For our new website, the main imperative was to feature online video as much as possible – not just loads of video clips of our films, but in a way that showed people in the non-video production sector just how valuable and important video on a website can be. The first thing we asked Webstars to do was to develop a new bespoke media player for us. We were thinking along the lines of the BBC iPlayer, something that offered a great viewing experience and that allowed the video to be shared with other sites for online propagation. And we wanted a media player that would not only work across our site, but that we could supply to our customers.

On our homepage, the media player would take centre stage. The film it showed would have to encapsulate something unique, and something special about Spectrecom rather than the work we produce. Last August, we went up onto Blackheath on a sunny Friday afternoon (probably the only one last summer!) to put all of our creative heads together and to decide what the film should look like. Steve even brought his kids with him, and amidst the fun, and later the drinks, a brief slowly emerged.

As always with any brief, we identified the messages we wanted to get across in the 90 seconds available. We felt that a fly-through would be able to show off our studio, hospitality and post-production facilities, introduce key members of our staff, show our work behind the scenes, and of course, allow us to screen some examples of our work. The film would have to be high-end (we opted for ‘cinematic’) so that in itself, without us having to resort to clichés like ‘creative’ and ‘quality’ in our narrative, we could simply show what we are capable of. It’s a bit like a personal ad boasting of GSOH. Don’t tell me, prove it! Just make me laugh. And finally, the film in its whole had to say something else about us, something that emerges which is more than just the sum of its component parts. We wanted this to be ‘honesty’, and in this case, being open and honest about who we are. In other words, we weren’t hiding behind the anonymity that a website can engender, where you get to see only the parts they (whoever ‘they’ are) want you to see. And for me, this precisely sums up the power of online video.  

a.greener@spectrecom.co.uk

Our old website was built back in April 2005 when Spectrecom first started trading as a limited company.  At that stage we were just excited to be in business, and the website included aspects of just about every television programme, film and corporate video Sarah Aynesworth, Steve Milton and I had ever been involved with.  It was a competent but aspirational site and made us look bigger and more accomplished than perhaps we really were at the time.  However, we soon started to develop a reputation in key production areas, notably online video, CSR, and student recruitment for colleges and universities.  But as our website grew organically, it failed to reflect our emerging brand.

We commissioned Webstars to build this new website back in July last year and from the outset, the emphasis would be to nail our brand and to focus on our online video offering.  We needed to demonstrate just how powerful online video can be, and to do that, the obvious solution was to feature video on our site about ourselves. On our old site we had a team page with a picture and a profile of each staff member.  After the studio page (which was always ranked in the first three on a Google search for "green screen studio") we found that the team page was receiving by far the most clicks on our site, sadly far more than our corporate video pages!  It taught us that people want to know who we are and our roles in the company.  OK, maybe some of our visitors were maybe just being a bit nosey, but we do, after all, work in a collaborative medium, and clients want to know what they can expect from our staff.  The maxim, "people buy from people" remains true, and we've recognised that online video has a big part to play in that.

Even now, I remain surprised by our competitors' sites, where they routinely screen their showreel material but very little else.  Don't get me wrong, they produce some great films, but they just don't use video to tell the story about themselves and their company.  It's as if to say, “we want you to buy our online video, but we won't be using it ourselves”.  More to the point, how can a visitor look at a glossy showreel on a video production company's website and say, "Yes, I can do that, I'll put that on my site".  Of course, they can't – they don't make videos. 

So with our new website we wanted show how videos should be used on a website by our clients. We decided to place video about ourselves right at the heart of the site. That's something that visitors can see working for us, and that they can copy.  In my next blog, I'll be talking about how we made those videos about ourselves. 

a.greener@spectrecom.co.uk