So, you’ve decided to hire a media guy. Step one accomplished!

Now, what do you do with him?

If you’re a small to medium sized company-and this goes for any, really-you’ll come to find that you’ll have many departments and people clamoring for your shiny new toy. Because someone who can create products for other people has high value. It holds true for just about any creative, really-HR loves borrowing creatives for logos and internal initiatives/newletters and other departments will come to find that someone else can do half their job for them is a great thing.

“Hey, can you create a video series explaining the entire concept of training to new workers?” Cue blanks stares and internal thoughts of “Isn’t that YOUR job?”. Did you hire the video guy for internal or external? Or both? We’ll get to that in a minute.

Instead, it’s best to think of how you can work together to create a great a viable product that works for everyone. Because it’s not that video guys CAN’T create a video series that pretty much makes some people’s jobs useless, but it’s also that you want a great company environment and team that can create better experiences for all. It’s also important to realize the value cost of those productions, even if you have a single full-time guy (presumably very busy), or even a team of creatives.

Here’s a thought; A single 3-minute video can cost a single guy a week to produce, and upwards of $500. Let’s stick with that number, because it easily gives a good idea of what those assets are worth to you and your company. If you wouldn’t hire an outside agency to create a video for that price, then you probably shouldn’t send your video guy on that errand. And while we’re talking about cost-it’s probably going to be more in reality. If you hire a full-time video guy, you’ll need a beefy equipment setup. At least 1 camera ($2k), a decent computer and graphics card ($2.5k-10k depending), software suites and components ($1k a year), lighting and accessories ($1k-3k) and backgrounds, stands, the sky’s the limit. If you add that media guy’s salary (and it should be decent for all they can do) in the price, plus the value cost of the equipment, then you really will be producing a video at a minimum of $1k per project if not more.

Back to the $500 per video concept. Let’s go with example 1;

You produce a video with testimonials for your external marketing campaign. It’s beautiful, dramatic, flowing shots and has everything you want in it. Call to action, graphics package, actors and more. Wait-did I just mention actors? Yup, sure did. Because here’s part of that cost that I didn’t factor in. If you shoot something with people, you’ll need to make sure that you’re using actors or people who have signed release forms. Even if you use b-roll footage from companies, it’s still going to cost you something to produce that video. And if you use someone from YOUR company, that’s great. UNTIL they leave, get fired, change positions, or generally do something that you possibly may not want to be associated with them for. And then your product is useless. Which has its own benefits and disadvantages, but you can be sure that if your executive VP is no longer in the picture, you can recognize the bad PR value of featuring them in a video about your company. Which renders any assets with them in it, effectively dead. And if you’ve shot a lot of content with that specific person in it, you have now got a lot of dead content that can’t be used. That’s an empty library and sunk costs.

Here’s example 2.  

You’re a larger company (or smarter) and you recognize the value of your creatives. You have a producer-someone who sets up the background details, actors, asks the interview questions and keeps it going (takes responsibility, that’s next post). You have a script/copy writer, someone who can give you an edge and feeling of the campaign and script. You have a media guy, the guy who lights it, films it, edits it, creates graphics for it, and finishes the video. You can add in a graphics guy to produce the graphics for the video guy. Then you have a web guy, the guy who uploads it and makes sure it gets seen and published in the right place with boosting content. Even in that example, which requires 5 people to effectively produce a piece of media, and is still placing a lot of expectations on that media guy to light/shoot/edit/graphics work/kick it out properly, you can get some effective work done. Except, you still need a proper chain of command and communication to make sure that the team does its job effectively. And that’s a “small” team. That team can service a company that needs to pump out media on a weekly basis. Daily? You’d run them ragged. You’d need double for that. And you’ll need someone effectively directing this team to do it’s best work. Because despite the size of this team-you’ll still have internal and external fights regarding how to effectively use the team to produce things for the business. Except this team is costing you maybe $5k-$10k a week in salary and shoot costs. Oh and example 1 can still apply to all the work THIS team does and then someone leaves the company after they’ve shot it.

Point being, don’t waste money by not being organized in the first place and recognizing the value of your media. It CAN work for you and it CAN work effectively. You just need to be smarter about how you use it and what you use it for. When you get a machine humming and running like it can, you’ll realize the amount of value the creatives can bring your company. And that brings us to step 3: Protection!