Video is too important to be reserved for key moments in your agenda. Savvy planners are incorporating authentic, short-form content before, during and after their events to drive more registrations, keep attendees engaged, deliver sponsor value, and continue the momentum long after the curtain falls.
So, how should you be incorporating short form video into your plan? And what factors are most important to creating content that people actually want to watch?
We invited Sam Lembeck, President of Production at See3 Communications and writer and director of a myriad of short form content from commercials and web series to short films, to join Michael Hoffman, CEO of Gather Voices for a live, 1-hour conversation on short form video for events. They’ll discuss:
[00:00:00] Michael Hoffman: We're going to get started. Welcome everyone to the, to Beyond the Main Stage, the videos you need to improve your next event.
So it's a conversation with me, Michael Hoffman and Sam Lembeck. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Michael Huffman. I'm the CEO and co founder at gather voices. I founded an agency called C3 communications that Sam is at now. I don't work there anymore. I am I've passed the baton to a group of amazing folks doing great work.
But C3 is a agency that works with social good organizations, nonprofits, associations, and the like to tell powerful stories using internet and video. And so we're going to talk about that. And so I'm really pleased to, to welcome Sam. Sam, I, you know, I'd love your you to introduce yourself.
I think, you know, you have this mix of sort of commercial and entertainment production world. So doing things that The expectation is that thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people would watch but you also do work for small and medium sized organizations telling powerful stories.
So tell us a little bit about how you got into that and, and a little bit about your journey.
[00:01:14] Sam Lembeck: Sure. Well hi everybody. Thanks for having me, Michael. So. My, my dad is in the industry. He is a director and I kind of grew up on a set on his sets, sort of just hanging out and I didn't really know what I wanted to do for a very long time, but I knew I wanted to do something.
In that in the business. So when, after high school, I went to Columbia college in Chicago. And I went to their TV broadcast journalism school because you could do a little of everything there. And I got familiar with and editing. They make you just get your hands dirty and everything. And while I was there, I was really sort of finding my way in the editing world.
The, the editing suites at Columbia College in Chicago are, were also used as teaching suites for avid students. Editing, which is like the, the premier system that editors use. So I got to really learn on some great material. And as I was there, I was like finding, figuring out that I was liking my film school friends and how they were communicating about story and analyzing movies and things like that.
And I decided to. Come back to LA. Well, I would have gone to New York if they had accepted me at NYU. I'm not, I'm not bitter. So I, I got into USC film school, graduate school, and I did the film school thing. I focused in directing because I was enjoying working with actors and working with the camera.
And. That was a great experience. And from there, I may, you make a, like a thesis project when you're in the grad school. And I made a short film. And that did not send me on a path to directing feature films. I thought for some reason that you, you get into this school, you obviously become an award winning director.
So that didn't happen. I, I learned a lot, but I found myself. you know, hustling, finding production assistant jobs, anything I could get. And, and while I was doing these sort of like menial kind of jobs, I was making short films with friends and making short films and video things. And, you know, YouTube was really happening at the time, beginning and web series were, were happening.
And, you know, I was able to sort of make anything I want and put it on the internet and get feedback. And and so, You know, I was just keeping myself busy and having fun doing that. And through, you know, connections, I found myself on a TV show called Rizzoli and Isles, which was on TNT. I was the head writer, producer's assistant for a while.
And then eventually I was able to write episodes. of the show, which was an amazing experience. And, you know, I wasn't expecting to be a writer. I didn't feel myself I didn't expect to be doing that, but it was, it was amazing. And, you know, I was able to write episodes and then I'm on set while they're filming them and I'm giving feedback and I'm watching, you know, shadowing the directors and watching them work.
So I really, really learned a lot. Doing that and got into the writers writers guild, which was cool. And then that show got canceled after about seven years and I was back to making my own stuff again. And I connected with an old friend of mine. who, you know, who was running a marketing agency and he needed somebody to run his video operation.
And so he and I started working together and a lot of my technical knowledge and storytelling knowledge mixed well with his marketing knowledge and know how. And for, for the last, I don't know, six years or so, we've been doing anything from Interviews to personal stories, to tour videos, to events, videos for events.
And we kinda have just been doing a little of everything that anybody might need to promote themselves or themselves or their organizations. And it's been, it's been great. It's not what I was expecting to be doing, but you know, I'm still able to tell people's stories or tell their organization stories.
And, you know, I've learned a lot about. Things that I didn't know I'd be learning about in as far as like the type of organizations and stuff, but and we've been working together at C3 and working with a bunch of great organizations there too. And, and here we are.
[00:05:47] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, well, excellent. That's a great journey.
I, I actually remember watching Rosalie and I was it wasn't it a Canadian production or, or was it? No,
[00:05:56] Sam Lembeck: it was, it was I don't know
[00:05:58] Michael Hoffman: why I thought it was. like shot in Toronto or something.
