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3.17.2023

6 tips to make your B2B video cool

We’re going to come out and say it: All B2B videos have the potential to be cool. Yes, every one. All testimonials, all explainers, all B2B ads — they can all be cool if you put in a little extra effort.

In this episode of “Death to the Corporate Video,” Guy and Hope share six tips for how to make your B2B videos cool.

How to make a B2B video cool

  1. Get rid of details. 
  2. Make it shorter. 
  3. Production design. Make it look cool
  4. Embrace weirdness. 
  5. Be aware of your creative immune system. Don't let it reject things that are new. 
  6. Elevate with texture and cool accessories.

For more on each tip, listen to the full episode or read the transcript below.

Transcript

Guy Bauer:

We just think it's like Clockwork Orange that when you watch my video, your eyes are gonna be pinned open and you have to watch all three minutes. Nope, people are gonna barely make it through the first 20 seconds and they're not gonna remember squat.

Hope Morley:

Hello and welcome to Death to the Corporate Video, a podcast with tools and advice for how to make B2B video ads your prospects actually want to watch. I'm Hope Morley.

Guy Bauer:

I'm Guy Bauer.

Hope Morley:

Welcome Guy. Today on the show we are taking another idea from our listener survey. So big thank you again to everyone who filled it out. We really loved reading all your messages and responses, and I'm happy to announce that we have chosen the winner of our little drive for a $50, either gift card or donation to the food bank. And the London Food Bank is getting a $50 donation from Umault. So thank you to our listener in London. You are randomly selected, so thank you very much. And if you didn't get a chance to fill out the survey, it is now closed, but you can always email us hello@umault.com and you will get a free response from me. So we love hearing from listeners.

Guy Bauer:

I was like, what is she gonna, we didn't talk about an offer, anything, like where is she going with this?

Hope Morley:

I will give you one free response.

Guy Bauer:

Get an email.

Guy Bauer:

We usually bill per email. Yeah, we're like lawyers.

Hope Morley:

I'm charging for five minutes to answer your email. Yeah. But we love hearing from listeners. This idea for this episode came from a survey response. We have a couple more episodes planned in the future from other feedback we've gotten from people. So we love it. Keep sending it. Love to hear from you. So today's episode came from a listener question and they told us, you know, you talk a lot about scripted B2B video ads, which is our niche, but it is not the only thing that we do. We also do unscripted work. And they asked, how do you make other types of B2B video cool? You know, not everything is going to be a polished scripted ad, which in a way are kind of easier to make cool. So how do we make everything that you do cool. And we thought that was a great question. So today we are giving you six ways to make your B2B video cool. And this applies to scripted, unscripted, whatever kind of B2B video work you're doing.

Guy Bauer:

And if there's anyone that knows how to be cool, it's me and Hope.

Hope Morley:

We are famously cool. 

Guy Bauer:

I am cool. Uh, no, I am not cool. I'm uncool, but I know how to make cool videos. Yeah. 

Hope Morley:

We are cool in one subsect of the world, just one sub little section and it's how to make cool B2B videos. We know how to do it. We are sharing our six tips today.

Guy Bauer:

All right. So yes, six tips on how to make a cool B2B video. Yeah. And like lumped into this aren't just funny ads or backpacking montages through.  I've also, I mean, I don't know, this is too much digression, but like if you, like, if you look at most cool work or a lot of it is like just get backpacking people and like have them trek and like camp and like look at the stars and then like walk through muddy river banks and stuff. I mean so much stuff is out there. You know why? Cuz it does look cool. Yeah. And there's a reason why it's out there. But a lot of times for our clients, if you think about what our clients do, it doesn't really make sense to go hiking on a riverbank in Patagonia or whatever where everything looks really cool. Right? So we're gonna give you some tips on how to make those less than cool things. Cool. Okay.

Hope Morley:

All your work can be cool with just these six easy tips.

Guy Bauer:

There you go. We're gonna solve every problem. This is a panacea.

