Working Our Magic Archives - Indigo Blue Productions

Breathe Deeply!

Posted on 24th February 202024th February 2020 by indigoblue

We come across a lot of very stressed-out people at the side of the stage or in front of a video camera.

We feel it’s our responsibility, not just to create an amazing space for a live event or meeting, but to help the presenters deliver their content as well as possible.

Of course, the same goes for producing a great piece of filmed content too.

So, how do we help our ‘stressed-out’ presenters control those nerves, when this awaits them?

Firstly, it helps to understand what is happening when we get tense and nervous about speaking to an audience or in front of a camera.

The language and/or concepts that we have formed in our heads are ‘telling’ our brains that this is a stressful (or in our brain’s language “dangerous”) situation. The old part of our brain, the amygdala, then kicks in. It’s our fight or flight response.

Neuro-transmitters in our brain trigger chemicals to be released as our body prepares itself to react physically. Our breathing becomes faster and more shallow. Our heart rates rise and our blood pressure goes up. Those chemical signals also flood our bodies also fill with adrenaline. None of this is helpful when we’re trying to stay calm and relaxed. The most destructive thing that our body does, though, is ‘switches off’ to a degree our pre-frontal cortex – that’s the part of our brain that does all the clever, creative thinking. The part that we really could use when we’re standing in front of a camera or an audience.

This is all runs through our autonomic nervous system, without our conscious direction.

Most of us probably can’t slow our own heart rates or lower our blood pressure through thought alone. We can, however, control our breathing! This is a part of our autonomic nervous system and also reacts to our conscious control.

So, when you’re about to perform, let’s help reverse the pattern of fight or flight. Let’s be mindful about our breathing. Here’s how:

Breathing Technique

Firstly, most of us breath into just the very top parts of our lungs and miss perhaps 2/3 of the area that we could use, so this technique is helpful in life generally as well.

Stand up and place your wait evenly on both feet. Relax your body, whilst maintaining an upright posture.
Imagine, when you’re breathing in, that you’re breathing into your stomach. Your stomach moves outwards and your shoulders remain still, relaxed and lowered.
Breathe deeply into your stomach, through your nose*, for 4 counts. This can be a little quicker than 1 count per second. The longer your counts, the more control you will gain, but do this at your own pace and ability. If you feel light-headed at any point – stop.
Hold your breath, gently and calmly, for 8 counts.
Breathe out for 4 counts, through your mouth**.

* Your nose has fine hairs that are designed to trap unwanted particles in the air from getting into your lungs, so it’s good practice to do this anyway.

** Breathing air out of your mouth allows you to breath a larger quantity of air in the same time. You’re breathing out a lot of carbon dioxide, which can become poisonous to us anyway, so again, it’s good practice to breath out deeply as well as in.

Do this 3 times, then allow your breathing to return to normal for 15 seconds or so, then repeat the whole sequence twice more.

This will help to fool the amygdala into believing that the situation is no longer a dangerous one and that it’s job is now done! It releases control slowly to the pre-frontal cortex and you return to the driving seat of your own mind!

The amygdala is often referred to as the lizard or monkey brain. Nobody wants the monkey driving the car. I heard someone say recently, the monkey can come along for the ride, but they are NOT allowed to drive, play with the radio or choose the snacks! I like that analogy…

There are lots of techniques like this that can help you to become a better speaker and communicator on camera and in front of an audience. Find out more, by giving us a call or dropping us an email.

Marketing is dead – Long live culture!

Posted on 12th September 201912th September 2019 by indigoblue

…And the culture of your business should be a part of your DNA!

Marketing and Communications for a business has changed. Telling or showing your customers what you want them to believe about your business is no longer a thing!

Your customers are way too savvy, too sophisticated and will easily see through your attempts to woo them.

They are well-informed and have access to as much information as they need.

The best your marketing teams can do now is to allow your customers to see your personality in good times and bad.

Your audience communications now should be all about the culture of your business and that should be the same from the first advert right through the customer cycle to purchase and beyond.