[00:06:01] Sam Lembeck: Well, a lot of stuff is shot there, so you're not, you're not like far off. It was shot here, took place in Boston. The, the set, I mean, but we shot it in Los Angeles and Los
[00:06:12] Michael Hoffman: Angeles can be anywhere.
[00:06:14] Sam Lembeck: It can be anywhere. Yeah,
[00:06:15] Michael Hoffman: that's right. The magic of television. Well, great. Well, I know some of you are here to earn CAE credit. That's awesome. If you are, you need to stay to the end. I will, I'll have a poll at the end asking you if you want CAE credit and that's how we will track your credit certificate.
The other way we know you're here to really learn is to participate in the chat. So I'm going to have a couple of polls. We're going to ask some questions. We'd love to participate. I think, you know, we have our experience you know, at Gathered Voices, we're working with about 150 organizations.
So I'm seeing a lot of things around video. Sam's working with dozens of organizations on, on video projects and sees things, but you have your own learnings and, and stuff, and we're not the sum total of all the information in the world. So We'd love for you to, to share your links, your stories, your things you're doing as well.
That would be, that would be awesome. So I actually want to start with a poll. And we're going to be talking about video at events. So I want to know when you have live events, are you capturing video at those events? And so, waiting for y'all to do that. If you are, if you say yes, you are capturing video events, just write a couple of a couple of words in the chat about what kind of video are you collecting?
Are you collecting is the video you're collecting recording sessions? Is that what you're doing? Are you doing interviews? Are you getting testimonials? Are you Getting B roll of the conference, what kind of thing in
[00:07:45] Sam Lembeck: the back and just getting a wide shot of the whole. Yeah,
[00:07:49] Michael Hoffman: the whole session or hour long sessions or streaming them like what do you, what do we mean the obviously capturing video events can mean a lot of different things so please add to the chat.
So, Ty says we record the entire meeting so you mean all the sessions of of. Of the meeting and, and then those go, where do those go? So if you record sessions like Amanda and Ty and, and the meeting, where do you put, you just, you put those online or is that part of a hybrid strategy? Or what do you, what do you do with that?
Shannon says, testimonials and B roll and sometimes full sessions. Rebecca says B roll and testimonials. And are the testimonials about. Those of you who do testimonials, are those about your organization or about the event or both? I think, you know, sometimes you think, well, we're people are at the event.
They can talk about why they're excited to be at the event. We can use that to market next year's event, but it's also, Oh, these are people who are part of our organization. We could actually collect content that we use for other things, not just for the event promotion. So love to hear about that as well.
Celeste says like our prevention summit goes to the YouTube page. So that's, that's interesting. So people who are not there can can watch. So a bunch of sessions around on demand. Thanks, Ty. Are you finding the the poll. Let me share the results. So it's most of you, the vast majority are capturing video at live events.
And let me stop sharing. Oh, and so And then I'm going to just stop sharing my screen for a second. So when you, so let's see, Victoria says sessions, presentations, interviews, testimonials. So tell us about testimonials. We know that that testimonials are a big thing that people collect at events.
If you collect testimonials, can you share with us some of what those testimonials are about? If you have any links to those testimonials, you can share those as well. What do you? find Sam about testimonial videos in general, you know, that are powerful and particularly today. You know, in the world that we live in, why, why are, why are testimonials so important?
[00:10:04] Sam Lembeck: Well, for me personally, I will sometimes take a testimonial over like a Yelp review, for example, it's sort of You know, easier to sort of see someone's real response rather than something that was easy to just type in on their phone. You know, you get a sense, you get more of a sense about who, a more, a more authentic sense of someone's reaction to something or somebody's opinion on something.
So it's, for me, it's as simple as that.
[00:10:37] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, I think one of the things we've seen also is that In a world where trust in institutions has gone down that these peer comments are just much more powerful, you know, that you can say this event's amazing, but if you say, if you have somebody that's just like you in the same position that says, I wasn't sure I wanted to go but I went and it was really powerful and I got all this out of it.
You know, that's going to just have more influence than the kind of institutional top down messaging today and we, we definitely see that across the board and so many things that that peer influence has power.
[00:11:15] Sam Lembeck: I agree. And it's something you can use in a multitude of ways, you know, you can use it to promote your next event, you're saying how much fun people had.
At the last one, or, you know, you can send it out shortly after the event to talk about how much fun people had for the people who missed it or want to learn more about it.
[00:11:34] Michael Hoffman: Right. And have you I want to talk a little bit about your work in the world of associations, nonprofits and the like, you know, when you're doing a commercial production, you're obviously can cast a wide net literally and have, you know, casting and find exactly the person that you want to play the role that you want.
When we talk about organizations, well, the president is the president of the organization and they may be good on camera and they may not be good on camera. Right. And then when we talk about members or people giving testimonials or participants or people who've gotten service from an organization, whatever it is that you want, you kind of On the one hand, you're at the mercy of who they bring you.