Guy Bauer:

No, I'm just kidding. Okay, go ahead.

Hope Morley:

That's like a throwback 2019 podcast joke. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's, anyone's actually been listening to us for that long. Anyway, tip number one for making your B2B video cool is get rid of details.

Guy Bauer:

And we, we've talked about this a lot, but what bogs down videos and causes them to be three minutes. So here's the thing too is that is it's way easier to be cool in spurts than it is. Like I can run, I can't personally run, but a human can run like a 40 yard dash in like, I don't know, like four seconds I think. You know, like that's in the, at the NFL combines, that's like a wide receiver time, right? But go and tell that wide receiver to run that over the next three minutes. They can't do it. You can't, can't sustain that. Maintain that speed. Yeah. Correct. It's like way easier to be cool in spurts than it is over a long period of time. Now what causes things to be uncool is time. What I'm trying to say is the details cause things to be longer.

Hope Morley:

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. 

Guy Bauer:

And so a lot of people get trapped and that's how they end up into these three minute things because they're filled with details. And it's really hard, like say you say you have this cool setup where you've got light tubes and you've got this cool aesthetic. Well after 10 seconds of in that light tube cool environment, it's now boring. Like it's now old hat. So like if you're having all these details in your video and it's the three minute thing, it's very hard to be cool for three minutes. So the details are forcing a longer run time. That longer runtime is now exposing you to like, it would just take a month to shoot all the cool scenes that you would need to, to shoot in order for three minutes to be cool. So details are uncool. Details cause things to also just be boring Now. So what do you do? But you have to, right? Like you have a lot of details. Understand that 90, 99% of your audience are not taking notes as they watch this video and so it's going over their head anyway. They're not gonna remember it. These details are driving you nuts, making you make a video that's boring and then they're also driving your audience nuts. Like they're not gonna remember it. In fact, you're just clouding any kind of message. Yeah. By pouring a bunch of details in.

Hope Morley:

Any of these B2B videos. You're honestly, you're, you're trying to leave people with a feeling, right? Like a good feeling about a company. Like let's take for example a testimonial video, right? Like you want to leave viewers with a feeling of trustworthiness and confidence in the company. Like you want to leave this impression. Correct. If you have too many details in that testimonial video and it's too long, you're just gonna take people out of it and it's unimportant for contributing to that feeling. So if there's too many details about the specifics of the project that this client is talking about, nobody really cares or needs to know that. What they need to know is they need to hear like the confidence that they had in your team and leave that feeling of, oh yeah, these people can do it. They did a great job and that's what you're trying to leave.

Guy Bauer:

The other thing is in production actually, so I in, in production and then writing the script too. I've noticed a trap is, well that's not totally accurate, so let's bring in the right paper that would be in front of the person when we film them. Or you know, like they wouldn't wear those kind of shoes. Like, like there's some kind of FAA body of advertising that's like scrutinizing every single frame. No one is gonna see that no one, you know, but, uh, no one's gonna see it. How is it that it took like sleuths internet sleuths to notice the water bottle and the coffee cup in Game of Thrones? No one noticed that. Yeah, that just is nerds on Reddit. Like I, I saw those episodes. I never saw those things. Never ever, ever. Okay. So like even that nobody noticed. And even at that, here's the other thing is, okay, so say there is a Starbucks cup in the thing that doesn't like take away from Game of Thrones at all.

Like it's, it's not a big deal. Focusing on details is gonna drive you nuts. And it, and it also adds no value. You have to strip away details and focus on just saying one thing. Your audience is gonna barely remember your company name. They're barely gonna remember this commercial or video or whatever. Like what's just one thing you want them to walk away with. Everything else should be stripped out. Stop wasting time moving potted plants on set and like taking 30 minutes to like, oh well the toaster oven is fake. Huh? That looks fake. Why would they have a toaster oven there? Like that doesn't No, no, that's only fake to you. My analogy is kinda like, have you ever like thought about a word like food? Yeah. And you're like food keep,

Hope Morley:

Keep saying it over and over again. Yeah.