We live in a world where your customers control the strength and direction of your brand, through a myriad of social channels. Unless, you have the resources to monitor all social channels and react to them all, it’s difficult for a business to really know how their customers perceive them. Even then, It’s impossible to control it.

So, how do you ‘do marketing‘ in a world without control?

Well… you ‘do culture‘! More specifically, you run an ethical company in the best way you can for the benefit of your customer. You are open and honest in your communication both internally and externally. If your own employees are massive fans and advocates of the business, then not only will your customers feel that, but any negative feedback the company gets can be outweighed by positive support from your team. People are willing to accept a company making a mistake, providing they were trying to do the right thing in the first place and they admit the mistake and try to make amends.

If your business culture isn’t angled towards social responsibility and inclusivity, your customers will know about it.

If your business isn’t providing value for money, your audience will talk about it on social media.

If you provide bad service, your reputation will be downgraded on any one of a host of review sites.

Understanding and developing the culture of your business and how it communicates internally and externally is the number one job of your comms team.

If you’re interested in learning more, we are uniquely placed in the industry, to not only help your communications, but develop your values-based culture as well. It’s a powerful combination!

Making your videos work for you…

Posted on 11th September 201916th October 2019 by indigoblue

As with your website, a video is just a tool in the tool-kit. It’s how you make it and what you do with it that will bring you real success and a return on your investment.

You will no doubt have heard by now that video is an essential communication tool, in marketing and other areas. However, there are so many platforms, styles of video and even shapes and sizes of video that really should be considered before you begin to storyboard your ideas.

Anyone making a film for you, should be helping you to imagine how that film could be used inside a wider communications campaign.

Making films can be a big investment and, as with all investments, you want it to give you a return. So let’s take a look at some of questions you should be considering.

What issue am I addressing with this film: Is it a sales tool, a learning tool, an information tool?
Who is my audience for this film: Customers, Employees, Partners?
Where and how do they connect with us: On our website, on social media, face-to-face?
Does this film convey a compelling story that engages your audience?
How do they receive and assimilate communication?
Can this film be used effectively on multiple channels, or can it be produced in a way that can be broken up into different clips for different channels?
Does this film have longevity, or will we need to be updated regularly?
Can we take the themes of this film and grow that into a wider comms campaign; perhaps a print, web or experiential campaign, maybe?
How does this film fit into our wider communications with this audience?
Is the film on brand, in our tone of voice and does it connect with our audience?

Of course, there are plenty more questions we would ask and plenty more answers too. Our intention in this short piece is simply to help you imagine this film in a wider context, delivering a greater ROI than most corporate films.

The tools in your tool-kit are only as good as the craftsman or woman using them.

For more information on how to develop a wider communications campaign, take a look at the website and give us a call.

Influencing your ‘Influencers’

Posted on 2nd August 201912th September 2019 by indigoblue

Influencer marketing is on the rise with your potential customers now 60% more likely to believe your current customers (usually a complete stranger) more than your own marketing or online presence.

Peer reviews are becoming more and more important. It sounds obvious, but your employees are customers as well and if you aren’t paying attention to the power of your own team to influence your customers, then this is the blog for you.

Your own internal team are right there and ready to engage with the world on your behalf, if you give them the opportunity and motivation to do it. In fact, they are probably already doing so, whether you like it or not. So, as with everything to do with social media, it’s better for your business to engage with it than let it go on without you.

So these are just a few ideas to help you give your team reasons to start promoting your business on your behalf.

Ask your employees to write blogs, create vlogs and podcasts

Ask everyone in your business to help create the outward messaging. They’ll connect with it more and are far more likely to share it on their own social channels. Give them advice and support in doing it. Give them the time and facilities to make it happen. Give them the authority to write and produce commentary that they feel appropriate. We’re assuming here that you have already created a culture where your employees want to write and say nice things about the business. If not, then we have a blog for that too!

Ask your junior team members to ‘interview’ your senior leaders

This connects to the previous idea. Again, the key is to allow for open and honest discussion. If your leaders are not willing to be honest, your junior members of the team will spot it immediately – and if they can, so will your customers. Again, if it’s a piece of work that your team members are helping to create, they will be more willing to share it themselves.

