Preparing for your next event? It will be important to put out promotional materials that create a buzz and inspires people to get involved. At the same time, you may want to weave this event into the larger narrative of what your company is about, without losing focus on the event.
That’s a lot to achieve on top of managing an event, so to help you out, we’ve put together some of our best tactics for showcasing your event. Items on the list below can be used in combination or on their own to build a video campaign that will make your next event promotion striking and effective.
1. Trailer
Trailers are the classic format for a promotional video, with content focused on introducing the concept of an event, along with some of the key people and highlights. The aim of a trailer is to give an overview of what attendees will get out of their participation. Trailers work well for almost any kind of event. Great footage to include might come from past events, or consist of interviews with the organizers and presenters.
2. Teaser
The teaser video is slightly different from the trailer, hinting at content and piquing interest by keeping back large elements of what participants or watchers can expect, leaving viewers at a cliffhanger rather than giving a true overview. A teaser will work well for an event that has a few surprises in store, such as special guests or giveaways.
3. Interview
Video interviews allow you to personalize your event by introducing some of the key personalities. Interviews are also an opportunity to drive home key messages from your event, highlight expertise, or just give some insight into the presenters, organizers, or typical (hopefully enthusiastic) attendees.
4. Event Highlights
Showing highlights from previous events in a series can be a highly effective way to raise interest in an upcoming installment. All of the content you can generate by filming live events is extremely high-value, and it’s worth every penny to have a few cameras on hand. You can reuse that footage in many ways beyond event promotion, too. For instance, you can easily rework it to promote your brand, as a presenter’s reel, or to make available online for viewing after the event for anyone wanting to relive the event activities.
5. Live Feed
A live feed expands your reach to viewers that can’t be at the event itself by letting them watch or listen online. When using live feeds, you can employ the landing page where it’s published to showcase to your products and services in ways that you can’t do in person. For example you can integrate ads or links to your products and website with the live content from the event.
6. Behind-the-Scenes
Nothing makes people feel more in on the action as showing your organization or key people involved in an event during the behind-the-scenes preparations. This gives a sense of the inner workings of your event and invites viewers to share in the excitement, while humanizing the people involved.
7. B-roll
B-roll is video footage of everything that isn’t a highlight: the outside of a venue; shots of key people when they’re offstage; footage showing the product; shots of the crowd, etc. Banking B-roll from your events will be extremely useful in creating a sense of your event’s atmosphere in promotional videos, and can be interspersed with any of the above content as filler or to cover editing gaps.
8. Bloopers
Did you happen to get any missteps, backstage laughs or other funny moments on camera? Bloopers are another way to show the human side of your company, and the fast-paced, dynamic nature of event production usually provides plenty of silly and clumsy offstage moments.
We want to know: how are you using video to showcase your next event? Leave us a comment or tweet to us!