Guy Bauer:

It's like existential. That's what happens on set too. Cuz you're looking at this frame and you're like, wait, toaster oven, why do we even put toaster ovens on counters? Ew. And you're like, get that toaster oven out of there and then like you look at the spot like a month later and there's like an empty kitchen because like everyone on set was driving themselves crazy that why are there toaster ovens here? No toaster ovens brand standard. No toaster oven. So it's like,

Hope Morley:

I would never work for an anti toaster oven brand. I am very pro toaster oven. This is a hill I will die on.

Guy Bauer:

Oh, toaster ovens. Actually, if there were, you gave me just one kitchen appliance, I would say toaster oven period. Yes. Period. You can do pretty much anything in a toaster oven. Yes. Yeah. So just nobody's noticing the details and all they're doing is making your video not cool.

Hope Morley:

Yeah. And as I always say, your video does not exist in a vacuum. Nobody is just watching the video and that's the only touchpoint they have with the brand. That's the only thing they're ever gonna see about your company. No, they're reading through the website, they're talking to a salesperson. They have a pitch deck. They have so many other places that you can have details that they can ask questions. Nobody is just watching a 60 second testimonial. And that's the only thing they've ever seen and will ever see from your brand.

Guy Bauer:

Yeah. Correct.

Hope Morley:

All right, so tip number two, to make your B2B video cool or cooler, this is a related tip, but make it shorter so it's not just about getting rid of details, but it's really hard to maintain anyone's attention for a long period of time. So short and sweet is the way to go with these B2B videos. We've started, I've started thinking a lot more about how really making multiple short videos can be much more effective than one long video. Say you've got a client that has three main points that they really, really, really wanna make. Say they have three benefit statements that they wanna get across. That's three videos, that's not one video that gets into three benefits. If you visit our blog at umault.com/insights last week I wrote a piece on the best B2B video campaigns I've seen so far in 2023. And a recurring feature in a lot of these campaigns is that they have a main spot and then they have small cut down like benefit or feature specific spots that are within the campaign. That's really what we're seeing the best brands doing. That's really a best practice going forward. 

Guy Bauer:

I mean now again, everything we say here, there's always an exception. There's always like Harmon Brothers Squatty Potty, right? Where it's like one video says it all and you buy, but a Squatty Potty’s 20 bucks. Yeah.

Hope Morley:

And that's a DTC product.

Guy Bauer:

Correct. So like there is no one video that you're gonna make that will make everything work. So what we've noticed, and it's not just us, it's like everybody is that it takes a very long time and multiple, multiple, multiple touchpoints for someone to work with you. And that's what marketing is for, right? That's why we're making these B2B videos is like to get more leads, right? Let's just think, let, let's just practically think here. Like say I made a three minute video that said all those three benefit statements, right? And say I sponsor that well for three years as my clients are not in market for what I do. They're just watching that boring video and they're not watching it because they've already seen it. Right? And most likely

Hope Morley:

They're, and it's three minutes long

Guy Bauer:

And it's three minutes long. So they're not even getting through it versus a mosaic of videos that are all like, let's just say 60 seconds, three different sixties or five different thirties or whatever. Over that three years there's more variety. It's just easier and more bite size. Because again, like we always, we do think in a vacuum, we just think and we think that like, it's like Clockwork Orange that when you watch my video, your eyes are gonna be pinned open and you have to watch all three minutes and there's watching for memorization. Nope. People are gonna barely make it through the first 20 seconds and they're not gonna remember squat.

Hope Morley:

And it serves the prospect too because people like to do a choose your own adventure. So if I'm shopping for a new B2B product for our company, there might be a feature or a benefit that this fictional product has that I only care about one of the benefits. Cause I'm looking for one thing, the other two might not actually apply to me and I don't need to hear about them. I'm still gonna buy based on the one benefit that does. So if I'm on your YouTube channel and you have three separate videos and I see one, that's exactly what I'm looking for. That serves me as a prospect. 

