Death to the Corporate Video – In Just 7 Minutes with Guy Bauer

Resources/Links:

• Check out Guy’s Free Guide: umault.com/theinvisible

Summary

Are you struggling to make a marketing video that everyone would want to watch?

Have you found yourself being bound to the “corporate” video template?

Do you want to know how you could make creative videos that could bring out the best in your business and promise you more views and clients?

Guy Bauer is the Founder and Creative Director of Umault, an agency that makes wildly creative B2B video marketing campaigns people actually want to watch.

In this episode, Guy shares the best and promising ways to make creative marketing videos that can guarantee more views and sales. He also talks about how you can avoid the typical and plain “corporate” video that everyone dreads to watch.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:20 – Guy’s ideal client: “Our ideal clients are marketers who work for B2B brands, and usually, these B2B brands sell complicated or hard-to-explain things like Cloud, AI, digital transformation, complicated financial products.”
• 01:50 – Problem Guy helps solve: “Our clients are B2B marketers, and they have increasing pressure to make a splash with their brand, especially as you know, competition proliferates. And there are big brands, you know, big behemoths like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and every day they expand into more and more B2B services.”
• 03:08 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Guy: “Our ideal clients are marketers who have that feeling that the stuff they’re making isn’t cutting the mustard, right? It’s work that just feels corporate. It just doesn’t feel exciting. They’re not seeing the excitement in their prospects.”
• 04:32 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Guy’s solution: “The biggest one is that they’re rushing into making the video, rather than stepping back and thinking about a strategy and a message and an idea. They think of all that stuff on the way to the production, on the way to the shoot.”
• 05:19 – Guy’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “Stop rushing to make a video, which is so counterintuitive. If you want to make a video don’t make a video yet.”
• 06:04 – Guy’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Guy’s Free Guide: umault.com/theinvisible
• 06:51 – Q: What is video strategy? A: Video strategy is this, here’s my metaphor, is that video is a delivery mechanism, just like how a missile works. So, a missile without a warhead, if you just lobbed a missile over to a target without a warhead, it would just hit the ground and do nothing. The missile is worthless without a warhead. The strategy is the warhead; the video is the missile.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“The strategy is the warhead; the video is the missile. Don't go rushing into making an empty missile that just hits with a thud. You need to build the warhead.” -Guy Bauer Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:09
Greetings, everyone, and a warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to you from Little Castaways Beach here in Queensland, Australia, joined today by Guy Bauer. Guy, good day, sir. A very warm welcome. Where are you based?

Guy Bauer 0:22
I am in a little suburb of Chicago, Illinois called Elmhurst.

Tom Poland 0:27
Elmhurst. Well, welcome! Folks, if you don’t know Guy, he is the Founder and Creative Director of-

Guy Bauer 0:34
Umault.

Tom Poland 0:35
Umault. Thank you! U-M-A-U-L-T. Now, that’s an agency that makes wildly creative business-to-business video marketing campaigns, which people actually want to watch and watch again and again and again. And Guy’s nominated the title for the interview, and I love it, Guy, I have to say. It’s called- the title of this interview is, Death to the Corporate Video. You know, the ones that the banks put out on the- you know, maybe some of the government departments put out and so on. So, let’s get into this, and let’s find out how Guy works with his clients to create videos that are engaging and interesting, and that generate revenue. Guy, our seven minutes is going to start now, sir. Question number one is who is your ideal client?

Guy Bauer 1:20
Our ideal clients are marketers who work for B2B brands, and usually, these B2B brands sell complicated or hard-to-explain things like Cloud, AI, digital transformation, complicated financial products. Those are our clients.

Tom Poland 1:36
Right. So, question number two and six and a half minutes left. We’re doing well so far. What’s the problem you solve for them? Because I’ve been hearing in that there’s some complicated explanation required. So how do you solve that problem?

Guy Bauer 1:50
Right. And so, our clients are B2B marketers, and they have increasing pressure to make a splash with their brand, especially as you know, competition proliferates. And there are big brands, you know, big behemoths like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and every day they expand into more and more B2B services. So, our clients are having to compete on a brand level with these big behemoths that have tons of brand recognition. And so how do you do that? It requires a different way of thinking. No longer can our clients go to market with just features and benefits put in bullet, in the form of bullets in a video, and the video acts and sounds more like a video, white paper, a corporate video. They have to go to market with a- they have to battle on a brand level, not just a feature and benefit level, and so we help them with that.

