We’ve been fortunate to work with a number of PR companies over the last few years and the most valuable experiences we’ve had is when we cooperate closely with the agency. This can be on a white label basis, sometimes directly with the client or as a clearly-defined partnership. Even when we speak directly with the client, we’re always keen to align with the PR objectives.
To get the best out of video, design or web design projects, we fully engage with the PR campaign; tapping into the in-depth research and business objectives.
By combining our expertise in producing visual content, alongside the PR agency’s messaging and marketing goals, we can tell a compelling story to attract meaningful leads for the client.
Quality script writing
Working with copywriters from a PR agency elevates the quality of the visual content without question. Whether that’s writing a brief or the video script itself.
We’ve historically written scripts in-house but having a fresh perspective directly from a copywriter always keeps us on-track with the marketing messages; resulting in really focused, effective content.
Our job as a creative content agency is to provide a visual call-to-action to draw viewers into longer form content. Great writing and visuals go hand-in-hand. The visuals alone cannot pass on larger pieces of information, only act an encouragement. However, without visuals it’s difficult to get a viewers’ attention.
Headlines
From our understanding of PR, the ability to grab an audiences’ attention through headline-writing is something we’re really interested in. Now I’m not talking about click-bait but rather being able use a headline as a basis for a video that will encourage the viewer to explore a topic further. Perhaps the video could even be ‘news-worthy’?
It shouldn’t simply be about embedding a video onto a website or into an article as stand-alone pieces of content, they should work hand-in-hand. The video should ideally try to incorporate the headline and achieve meaningful engagement for the benefit of the client.
Breaking down complex ideas with animation
The big selling point for animation, particularly within a B2B context, is it’s ability to break-down quite complex ideas from a white paper or complex offering. We can then create easy-to-understand pieces of sales content.
Sales & marketing teams often ask us for short animated videos to use in email campaigns or on dedicated landing pages. Rather than trying to explain the offering during a call or through an elongated sales pitch or presentation, sales people can use the video.
Animation has the ability to entertain, visually engage and deliver messages very quickly. As they say, a picture can paint a thousand words. I think animation can offer a bit more, especially when it’s delivering 25 images per second 🙂
The animation process
The perception is that animation is a complicated process. It isn’t. All we ask for is 5 key marketing messages and the brand guidelines, that’s it! Then, either we’ll write the script ourselves or the agency will send us a pre-approved script.
There are only minor responsibilities from this point onwards from the agency; signing-off the storyboard and artwork. We can then get to work on the animation.
The whole process from script to delivery takes 4-5 weeks for a 2 minute video.
Messaging for Web Design projects
When designing a website, in addition to eye-catching, intuitive design, it’s essential that the messaging is clear and as simple as possible. We cooperate with the PR agency to incorporate the messaging throughout the website.
Making sure the website isn’t clogged full of sales-speak but instead speaks directly to the end-user is the most important goal for us. PR copywriters know exactly how to avoid sales-heavy text so once again the final website benefits from that cooperation. We can then go away and solve the technical aspects of building a new website or landing page.
We are often asked to re-design websites; where a company’s branding might have changed or the website needs additional things like animated banners, new functionalities or fix bugs. Once the website is complete we can be as involved as the client needs. Monthly maintenance and ensuring a high level of security can be part of that.
As part of our cooperation, we are often asked to support one-off campaigns by building a landing page. These are particularly useful for report launches, white paper downloads or one-off events, that require registration or more information to be kept in one place for easy access.
The future is both long and short
Audiences are very happy to consume both very long and very short content. We’ve all seen the rise of long-form video podcasts where viewers are very happy to watch a video for 1 hour and then they’ll scroll to consume very short content. Both are equally valuable…in moderation. The main thing for us is when we produce long-form videos, we want to make sure that clients get the maximum value from them. Therefore, we offer the option of editing multiple bite-sized videos for Instagram reels, Tik Tok, YouTube Shorts etc.
Re-purposing is really important. Short, edited videos can really take on a life of their own. There are so many platforms which allow us to offer increased value by publishing a whole package of videos which can last a number of months.
Connect visuals with a PR campaign
Cooperation between a creative content agency and a PR agency ensures the best optimised value proposition, when the effort and investment spent on creating great copy, messaging and an associated PR campaign gets a multiplied ROI when connected to engaging, eye-catching visuals.
About the Author
Edward Loades is Managing Partner at Blackcliff Media, a creative content agency which provides a visual call-to-action to draw viewers into longer form content. For further information, connect with Edward on LinkedIn, contact him directly: edward@blackcliffmedia.com or visit the Blackcliff Media website.