Guy Bauer:

Never thought of it like that, but you're exactly right. Choose your own, choose your own benefit, right? Like it allows the client to put their own weight, the prospect to put their own weight on what you do. Yeah. Because if you try to force them into a three minute thing that just says everything, the first two they could knock.

Hope Morley:

Right? If the first one doesn't apply to me, I'm gonna bounce before you get to the one that I was looking for.

Guy Bauer:

Yeah. Oh that's, I didn't even think of it like that, but that's really clever. Yeah. I mean

Hope Morley:

I am rather clever.

Guy Bauer:

And then going back to the previous point too, it's just really hard to sustain cool over a long period of time. Like for example, this is what I'm really proud of when I made my space kids thing the first time, it was the kids launching. Like I knew that the biggest, like I'm a science fiction lover and one of my biggest pet peeves is anytime you see someone who made like a spaceship set and they tried to make a spaceship movie, the spaceship set only looks real in a couple angles, but because they make their spaceship movie 10 minutes, you eventually have to use other angles. Like you literally run out of time. And that's where their lack of production value and their spaceship, that's where it falls apart because they have to show too much of it. So I knew when building my kid's spaceship thing, I was like, this thing is such low quality, it's only gonna work in these three angles. That's it. And I'm not gonna try to force it. And also the story I knew had to be so short because I don't have the quality to make it a two hour Star Trek movie or even a 10 minute thing. Like, so it's just hard to sustain cool for a long period of time. Every second that ticks you have to work almost exponentially harder to maintain that level of cool tip the odds in your favor just make it shorter. It's easier to be cool.

Hope Morley:

So third way to make your B2B videos cooler is production design. Production design is not just for the big guys anymore, it's for all of us. There's a lot of ways that you can elevate and make things cooler by thinking more strategically about your production design. If you listen to our last episode about our Slingshot Biosciences project, we talked a lot about playing with colors and fun lights. Like that's an element of production design that we use to make that look cooler. Or you can build sets. I'll link to it in the show notes. But I just posted on LinkedIn this week, a before and after of a set that we built for a project that we were given an empty and weirdly shaped conference room to be filming. That's supposed to be a really engaging, fun teaser for a new product launch. And we built a really cool set to put these people on instead of just shooting them in a boring hotel conference room. I don't wanna say it's an easy way, but production design is a way to get out of the office and do something that makes it look cool.

Guy Bauer:

Yeah. And production design is, it could mean wardrobe too. If you analyze commercials that you like, odds are, they've made people dress nice. One of the big causes like corporate video or like stale B2B feeling video is they don't like they, this is the standard is like, don't wear pin stripes, don't wear complicated patterns. Don't wear logos. Right? That's as much production design wardrobe information that people think about. And what usually people do then is they'll wear like a black suit jacket with a white shirt that's just very boring. Wardrobe makes up a majority of actually what people are looking at. Yes, they're looking at the person's face, but they're also using peripherals and context to look at the person's clothes. So a great cheap way to boost the look is just have people bring, even if you don't have money for wardrobe, is give them the color palette of your company.

So if your colors are purple and yellow, say if you have purple and yellow clothes, bring them. Or any complimentary colors, be intentional and just put colors on the screen in a very easy way to put colors on the screen is just through what people are wearing. The other thing is think about, just think about any ad that you see on tv. Most of them are going to take place in very nice exterior locations like mountain climbing streams, camping backyards with like those string lights. It's all about like getting good looking images. And when you shoot in a conference room, it is impossible for you to get a good looking image. It's just impossible. It's just white walls. And even if there's art, it's like corporate art and stuff. So we have this rule is get out of the office, like, don't shoot in your office. Just get out of the office. How can you tell the story without shooting in an office?

Hope Morley:

I mean, offices are inherently uncool.

Guy Bauer:

They're uncool!

