He picked a winner
Many clients putting on branding or sponsorship events would like to have along with photos a handful of short video clips they can use to feed the social media beasts (You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, etc). As all high-end cameras used by professional event photographers have built in capacity to shoot high definition video, it is easy to provide a 2-for-1 service to help reduce the overall cost of event coverage.
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This type of service is really aimed at the client (or PR firm working on behalf of a corporate account) who will be able to take advantage of the video provided and edit according to their own needs. Often just a brief 10 or 20 second clip is all that’s really need to help provide texture and context for a lively event where the goal is brand promotion. I was recently hired to cover a marketing activation hosted by KIA at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup 2014 (Germany won this one too!) in Montreal in our city’s much maligned Olympic Stadium. In addition to the standard set of images requested (see below for a sample shot list), I was also asked to include short video clips. Including video with my normal event photography helped me give my client everything they wanted, and saved them the added cost of hiring a videographer.
Most organizers staging a promotional event have invested a lot of money, time and effort in getting the event ready for the launch. Money is spent on promotional items like tents, giveaways, t-shirts, temporary tattoos, etc as well as a raft of (usually) locally engaged staff to man and animate the booth, interact with visitors and provide the key branding messages along with a smile and good time for people drawn to the event site. Adding video into the requested images from an event photographer makes sense in the context of the overall marketing spend. There may not be enough budget for both, and while a good photographer can provide both, the same is not necessarily true in the reverse where a videographer is using a purposely designed video camera.
The role of the combined event photographer + videographer is to capture images of all of these elements in place, as well as in action. Many times the corporate end client has outsourced the event to PR firms that specialize in promotional events, and it is part of the PR firm’s mandate to show the client just how their marketing dollars were spent and on the level of visibility they achieved through the branded elements onsite. A part of nearly every event photo shot list in these kinds of set ups include a set of images showing all the branded pieces in place and in use, as below:
- Overall activation space
- Consumer interactions – people smiling, participating in the kicking cage, getting their faces painted/tattoos applied, receiving a towel, sitting in the display vehicle ==> combination of staged (e.g. Consumers facing the camera and smiling at you) and candid shots (e.g. Consumers not looking directly at you)
- Specific branding pictures: Staged photo of entire staff team – full body length as well as cropped at the waist
- Tent
- Tent walls (inside and outside)
- Table skirt
- Flags
- Bean bag chairs
- Kicking cage
- Tattoos (preferably on people’s faces/arms)
- Towels – people holding them up as well as on the table
- Staff uniforms
These kinds of images are key to fulfilling the mandate, and are enhanced by subsequent video clips during the event of the articles being used. In the best case, a combination of video and photos will provide not only an accurate document of the event, but also impart the general feeling and a level of excitement that all marketers like to see being generated around their brands.
It is important to note that a professional videographer may well be worth the investment, particularly for weddings and other personal milestone events that require a polished professionally edited video. One of the main differences in quality between shooting brief event clips on a camera essentially designed for stills and a professional video camera is the sound quality, with vastly superior sound quality available in the higher end professional gear built for that purpose. However, for many clients, an intensively edited, polished product is not necessarily needed. In this age of distraction where attention spans are shorter than the lifecycles of fruit flies, a quick flash of video showing the key branded elements of a sponsored marketing activation (in KIA’s case we had a fun kicking cage where visitors could kick a ball into a cage and have the speed of their shot measured and played back for them) may be all that is needed to help convey the fun, excitement and vibe of an event.