Tom Poland 2:46
So, it’s not only articulating the value proposition as it were, but it’s also standing out, making that splash, getting the cut-through, getting people’s attention and engagement. Okay, so let’s go to question number three, five minutes left, what would you say some of the typical symptoms that your ideal clients experienced before they find your solution? What’s going on in their business?

Guy Bauer 3:08
So, our ideal clients are marketers who have that feeling that the stuff they’re making isn’t cutting the mustard, right? It’s work that just feels corporate. It just doesn’t feel exciting. They’re not seeing the excitement in their prospects. And so, they know that there’s something wrong. And typically, what it is, is that they’re making “corporate” video. And I mean, I use that term as a very, it’s like a negative thing, “corporate” video. You know, all video that a corporation makes, I guess, technically fits into the corporate video category. But “corporate” video, when you think of that there’s a negative connotation. It feels corporate. It feels stale. It feels devoid of creative. It’s sweaty executives in forced interviews. It’s slow-motion, people collaborating in a conference room. What it is, is there is no story, and what usually makes a corporate video a “corporate” video is the story is focused on us rather than our clients.

Tom Poland 4:11
Right. So true! So, thank you for that. Three and a half minutes left question four. You’re dealing with smart people who are aggressive in their marketing and in their business goals. They can notice what’s going on. They’re going to try stuff that may not work. So, what are some of the common mistakes, maybe a couple of common mistakes that when you talk with new clients, you find out they’ve been making?

Guy Bauer 4:32
Yeah, the biggest one is that they’re rushing into making the video, rather than stepping back and thinking about a strategy and a message and an idea. They think of all that stuff on the way to the production, on the way to the shoot. Everyone has such go fever to press record. They don’t give enough weight to what it is they are filming and that’s usually the main culprit.

Tom Poland 4:59
And that’s probably the hardest part is figuring out the strategy and what the story is, and the rest of it’s probably more technical. Okay, that’s interesting. Thank you! So, let’s go to question five, two, and a half minutes left. What’s a valuable free action that someone could take, it’s probably not going to solve the whole problem, but it might take it a step in the right direction?

Guy Bauer 5:19
Yeah. Stop rushing to make a video, which is so counterintuitive. If you want to make a video don’t make a video yet.

Tom Poland 5:26
Right.

Guy Bauer 5:27
Try to put more time into making the video on paper. It’s going to save you so much more money if you pre-visualize your video. And don’t underestimate the value of sleeping on it, of just having time to think. That’s all the valuable time! The making of the video is the easiest part of the whole thing, actually.

Tom Poland 5:48
Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. Okay, so strategy before tactics, thought before execution! So, question number six, and we’ve got one minute, 45 seconds left. Where can folks go to get more ideas, more information, more help? One valuable free resource we could direct people to.

Guy Bauer 6:04
Yeah, so we have a free guide, Seven Ways to Avoid Making a Corporate Video. We set up a landing page for your listeners, umault.com/theinvisible. U-M-A-U-L-T.com/theinvisible. We also have a free masterclass telling your B2B brand story with video and we don’t ask for an email or any kind of thing.

Tom Poland 6:26
Wow!

Guy Bauer 6:26
Just go watch all, I think, there are seven or eight episodes.

Tom Poland 6:29
Fantastic! So that’s quite a rich resource there, folks! www. U-M for Mary, A-U-L-T, umault.com/theinvisible. Guy, thanks for that! That’s going to be valuable for folks. Question number seven, we’ve got 50 seconds left. What’s the one question I didn’t ask you but should have and the answer, please?

Guy Bauer 6:51
So, what is video strategy? Because I mean, strategy before execution, that’s- everybody says that! Right? So, video strategy is this, here’s my metaphor, is that video is a delivery mechanism, just like how a missile works. So, a missile without a warhead, if you just lobbed a missile over to a target without a warhead, it would just hit the ground and do nothing. The missile is worthless without a warhead. The strategy is the warhead. The video is the missile. Don’t go rushing into making an empty missile that just hits with a thud. You need to build the warhead. And I would argue that the warhead is more important than the actual. Well, I guess they’re equally important, but you have to stop ignoring the warhead.

Tom Poland 7:43
Okay, Bauer. Thank you so much for your time!

Guy Bauer 7:46
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom Poland 07:48
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.