eLocal has a series of short 10-20 second website videos which they give away to each of their clients. These videos face the challenge of presenting material which can fit on any website, in a given profession, and yet be so specific that it can effectively reach out to potential customers and make them want to do business with the company.

The videos must present material which is general enough to fit on any website in a given profession, and specific enough to effectively attract customers. Since eLocal invented the website video genre, which is still relatively new, it is important to examine their online videos and see what appears to work and what needs to be improved.

The eLocal garage door repair video is found at : http://www.youtube.com/elocalvideoexamples#p/u/4/WOvIaqPRjEU

This video provides three different shots of garage doors, one before and two after repair. The video attempts to convey to the viewer the improvement wrought by the repair work. In the first shot, meant to convey the sense of garage doors before they are repaired, the surface is a shade of yellow and out of focus. In the second shot, the garage doors are crispy white, and in focus. The scene conveys the epitome of the American dream, a nice flagstone house, with a large white two door garage. In the third shot the door is bright white and framed by a brick home.

From a visual perspective, the second mini scene consisting of the double garage doors set in a classical American dream home is the most attractive The doors are a bright white, the scene is well lite. The grass is well manicured, the driveway is in perfect repair, altogether a pleasant shot. The third scene, which conveys a new garage door in a brick home is not quite as attractive. The scene appears a bit out of focus, the brick work which is much smaller than the flagstone competes a bit with the garage door, and the garage door is single, somewhat beneath the American dream of a two car family. As a final mini-scene, the shot is anti climatic.

Marketing research has shown that the web videos which are most effective in attracting customers do so by conveying a sense of trust in the company. Awakening of trust, more than the imparting of information is what attracts customers. The second shot of a newly painted double garage in an all- American dream home, imparts trust. The first out of focus scene conveys lack of professionalism. The third scene, conveys the image of a company which is liable to slack off at the end of any job. The single garage door harkens back to the out of focus single garage door at the beginning of the video, and leaves us with a sense of decline rather than build.

A realistic shot of hard working repairmen in the process of fixing a garage door, would, in my opinion have been more effective, in conveying a sense of what the company does, and in imparting trust in the company. People are most likely to identify with and trust hard working repairmen.

The take home lesson from this web video is that the attempt to convey the before and after repair process via manipulation of camera angles exposure and focus, is not necessarily that effective. I believe people are more likely to respond to realistic images of a work in process than an obscure metaphorical presentation suggesting that some type of repair process has taken place.

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Filed under: Video Marketing

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