Hope Morley:

And we're not just saying that cuz we gave ours up and work remotely, but they don't look good. You know, they're pretty much universally bland even if they're nicely designed and have some of them now, you know, have more color and nice furniture, but even so it, they're just not gonna be cool. Yeah.

Guy Bauer:

Okay. Yeah. Anyway, I don't wanna, yeah, cannibalize from our, our next point, which is Yes. I'll, I'll go into it, which is yeah, please be weird and own it. So the big mistake many corporations make, which leads to corporate video is they don't want to get in trouble. No one wants to get fired, no one wants to get canceled. No one wants to be the latest thing on Twitter of like, did you see what this company did? And I'm not advocating for getting in trouble with like ESG stuff, but think about like, like it, whoa. Is it weird if people are not wearing suits in our, like what if like, if they're just wearing like casual clothes, what will people think? You know what they'll think, they'll think nothing. Like they won't, like that's not, you're not gonna get canceled for that.

You're not gonna get in trouble for your people not wearing like corporate clothes or whatever. Stop trying to fit in. Cuz when you fit in you just become white noise. You literally bake the white noise into your spot by you looking like everybody else and not wanting to stick out, not wanting to be weird. So what do I mean by weird? Weird is actually just something you've never seen before. And don't be scared by that. A lot of people are like, well has that ever been done before? Nope, it hasn't. Well then that's the perfect opportunity to be cool is go for it and own it. And it may be bad, it may actually be bad in the grand scheme of things, but since it's new no one's gonna know. And you get cool credit. If you look at any of the big ads that are like, whoa, that's so cool.

Like it's actually borderline bad. Like the cool trend right now is big large format frames with very harsh sun on people. And almost like in the nineties when they would do those like very wide angle like kind of cockeyed shocks on people's face, that's cool now. But actually 10 years ago that was uncool and 20 years before that it was cool. So like cool is just defined by how much you own it or not. Like no one knows what's cool. What's cool is being like my friend Ralph who in high school was just weird and never wavered. And then that act of not wavering is actually what is cool. Being cool is just doing your own thing. So it's like, just don't worry about what people are gonna think of you again. Like don't say mean things and you know, do things that are obviously dumb and stupid but like,

Hope Morley:

Or like offensive. 

Guy Bauer:

Not what we're saying. No, no. You can't do that. But like, be okay in your own skin. It's fine. No one cares. No one cares either. No one cares. This is the, uh, nihilist hour. 

Hope Morley:

Thanks for listening.

Guy Bauer:

No one caring is empowering. Yeah. It's like no one cares. It's like we got Dodson in here, we got Dodson. See, no one cares. No one cares. It's like no one.

Hope Morley:

That's a Jurassic Park reference for anyone who can get that. I think that's cares. Yeah. That's an empowering thing that a lot of us figure out is we get older, you know, that it's like people aren't paying as much attention to you as you think that they are. Yep. And nobody really cares or notices a lot of things. So do what you wanna do and make something great.

Guy Bauer:

My neighbor next door told me this. They did some kind of um, like experiment. They had a person dressed in a chicken suit, go to a lecture hall like at a university, you know, a lecture hall, like a big one, like 200, 300 kids, you know and a person in a chicken suit went there and sat in it in the class the entire time. And then after the class they surveyed everyone and asked, did you see the person in the chicken suit? And a majority of them didn't see it. Like, they don't see it. No one cares. Like they're, we're all in our, another thing I read too is like, name the cringiest moments from all the people you know that they think are their cringiest moments and you can't think of anything cuz you only care about your cringey moments like no one else. You're not caring like no one cares about anyone else. So like, so what is the point? But you know what I'm saying, no one cares, just do it. Go. And you know what? And then no one cares until they do. And that's the best thing is like, then potentially people will really care about what you're doing.

Hope Morley:

Because you've made a mark.

Guy Bauer:

Because you were weird and you owned it. And so just be like, my friend Ralph, like Ralph wore like weird shirts. Like I can't even describe it cuz it's not about what he was wearing. It's not about what he

Hope Morley:

 It's about the confidence that he had in wearing it.

