A couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and commissioned a fantastic company to produce a short video for our website. Video is being used more and more on websites now: it literally enables you to bring your company to life and get people engaging with you before they meet you. I hope that our video will give visitors of our site a flavour of who Flourish are and what we’re all about and deliver an even more authentic and inspiring experience than copy alone can.
It’s taken me a long time to find our partners. I’m infamous for my high standards and I had a very clear idea about what I wanted and these guys really gave me confidence that they “got” what I was after and had done that kind of thing before. I’m after something that gives people a taste of Flourish, so I wanted to avoid anything too static. We’re fun, approachable, creative and (hopefully) inspiring, and that was what I wanted to get across in the video.
We did quite a lot of last minute prep – including Izzy arranging some flowers from my garden…
Do you notice that we’ve got rid of that horrible, huge “sample station” that was blocking Izzy’s view of the river and taking up half the front office? Instead we’ve had some amazing bespoke pigeonholes crafted by a local joiner that take up far less room and still enable Izzy to give our clients the print samples they need.
There was also much last minute faffing with labels for the folders (remember my high standards? Poor Rob was designing labels and cutting and sticking right up to the wire) as well as tidying up our desks – mine took a while, I can tell you.
It was scary because I’ve never done anything like this before and also because I had nothing to compare it to. None of our competitors have video on their sites at the moment and I was inspired by very few of the videos I saw on other websites that did have video. I’m sure that in six months time a lot more people will have video, and they’ll be able to learn from our mistakes! But for now I was going in blind. I had a lot of conversations with Alex, our director, who is an ex-music video producer and incredibly cool and good at what he does. Between us we agreed a format for the video and I prepared some questions for the team.
I’ve deliberately kept it unscripted. None of us are actors (with the exception of Caroline who boasts an A-Level drama qualification amongst her many talents) and I just don’t think it would have captured the essence of who we are if we’d scripted things. So instead I prepared some questions which Alex asked each of us.
We also invited in some clients to gush about us and in return kept them going with large wodges of cake and coffee. You’ll also spot the bucks fizz that I gave to each member of the team for breakfast to calm our nerves…
This is the lovely Clare Yarwood White (and her son Caspar exploring my office in the background…)
And here are Matt Pereira and Donna Pouryemour (enjoying a lovely large slice of carrot cake) with Rob, Ian and Caroline in the designer’s studio (Chloe and Izzy are just out of shot…).
I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. I can’t help thinking that I should have invested in a blow-dry for my hair! But hey ho, at least you’ll get the real (unkempt) me. I’m mightily reassured by their attention to detail and vision for the day and we actually all enjoyed it, which we certainly didn’t expect.
As soon as I have the first draft I’ll share it with you… But for now I just wanted to give you a sneak preview of the day.