Consult your employees on business decisions

OK, so maybe not every decision, but getting your teams invested in the company and in its intellectual leadership, will create a powerful connection, This will give them the sense that they are helping to influence the direction of the business and their own future. Actively listen to your colleagues and staff

This sounds obvious, but it’s so rarely done well. Leadership is difficult and time is very precious, but one of the most important things a leader can do is to ‘actively listen’ to their people. That means, putting the phone on silent, being present in the room with the other person and engaging with them. They are representative of your whole company and your customers – without them, your business dies.

Create and engage two-way communication with your people

This is a whole topic in itself. The key is to open up channels of communication so your colleagues can feel like they have a means to connect with the senior team, at a time that suits them. To complete the circle, your leaders need to respond, fully and compassionately.

Create a ‘reverse mentoring’ scheme

We recently ran an event where a speaker had talked about a successful ‘reverse mentoring’ scheme they had set up in the business. Simply put, as you would imagine, a junior team member was mentoring a senior leader. It was so successful, the business renamed it – ‘Mentoring’! This kind of engagement

If you haven’t already done so, try and get an intranet that mimics Facebook!

Again, this is an entire blog in itself. In a sentence – your teams have every communication platform at their fingertips 24/7. If your internal communications platforms don’t match up, then they might as well not be there! The days of ‘push’ communication are gone!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this and all our other blogs, so please do let us know what you think!

7 STUDENT RECRUITMENT VIDEO IDEAS TO HELP YOU ATTRACT MORE GRADUATES

Posted on 4th July 201712th September 2017 by indigoblue

There are plenty of different approaches you can take with a student recruitment video. Having seen hundreds produced by companies in many different industries, a lot are quite formulaic, while others are exciting, interactive or arty.

Choosing the right strategic approach to student recruitment videos is about getting the tone right, to attract the right candidates and portray your company in the best light. Working with a video production company, such as Indigo Blue, helps clarify your tactics and create a personalised and highly successful video.

While the field is wide open for creative interpretations and new video styles, there are some ideas that work better than others. The gold standard of any idea is how it succeeds (or fails) in attracting suitable, skilled candidates from among your target audience. Looking at the student recruitment videos of some of the best performing companies therefore gives some useful insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Here are a few proven ideas you can try when planning your next student recruitment video.

1) Make The Information Representative Of Your Company In General, Rather Than For Specific Departments

This will give your video wider impact and relevance when recruiting for multiple departments. It also avoids giving candidates the wrong impression in companies where departments are sometimes radically different.

2) Use Real Interviews With Employees To Explain Why Your Company Is A Great Place To Work

Have these take place in situ so that graduates can see what your offices are like. Avoid painting a misleading picture, but use a professional film crew to capture your working environment in the most positive light. If your business is a recognised brand, use the video to show employees working on your key products and services.

3) Explain The Typical Tasks And Challenges A Graduate Recruit May Be Involved In

For instance, will they be meeting clients, creating briefs or just making tea? Emphasise the fun and challenging potential of these tasks, while taking pains to be realistic. Set expectations too high and your candidates will be disappointed and unmotivated.

4) Include Clear Information About How The Graduate Can Apply And What Will Be Expected Of Them

Give recruitment website URL links, set out the recruitment process, give interview hints. In other words, make it as easy and painless as possible to apply. Bear in mind that for most of your candidates, this will be their first real experience of the job market, so set their minds at rest and make them feel comfortable.

5) Explain How Your Company Can Make A Difference To The Graduate’s Life

For example, show what valuable experience the candidate will get from the graduate programme, the potential financial rewards, employee benefits etc. As Millennial graduates often have a highly developed social conscience, you can also demonstrate how your company makes a real difference in the world, such as by showcasing your corporate social responsibility policy.

6) Explain The Skills, Qualities And Characteristics You Are Searching For

Your student recruitment video is your chance to put a flag in the sand and attract people that resonate with your core values and skill requirements. The video is part of your selection process, so define these skills carefully and unambiguously.