Guy Bauer:

Exactly. Exactly. It's not, it's the medium is a message. The pattern just keeps coming over and over. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. It's like, it's the confidence in which you carry yourself. They judge based on how you do it. Not essentially what you're saying.

Hope Morley:

All right guy, you wanna share the fifth tip?

Guy Bauer:

Okay, the fifth tip is this is beware of your immune system.

Hope Morley:

So drink lots of orange juice, right?

Guy Bauer:

No, no. Your creative immune system. So what what's gonna happen is, is say you're a brand working with an agency and they pitch something that is cool. So now we're talking directly to like, you know, brands who are working with agencies and they wanna make cool work. Well, odds are your agency is gonna come up with a cool idea. Now what have we defined Cool as cool as kind of weird and new and like, I don't know, not not seen all the time. And what you're gonna have is an immediate creative immune system reaction. Your white blood cells of creatively will swarm that new idea and try to destroy it basically because it is new and you have no reference for it. You've never seen it before. No one has defined it. It's been, it's just an idea that you've never seen executed. I'm a big Weeknd fan. A big Weeknd fan, not of the weekend, the artist the Weeknd.

Hope Morley:

Not just Saturdays.

Guy Bauer:

I do love weekends, but um, and this happens every time he puts out a new album. I listen to it and I'm like, this guy's lost it. It’s over. This isn't, I mean he's lost it. Just, I'm done. And then like I listen to the album again and I'm like, all right, there's a couple songs and then in a month cut to a month later I'm like, yeah, that's the best album I'm telling you. It's amazing. Why do I have that knee-jerk like kind of hatred is because the Weeknd keeps advancing in his career. Every album he puts out, he experiments with new things that haven't been done before. And so when I hear those things it's almost like I can't compare it to anything else cuz I've never heard anything like that. So my immune system goes bad evil, kill it, destroy it. No good.

No, no, no. And that's my literal immune system. Like trying to force it into consensus and status quo. Well you're doing the same thing with ideas and that's why the only prescription for your immune system is to sleep on it. And you need lots of time to sleep on it because you need to determine is this truly a bad idea or is it actually a really good new idea that you just don't have time, you just don't have any basis to compare it to. You just have no control. So take time, sleep on it. The worst thing you can do is start asking everybody about it because they're gonna have their own creative reaction. 

Hope Morley:

Knee jerk reaction. 

Guy Bauer:

Yeah, exactly.

Hope Morley:

Yeah. It's easy to fall into a creative rut and it's always easy to make the same thing that you made last year. It's easy to get approved. People already know that they liked it. Like let's just keep making this. It's a lot harder to push through something new. Yep. All right, tip number six. Right. Our last tip for how to make your B2B videos. Cool Guy will you share the last one?

Guy Bauer:

I will. The last one is elevate with texture the necessary unnecessary. So easiest way to describe this is like what do you need in nor what do you need to wear in order not to go to jail? So you need to wear pants and a shirt, right? In order not to go to jail. 

Hope Morley:

In public.

Guy Bauer:

In public, right. A scarf is not needed even when it's cold. You kind of don't need a scarf legally. You, you, you know, like you're not gonna get arrested for not wearing a scarf. So why do people wear scarves? Well in the, in the winter they wear it cuz it's, it is gonna protect them from the cold. But why do they wear scarves when it's, it's not cold is because it looks nice. It's not necessary. A scarf will not like make or break you. It will not send you to jail or not. It has no actual practical use other than it looks nice. So that's what we're talking about is like stop trying to make everything so perfect and like every little bit has to drive information or brag about what you do. Like embrace the things that are just neat.

Hope Morley:

And it seems unnecessary. But if you look at someone who is particularly well dressed, it's not just that they're wearing a nice pair of jeans and a nice shirt. They've usually accessorized. They have nice shoes, they have jewelry, they have a scarf. You know, those little things that people add are actually the most important part of being cool, of being fashionable in this example. So adding those little elements into your video are not unnecessary. They are the little sprinkle of cool that you have that are needed to bring it from a corporate nothing B2B video into the realm of cool.

