The request and our approach.

Thanks so much for reaching out about your video project. Financial planning is an important way to guarantee stability for someone’s future and not enough people do it. You’re looking for 3-4 short videos of the SAI Team and possibly an “interactive office tour” as a way to introduce prospective clients to the team and office so the feel comfortable reaching out. Targeting young families setting up a financial plan for their future and older potential clients as they near retirement age and need to make sure things are in order.

The way we work is we’re happy to do things exactly as you request them, but I have 20+ years of agency/brand experience and will always share what I think will be most impactful to meet your end goals.  For this project, I don’t think videos of the team and an interactive tour will be the most effective way to get people into the office and comfortable.  Someone from the SAI team talking to the camera about financial planning puts a face to a name, but doesn’t bridge that connection for someone who feels a little lost in their planning.  That’s because videos like that still feel like someone talking about abstract terms the viewer doesn’t really understand.  The viewer has a hard time connecting, because they don’t see themselves in the team, they see someone trying to sell them something.

The best way to put people at ease and build their confidence in SAI is through authentic stories of real clients who are happy with what you’ve done to help solidify their future.  Our suggestion would be to find one younger family and one older couple who use your services and love to talk about it.  Then we’d film with them in your office to show that it’s a comfortable place, and they’d tell their story about where they were pre SAI and where they are post SAI.  We’ll supplement the live interviews with stock b-roll footage to illustrate what the interviewees are talking about.  We’d take those interviews (and stock footage) and create one Young Family video and one Older Person video that would connect with a potential client of yours.  It’s like word of mouth in that these people are co-signing SAI as the place that turned their financial situation around.  You’ll illustrate to a potential client that they too can be comfortable at SAI because this authentic story, could be their story in the future.

Deliverables and additional things to do.

So what will the project entail…

• Pre-production scripting of questions that will lead to the right answers. We’ll ask you for a short paragraph that would be what we want the people to ideally say. From that, we’ll craft questions that will lead person on camera down that path, but in their own words. That way we get authentic stories told in their own words, but we go in knowing what some of those words will be.

• One day of filming at the SAI offices to capture the interviews with a member of a young family and an older person.

• We’ll supplement the A-Roll interview footage with stock B-Roll footage. This is more budget friendly than filming with each family in their homes, which we could also do with two half day shoots, but would add to the overall budget.

• Two, 2-3 minute videos. One on the young family and one on the older couple that found the financial guidance they needed from SAI

• 2-3 short clips of each video that you could use for social media ads if that’s something you do.

So what else we’d suggest doing? We work with similar companies to yours as vendors and clients and these are some of the things they’ve said worked in the past…

• Referral contest.

  • After you launch the videos on your site, launch a referral contest through all your existing clients. Say “for the month of April, for everyone that says Steve Smith referred them, you get one entry and we’ll draw a $1,000 winner (or another amount you decide on) at the end of the month.”

  • If word of mouth is your number one way for getting new clients, gamifying it and putting a time limit on it, will help draw even more clients in. And your new videos will elevate the authenticity of SAI.

• Facebook Groups.

  • The local “mom groups” on facebook are flooded with referral requests and they’re like gold. We hired a painter through a “The Wheaton Moms” referral and I asked him about it, he said his business was very busy just from those referrals, which was based off of one job he did for someone on the group.

  • This is more of a “guerrilla marketing” style tactic, but find two clients and one family friend. Have the family friend post in the groups looking for a Financial Planner, then immediately have one happy client recommend SAI and have another co-sign that recommendation.

Here’s some of our work…

It’s important to learn a little bit about who you’re working with before a project starts. We’re not fresh out of college and decided to start doing our own thing. Our founder & Creative Director, Cal Engel has over 20 years experience in the industry. Spanning from traditional marketing agencies to innovation agencies to brands to digital out of home, even working with literally the biggest music acts in the world. Ten years ago he decided to form AV Collective as a way to provide that same high quality work to clients, but without them having to pay the overhead of a traditional agency. Why’s that important for you? Every project is going to have challenges. It’s about the knowledge and expertise of the people you work with, that allows them to overcome those challenges and deliver projects beyond your expectations.

Here’s what a few of our clients have said about us…

So we’ve spent a lot of time going over what we’d recommend doing, so here’s what the shoot, 2 edited videos (young family and older couple), and clips would cost…

• PreProduction [Planning] - $750

• Production [Filming] - $3,050

• Post Production [Editing long videos] - $3,500

• Post Production [Editing 6 shorter clips] - $1,200

• Misc Costs [Stock, Music, Etc] - $450

• TOTAL - $8,950

Here’s the detailed breakdown of costs…