7) Showcase Your Company Brand

Clearly display your actual office premises, logo, and well-known projects in your video. Be sure that your video harmonises with the corporate colours, fonts and – most importantly – the messages used in your marketing strategy.

Create Winning Videos To Attract The Best Candidates

Creating an effective graduate recruitment video means striking a balance between content, accessibility and high production standards. At Indigo Blue Productions we give you the benefit of more than a decade of corporate video experience to produce bespoke videos that attract the best talent for your business. To find out more, take a look at our Ultimate Guide to Graduate Recruitment Videos, a new e-book full of helpful information you can use to create high-performance videos. You can download the guide for free by clicking here.

HOW TO USE GRADUATE RECRUITMENT VIDEOS TO ATTRACT THE BEST TALENT FOR YOUR COMPANY

Posted on 3rd July 20174th July 2017 by indigoblue

A graduate recruitment video can be an invaluable ally when reaching out to find the next generation of talent for your company, or it can fall completely flat. The outcome largely hinges on how the videos are used.

Most major graduate recruiters make use of recruitment videos these days. They have become an accepted part of online and campus-based recruitment. The danger of this lies in companies treating recruitment videos as an obligatory box ticking exercise, and failing to approach them as a strategic tool. With hundreds of companies competing for the same pool of skilled graduates, the best results will go to the recruiters who know what talent they are looking for and how to use video to get their attention.

When planning a new graduate recruitment video for the coming season, start by asking yourself the following strategic questions:

What Is The ‘Profile’ Of The Graduates I Am Searching For?

People are all individuals, but it is possible to group people into broad categories based on their aspirations, socio-economic background, degree choice and spending habits. Your graduate profile isn’t so much the skills you are looking for and what you can offer candidates, but what the worldview of your target candidate is likely to be. Are they motivated by money, by career progression, or by adventure? Are they looking for security or to break the mould?

Consider your corporate culture as an employer, which will be different for an investment bank than it will be for a tech start-up. The best candidates are where there is a clear alignment in vision and outlook with your company. These are likely to be the people who will work hardest and be motivated to stay with your business for the longest time.

What Can I Offer My Candidates That Our Competitors Can’t?

A typical graduate will see dozens of recruitment videos, all populated by people wearing similar suits, working in similar offices, for similar companies. Step outside the box for a moment and look at the key characteristics that make your company different. This may come down to your internal company culture, the clients you work for, or your approach to your services. Get stakeholders from different company departments involved to pin down what makes your business unique. The job of a graduate recruitment video is to portray your programme and your business in an appealing and convincing way.

What Are The Essential Skills And Strengths I Require In My Candidates?

For your candidates to be successful and add real value to your company, they need to have certain skills and strengths. These may include independence, leadership, loyalty, presentation skills or mathematical ability. Every company is different, but the selection process begins with the video itself. Use the features of the video to clearly express what you are looking for from your candidates, so that graduates can select whether or not they fit the bill. This helps ensure that only the most suitable candidates start the application process.

Does My Video Portray An Accurate Depiction Of Our Company?

It is tempting to paint a dashing and glamorous depiction of your company in your recruitment video; sweeping vistas of New York, sparkling modern offices, swanky corporate dinners. How much of this is realistic for an entry-level employee, or someone on your graduate programme? Setting the wrong expectations in your video is going to lead to disappointed and de-motivated graduates, who are unlikely to do well in your programme. Worse still, they may be tempted to jump ship to one of your competitors.

The Ultimate Guide To Graduate Recruitment Videos

Your graduate recruitment video has the potential to raise the profile of your company and help you win over the best talent for your graduate programme. However, to be successful you need to adopt a strategic, marketing-based approach to your content, coupled with creative thinking and great production standards. At Indigo Blue Productions we can help you produce eye-catching, engaging videos that set you apart from your competitors and bring in the best talent for your company. For more information, please download our free Ultimate Guide to Graduate Recruitment Videos, which is crammed full of useful hints and tips. Click here to claim your copy today.