Guy Bauer:

Yep. Unnecessary but cool. So if something is cool, like cool also is like, um, like in video games, you know how like you're, there's driving games and then you hit one of those things with the arrows and you go faster. Mm-hmm. It's like that slippery part. You're that boost you, that's what a cool part is. It's almost like cool credit and it just drives viewership. It just like drives people to like lean in. Yeah. It serves no practical like purpose other than you need to reward your audience for watching. And if they get a little cool part that's neato and odds are they're just gonna remember the cool part anyway. Cause it's cool.

Hope Morley:

So specifically what we're talking about with this, when you talk about a B2B video, so this might be a little part that's, you know, a quick cuts through an edit or a way that's like a little bit more engaging than your normal thing. Or it could be a little bit of authenticity, personality, a little behind the scenes shot, something that's just bringing something a little different into the mix.

Guy Bauer:

I mean like, look at any of the big TV commercials or cool things that you like. There's uh, little flourishes of cool elements. A lot of times you'll see like off weird angle, like if somebody's walking through the woods, there'll just be a quick shot of the camera looking up at trees and looking at the sun spike the lens. And that part is not necessary. It's just people walking through the woods. But that little bing, uh, gives you like texture and a feeling. And you know what, it looks nice like if you were to look at like a, a chart of the coolness level, let's just say it's flatlining, it's flatlining during your scene of just two people walking through the woods or two people walking through a hallway or whatever. And then, and then you do some cool abstract shot that just looks cool, it has cool light, there's gonna be a slight ping up and then it'll go back down to the flat line. Well the, if you were to take the average of the coolness level, it is higher because you put that little ping in, you know, and it's unnecessary. And that's the thing. It's, and that's where those little unnecessary things get edited out because they are unnecessary, but they are necessary. They're the necessary unnecessary if you want to be cool and get people to watch your thing.

Hope Morley:

And keep watching it. Yep. Alright, let's run through what our six tips are for how to make your B2B video cool. Tip number one, get rid of details. Tip number two, make it shorter. Tip number three, production design. Make it look cool. Tip number four, embrace the weirdness. Tip number five, be aware of your creative immune system. Don't let it reject things that are new. And tip number six, you need to elevate with texture and cool accessories.

Guy Bauer:

Yes. And you know, just experiment and be brave and don't do things that are gonna get you in trouble with authorities. But other than that, like, and the master litmus test is this, will someone write me an angry letter over this like, dude, God, at one minute and two seconds in there was a shot that is not technically accurate and I will no longer watch any of your videos ever again because of this inaccuracy. Like, no one's gonna write that letter. So unless some like, and even if that person did write that angry letter, you would be like, oh my God, what's wrong with this person? And throw it away. Anyway. So I'll take like, what do you think the comments are gonna blow up because this thing isn't scientifically accurate. A hundred percent no. Unless you're doing like a tutorial on being scientifically accurate, you know, but like, if it's marketing, if it's the thing, no one cares. No one cares. Stop being so hard on yourself and it's that being hard and like we have to be like perfect. That's what causes it not to be cool because it's striving for perfection, not entertainment. Boom. Might drop. Goodbye.

Hope Morley:

Thanks for listening today. We hope you learned something about how to be cool from the two coolest cats in B2B video marketing. You can find us on our website at umault.com. That's U M A U L T.com. Or you can find us across all the social media channels at Umault. And as I said at the top of the episode, you can always contact us. Hello at umault.com. Thanks for listening today. 

Guy Bauer:

You're welcome.

GUY BAUER

FOUNDER AND

CREATIVE

DIRECTOR

Picture of Guy bauer, founder of umault

Guy has been making commercial videos for over 20 years and is the author of “Death to the Corporate Video: A Modern Approach that Works.” He started the agency in 2010 after a decade of working in TV, film and radio. He’s been losing hair and gaining weight ever since.

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