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Top Ways to Integrate the C-suite Into Your Video Strategy
The members of your company’s executive leadership team can empower your branding and marketing strategies, and not just in their capacity as decision makers. Putting your brand’s chief executive officer, senior vice president or other senior leader in front of a camera can lead to compelling, convincing video content.
With the right video production strategy, you can turn business leaders into the face of your business. This humanizing effort can be a great benefit in an era when potential customers have a wide variety of companies to choose from and skilled employees are setting the tone of the talent market. If your chief executive has a strong presence instead of being an unknown quality, your brand is more memorable.
Messages can be clear and compelling when they come directly from someone in a leadership role. Depending on the situation, this could be the chief financial officer, chief technology officer, chief human resources officer or any other relevant senior executive with a C-suite job title. The important part is to create this content as part of a fully considered video strategy, rather than taking a scattershot approach.
Why C-suite executives make great video subjects
C-suite leaders are well suited to appearing in corporate video predictions because of their intimate connections with their brands. Customers and employee teams alike may not have a strong impression of a brand unless they directly receive information from that company’s content. When the videos star real business leaders at the organization, these executives’ words have authority and power.
Matching leadership personnel with video strategies
While the general idea of business leaders in video is promising, not every chief executive is naturally suited to starring in all types of videos — each senior leader has their own personality. Depending on the mix at your organization, you may find certain types of content are especially valuable. The following are a few scenarios to look out for when designing video strategies:
- Big personalities: Sometimes, an executive’s personal brand and the company’s professional identity can combine, benefiting both parties. Consider the way Richard Branson has used personal vlogs on his YouTube channel to cross-promote so many of his organizations. While not every company will have a chief executive who travels to space, leaders with personal charisma are out there.
- Deeply involved founders: If your company’s founders are still involved with the business, they can be highly influential parts of a video marketing strategy. This has played out at Hubspot, where co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah give weight to the brand’s story by recounting it in their own words.
- Skilled communicators: In some cases, an executive’s messages can become important parts of the company’s branding, creating traditions that may help company leadership get closer to employees or audiences. For example, Publicis’s Arthur Sadoun has earned the trust of the company’s employees with his annual holiday messages, and the connection is so deep that he chose to publish a personal video disclosing that he’d had a cancerous tumor removed and updated employees on his status.
Ideas for C-suite video content
Just as there are many kinds of communicators, there are numerous genres of clips that can star business leaders, each serving a different audience and spreading a unique kind of messaging. In some cases, the leadership skills that have helped a person take on an executive position also make them an ideal spokesperson for the company.
Videos starring your business leaders could include internal communications meant for specific parts of the company’s team. These videos can be part of a fruitful collaboration between the human resources department and a senior executive. This may mean:
- Stockholder and board member updates.
- Remote and on-site employee training videos
- Crisis communications for employees and investors.
There are also strong use cases for external branding materials that feature a senior leader embodying the brand voice. Thought leadership straight from decision makers in leadership positions can be compelling. This may entail:
- Social media video clips and short-form content marketing
- Product launches, event keynotes and other formal speeches.
- Company mission statements and brand values explainers.
A balanced strategy can include both internal and external videos, as the situation demands. As long as these clips are planned out to convey a consistent brand identity and calculated to match your business’s overall values and mission, you have a great degree of creative freedom.
Getting started on executive video production
While it’s uncommon for companies to have professional-level video production departments in-house, that doesn’t mean brands should settle for less when it comes to executive videos. Whether you’re targeting an internal or an external audience with your leadership video content, a partnership with an expert video production partner can ensure your clips have the prediction values to impress your audience.
Working with Crews Control is an ideal way to add expertise to your video content strategy. By adding whatever expertise you need — from video and audio capture to editing, post production and more — you can show off your leadership team as the face of your brand, indelibly tied to your company name. Contact us now to learn what’s possible.
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