GET CREATIVE WITH YOUR GRADUATE ATTRACTION STRATEGIES TO BECOME THE NUMBER ONE TALENT RECRUITER IN YOUR INDUSTRY

Posted on 3rd July 20174th July 2017 by indigoblue

To compete effectively with your competitors for the cream of each year’s student cohort, you need a talent attraction strategy that lets you stand out from the crowd. Companies in the upper reaches of the Times Top 100 Graduate Recruiters List have two characteristics which, taken together, act as powerful keys to success. These are strategy and creativity.

Taking a strategic view involves being clear-sighted about what you can realistically achieve and taking the steps necessary to get there; assessing each activity in terms of return on investment. Being creative means being unafraid to break convention, try out new tactics and engage with your graduate audience in new ways.

A high quality recruitment video is a key part of a recruitment attraction strategy. As a specialist video company, we are well placed to help you leverage the power of video marketing when it comes to formulating your talent attraction strategies for the coming year. Beyond this, try implementing the following strategies to boost your recruiting power.

Ensure Buy-In From Your Organisation

It is so important that you have all the departments of your company on board and sharing ownership of your recruitment messages. You should seek input from different stakeholders prior to the launch of your strategy, and then keep the momentum going while your applications are open. Keep the wider organisation informed by posting information on your company’s internal intranet and encourage personal referrals.

Create A Compelling Graduate Value Proposition

In marketing, a value proposition explains how a product solves a prospect’s problems, explains the advantages you offer over your competitors, and presents the benefits the prospect can expect by becoming a customer. With talent attraction the principle is the same. Your strategy needs to explain how enrolling in your graduate programme will help your candidates fulfil their aspirations, and how your company complements their worldview.

The value proposition sets out the opportunities in your company and what duties are involved. Financial remuneration and in-work benefits play a part in this, but in most strategies these are secondary to career progression and a sense that the graduate is making a difference in the world. From this process will come a set of graduate recruitment messages, which should be made to align with your marketing position and brand identity. A graduate recruitment video is a fantastic way to encapsulate your value proposition quickly and effectively.

Write A Candidate Attraction Strategy

Create a formal, multi-year graduate recruitment strategy linked to a clear budget and guided by previous ROI. Track expenditure and returns from previous activities, such as online advertising, to hone your strategy down to only the most effective activities.

Target The Right Graduates

Not all graduates will be suitable for your company. Create a profile of your ideal candidate by degree subject, university, strengths, interests and personal characteristics, and focus your marketing towards this target audience. Precision recruitment marketing is more effective than a shotgun approach.

Utilise Social Media

Today’s graduates are prolific users of social media and mobile devices. To succeed, full use must be made of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other outlets. Videos can be broadly disseminated through social media, as can application forms and other recruitment materials. This can sync well with your efforts on campus and at careers fairs. Using paid social media advertising can get your messages in front of specific audiences too – for instance if you need to increase your diversity profile by recruiting more women and minority candidates. Use regular social media updates to maintain urgency after applications open.

How To Use Video To Become A More Successful Graduate Recruiter

Graduate recruitment videos give a talent attraction strategy teeth by helping you quickly put your messages across to the right audience. To find out more about the potential of graduate videos, please download our Ultimate Guide to Graduate Recruitment Videos. The e-book is free and is full of information gleaned from our many years working in the student and graduate industry. Click here to get your copy.

Have you already got enough on your hands?

Posted on 7th August 201525th October 2016 by indigoblue

We bring all our expertise and professionalism from our big conference events to your smaller meetings as well.

When you’ve got the delegate management, your senior team and external speakers to look after, you probably could use a little help with the microphones and powerpoint presentations. That’s where we come in….

But we can add so much more value than that.

Maybe you want to have a dedicated professional to make sure that all your breakout rooms are set up and your speakers’ presentations are working. Perhaps, you want to play video and need the sound to be heard. Or, would you like to really make your evening dinner to shine, with great lighting and some games to help the networking go with a swing afterwards.

So, next time you’ve got a company meeting to organise and would just like a little extra help so you have the security of knowing the sound and visuals will work, then you know where to come.

