Building materials companies should use more videos to educate their customers and promote their products. With vehicles like YouTube, Vine, Vimeo, Wistia and others, customers are now expecting to see videos.
If you’re going to produce a video you should try to do it right. Masonite shows how not to do a video. This is surprising because Masonite is a large company who can afford to do a video correctly.
I saw this video on LinkedIn, where someone from Masonite shared it, which is a good idea. When I watched the video, I was surprised at how poorly done it was. It says absolutely nothing. The only people who will want to watch it are the people who work in their innovation center and their families. “See Daddy at work!”
Here are my assumptions:
- Masonite is a leader in the door market with some very good competitors.
- The Masonite Innovation Center is probably an impressive facility that is part of their competitive advantage.
- Not all customers will have the opportunity to tour the innovation center. A video is a great way to share this with more customers and set Masonite apart from their competitors.
What’s wrong
The video has doesn’t tell me anything. It looks like they took some images and edited them together to make a video. You can do a video that tells a story without a script but this is not one of those. The video is missing a script and voice over to tell me what I am seeing and why this makes Masonite better.
Here’s a video where they did it right. The section on innovation from this video, tells a great story.
They did it again
I thought maybe this was a one-time situation and then I came across this equally ineffective video that Masonite did to promote their exhibit at IBS. The video is a flashy exercise in creativity for creativity’s sake. There is no message or reason to visit their booth.
I can hear the creative person claiming that this is about the image and brand. “Telling builders why they should visit the booth will just get in the way of my creativity.” I think the only reason you do something is to sell something. This video doesn’t sell anything. It reminds me of a video you see at the Las Vegas airport about the David Copperfield magic show.
I toured the Masonite booth and it had a lot of very impressive new products and marketing tools. The person who gave me a tour of the booth told me a great story. A story that would make builders want to use Masonite. Too bad that story wasn’t in the video.
I’m not sure a video was the right tool to use in this situation. It looks like they had some money left in their IBS budget and decided to spend it on a video.
Builders are simple straightforward people. They don’t come to IBS looking to be entertained. Creative people frequently don’t take the time to learn how to communicate to builders. They try to wow them like they would a consumer.
If a video was the right tool, just like the innovation center video, it should have told a story. It should have started with a strategy and script.
My advice is to use more videos but make sure they tell a story.
Click here to learn about the three types of videos every building materials company should have.
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