance heavy industries check out our guide
What's the budget?
It's important to establish budget before we get too far along in a process to make sure we're planning for something that can actually be done. A good partner will tell you what's realistic. You can produce Star Wars on a $10,000 budget and a $100,000,000 budget but the approaches and final product will be very different.
Our job is to make sure you'll like the outcome, understand the trade-offs, and to help you prioritize where to spend.
Have you worked with a video vendor before? What did you like or dislike?
Knowing this - whether you’re brand new to working with a video vendor, or have a laundry list of things you didn’t like about previous working relationships - helps inform our team so that we can make sure we’re the right fit and that we're assisting you in the best way possible. We're big on fit at Lightswitch. We know what we're good at and who we're good at helping. When we find those partners we form decades long production partnerships.
Our team approaches each video kickoff call with honesty. If we don’t think something will work, we’ll not only explain our reasoning behind it, but will have an alternate solution ready to go to still deliver the best video possible.
What to do after your call
The last step of a kickoff call happens after everyone hangs up - sending a summary email.
Putting call summaries in emails is crucial, as this is where we can confirm details in a documented way that can be referenced later for clarification on both sides if needed. This is also a great time to ask any follow up questions, share new ideas that you may have thought of afterwards, etc.