We look forward to seeing you.

Graham Wadsworth
Creative Director

How do you engage your delegates…?

Posted on 1st August 201525th October 2016 by indigoblue

In an age where there are three generations working in business today, we recognise that using technology is essential to engage a ‘GenY’ population, but your ‘Baby Boomers’ will need something quite different. Therefore, using a variety of ways to engage everyone at your events is essential.

For years, companies have organised conferences, bringing together their employees who take time out of the business to deliver strategic messages, bringing the audience up to speed with the latest initiatives and rewarding them for a job well done.

In our opinion, as your delegates become more technology-aware, your business conference must stay up to date with the way in which your delegates wish to communicate, if you want to get your messages across effectively.

How interactive are your conferences?
How effective are your speakers and facilitators?
How do you involve the quieter members of the audience to ask questions?

Would you like an innovative and modern approach that gets your audience interacting with you in a way that helps you to gauge the level of buy in at your event immediately?

Well, we have recently been providing our clients with a solution for their conferences and achieving results that impressed them and their delegates.

How does it work?

We provide an iPad for each table, group of people or individuals and, where required set up a dedicated Twitter account and hash-tag. The iPads can be branded with your conference or company logo on. They can also have vital documents relating to your event that your audience can click on and refer to.

Using the hash-tag, we can track comments that your delegates are making throughout the event from their own twitter accounts. So, this is similar in concept to the interactive voting pads and text service, but there a subtle but important difference.

Once we have moderated the Twitter feed comments, we can then put them all up onto the conference screens for the speakers to use as discussion topics.

We ask the delegates to tweet questions and thoughts during the sessions. At intervals, the facilitators or speakers can refer to the twitter feed and get a sense of the audience’s thoughts and take questions from the twitter feed comments as well as the regular Q&A session.

What is the benefit to the audience?

It allows the quieter, more introvert delegates who wouldn’t necessarily have put their hand up and asked a burning question to feel more confident to do so by typing a tweeted question.

Audience members feel they are part of the event and not just being spoken to all day.

What is the benefit to the Company?

Sometimes speakers can run out of time and audience members who have questions often don’t get the opportunity to ask their question.

The great benefit of using the twitter feed and hash tag option is that questions that didn’t get answered during the event can be answered afterwards. Sometimes our clients place a Q&A session on their intranet following the conference so audience members can see the answers to their questions and others from the day. It is a great way to embed the key messages from the speakers at the event.

You can judge the level of your audience. When the twitter feeds slow down, more than likely, so has the energy of your event!

If you are keen to encourage your audience to ask challenging questions, you could set up a twitter account for the event and set all of your iPads to use that account. That way the questions would stay anonymous and potentially you could get to the heart of what people really think.

You don’t have to have someone at the conference writing down the questions, you will have a record of all of the questions from your twitter feed account.

What if a challenging question comes up on the screen that our speaker would prefer not to answer there and then?

That wouldn’t happen. One of our event crew will sit with a member of your company during the event to ensure that only the questions being displayed on the main conference screens are relevant and appropriate to the environment.

If the question is not relevant at the time or controversial, you may choose to answer that question at a later date via your company intranet or news bulletin.

Can’t I just stick with a more traditional approach, I am not really into Twitter?

Well that’s lucky, because we are! We are here to help and in an age where there are three generations working in business today, we recognise that using technology is essential to engage GenY and different to perhaps what a baby boomer would want. Therefore, using a variety of ways to engage everyone is essential

We can support you prior to and during your event to help you set up your twitter account and #tag for your event.
We will brief your facilitators and speakers ahead of time on how it will work on the day.

Finally we will be there on the day so you can stay relaxed and enjoy your event.

We’ve worked with a number of businesses that have engaged this type of technology and both the delegates and the speakers have been hugely impressed by the difference in the way the events have run.

Delegates feel a sense of energy in the room and are engaged by their ability to interact with the speakers in real-time. The speakers feel a sense of their audience actually hearing them and being a part of the delivery of the speech.

If you would like to discuss how using this technology could help you at your next event, call us today and we will be happy to help.