CharityVillage® Research: Properly crafted Videos with Heart can move donors to new giving levels

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Properly crafted Videos with Heart can move donors to new giving levels
By Pat Kahnert
March 28, 2001; Canadian FundRaiser
Creative video can be a powerful tool for both selling and celebrating your cause. Here's a formula for success in preparing, producing and presenting videos with heart that enhance the trust, confidence, pride and commitment of the partners - sponsors, donors, volunteers, staff and community partners.
The key to your success in making the most of this medium is to surround your production efforts with focused preparation and relevant presentation techniques. Here are some lessons in producing videos with heart that move your target audience to further appreciate and, ultimately, support your group's work:
Start with clear objectives for your video initiative. Who do you want to reach, and what would you like them to do as a result of seeing the video? How will you measure your success? Develop a theme that captures the spirit of your production and outline a creative treatment that will help you validate your theme.
Ensure you have a good story with real people who are both articulate and passionate about the benefits of your group's work. People featured in your video can bring the best out of what your group means to them and others in the community.

Set a critical path for every aspect of the production
Exciting visual is critical to the success of your video. In addition to shooting exciting cutaways, we place high value on capturing relaxed and incisive interviews, and putting the subjects at ease. We want people to speak from the heart, not from a script.
Good videos with heart focus on how people feel, not on the logistics of your work, which is better accomplished in print. A great interview is only as good as the quality of the camera work and editing. You can't beat the impact of captivating and dramatic visuals combined with a confident and direct subject, accompanied of course by great music and magical mixing.

Create the right atmosphere, in a face-to face viewing
After the expense and heavy time invested in preparing and producing the right video, it is crucial that you create the right atmosphere to show the video. A well-orchestrated screening for a target audience will always create a positive and lasting impression.
Don't just mail the video to your audience. Create a face-to-face viewing opportunity, including a brief introduction. Always survey your audience following the screening, and ask them if they would like to have a copy of the video (VHS copies cost just $4 or $5 each to produce). And don't be surprised if one of your viewers offers to continue or even increase their contribution of time, effort and money to your cause!
Nothing is more gratifying than generating immediate returns from a well-orchestrated marketing and promotional initiative, such as a video with heart that captures the essence of your cause. Recently, a video with heart that PBK + Videoframe produced for Waterloo-based Lutherwood Community Opportunities Development Association inspired one viewer at the inaugural screening to donate the equivalent of more than twice the cost of the video.
The video, Building Better Futures, "encapsulates the best of what our agency was all about," says Rev Dr Dieter Kays, president and chief executive officer of Lutherwood-CODA. It takes, he adds, "a complex organization and reduces it to understandable dimensions. More importantly, it speaks to the heart of our audience and promotes understanding and commitment to the work we do. Building Better Futures is the single most powerful communication tool that we have, to promote understanding of, and commitment to our cause."
For more information, contact Pat Kahnert, president, PBK + Associates, at 905/337-7933, or e-mail pbk@cogeco.ca. PBK provides corporate marketing and public relations services specializing in building community partnership programs that help business, government and voluntary sector customers build stronger relations with their key stakeholders.