One of the most potent forms of punishment I recently inflicted on myself involved intentionally searching for all the marketing videos our community of magicians & variety entertainers have been putting out amid this self quarantine.
Now look, I’ve been involved with video and video marketing for the last 20 years… all the way back to earning a Bachelors of Science in Video & Film when I studied at the University of Miami School of Communications. (Check out 18 year old Brad Ross anchoring the UMTV Midday Report News…)
So what’s going on?
Why do most of these Facebook “LIVES,” virtual shows & marketing videos suck?
Why do they have to suck?
How can they drop the ball that badly?
Well, after I went through video after video, certain patterns started to emerge.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a rocket scientist, nor am I a brain surgeon, but it’s very easy to spot these patterns.
It’s very easy to trace these patterns back to the failure of these videos.
I’m not speculating on their failures because video has failed when it has only a hand full of views. You can’t escape from that conclusion. You can’t dance around it.
About half way through my painful search of bad videos, I started taking notes and came across these COMMON MISTAKES made by magicians & entertainers creating video content:
Poor Quality.
It’s obvious that a lot of the videos that I was going through and viewing were really sloppy and of poor quality. Now in some cases they were using a really bad webcam that made the video look like it was created 15 years ago. Some videos were shot so far away that it made it was just hard to watch such a wide shot. And in other videos, lighting was crappy and in many audio was just awful.
No Point.
Unfortunately most of the videos lacked a point. Some folks tried, but others were clearly just “going live” because they see so many people doing virtual shows and lessons that they wanted to jump on the bandwagon and do the same. If you are going to go LIVE and make a video, there has to be a point to it and something of value for your audience.
No Presence.
Another REALLY common feature that I observed among MOST of the videos is the fact that they did not create presence.
No stage presence from the PERFORMER and none for their BRAND.
Now, please understand that a lot of these videos don’t look awful from a technical stand point until the performer starts talking. Some have clever elements. Some even look like they spent a tremendous amount of money on high level animation or equipment.
But regardless of how slick certain elements are, and despite the fact that sometimes these elements came together to produce a really nice effect, at the end of the day, there was no presence.
It felt like the video:
…wasn’t speaking to anyone.
…making the brand behind the video come to life.
…wasn’t doing anything that would make me remember the performer.
It was just lying there.
It was flat.
So there’s a bunch to chew on for today…
Tomorrow I’m going to share 2 more HUGE mistakes I’ve been seeing magicians & entertainers make with their livestreams, virtual magic shows and marketing videos. YOU DON’T WANNA MISS IT!
Look out for my email in the morning 10:00am EST
Till then…
This is Brad “Mr. Video” Ross… signing off! 🙂
Stay Home… Stay Safe… Stay Healthy!