And on the other hand, there's probably lots of people in those communities who are maybe more engaging than they ever knew. How have you found that about finding? people and then how do you work with those people to bring out the you know, obviously it's different, right? They're not getting paid to do it in the way that you would on a commercial set.
So how, how has that transition been and how do you get the most out of the kind of amateur sharing their story?
[00:12:45] Sam Lembeck: Sure. Well, you know, it's a little bit of, I think you have to sort of ask for more than you need, as far as being able to craft something that is powerful. So, I worked an event recently. That was all material gathered through gather voices.
And a lot of it was hard to watch. A lot of people are not familiar with filming themselves. You know, even if it's just sitting in front of a computer, but because we asked so many people to send material, we will, we were able to pick and choose. stuff that worked for the video. So, and it wasn't necessarily that people, the quality of people's cameras or sound was bad because you can help that stuff in editing if need be, or, or, but it's more about.
Finding the people who are able to give a good story or give good feedback and you are, you know, if you can work hard enough to get and fast enough to get people to send you material, you can put together something really meaningful. And you don't need your one person who's great in front of a camera to do it.
You can get real people talking about their real experiences or talking about how excited they are, or talking about what they know about your organization or your thing, and that really translates more that can translate more than. Some actor who, you know, sounds good. Someone who's passionate about something is going to read.
[00:14:28] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, that's interesting. I think what we've seen with testimonials being really important that sometimes the old traditional way of having a camera crew setting up in a room with the perfect blue background and the perfect lighting and the perfect, you know, sound
[00:14:44] Video: it
[00:14:44] Michael Hoffman: feels and, and only a handful of people who can go through that because of the setup time and all of that, that it feels very artificial and it, and it doesn't resonate in the same way where people today are just used to watching amateur video in a completely different way.
They see it every single day. People are watching video on Instagram and TikTok and everything else. And so having a regular person share their story in more of an authentic way often resonates with, with people. And What's interesting to me also is the that the, the You know that there's a aspect when you ask a large amount of people to to share their story, there's an aspect of casting in that, right, which is, you don't necessarily have to use all those stories, you can use the ones that are great.
But more than that, now you know who those people are. And if you're going to do something with that professional camera crew, you have a much better list. People that, you know, can articulate your, your mission well, or, you know, that their story is really compelling. And you would never know that. So if you think about you're an association and you have hundreds, hundreds of thousands potentially of members, how do you know, there's absolutely rock stars among those members, but unless you're asking lots of people to share their story, you never know who they are.
[00:16:09] Sam Lembeck: That's right. And I would even say on our more professionally. Produced videos. A lot of the time, what we do is we will, we will book two days of interviews. And instead of having somebody talk about the organization, we'll get the people who work at the company and we'll just film them and ask a lot of them.
The same questions we'll ask them, you know, we'll just repeat it and get the best answers from all the people. And because we're asking interview. Style questions instead of somebody just saying something that's prepared, it just feels more authentic and it really can make something meaningful that people believe, even if it's well produced material, it has the same, you can get the same.
As long as you're. You know, having people talk from the heart,
[00:17:05] Michael Hoffman: right. I want to just take a couple minutes and go through some some general information around video for events that I think can give you a little bit of level setting, you know, we're seeing video. Driving long term engagement around events by including it, not just in the event itself, but before and after as well.
And so the ability to collect video and use video pre event is often great for pre event marketing. So having folks for example, build video collection into Their registration. And we're so people, especially like early bird registration, people saying, what are you excited, what are you excited about?
And they're sharing what they're excited about. Well, those are the best promotion videos for the event. Having speaker videos in advance saying, here's what my session is going to be about. Here's why it's going to be exciting. That's those are really valuable as well. So you can drive a lot of.
interest in an event by including content way
[00:18:05] Sam Lembeck: better than just a headshot of someone that's like this person's going to be an event. Oh, let's see what this person looks like two weeks out or a month out and see what
[00:18:14] Michael Hoffman: exactly. And it feels like Well, I don't know who this person is really I don't know what their qualifications are.
I don't know if they're great speaker. And if you can give me a little bit of that that's just going to get me excited about it. And then collecting content at events, you know, obviously there's lots of ways to do that. With the, the picture here in the middle is the gather voice video kiosk, you know, where we can collect, I don't know, 50, 50 videos in a day.
For example, for MPI, the meeting professionals international and you can do it with camera crews. You can do it iPhones. You can do lots of different ways to collect content at events. And that content can be testimonials about the events, but it can also be. educational content, right? One of the interesting pedagogical things that we've seen is when you have somebody presented a session and people afterwards are asked, tell me what your big takeaway was.
Well, they're going to interpret that session through their own work in a way that could be really helpful to others. And so being able to do that, it's also a way to bridge the gap a bit between. These virtual events and hybrid events and in person events. So people who aren't there being able to get some of the learnings from the people who are there, you know, is interesting.
And then post event being able to use that content that you collected. Pretty enduring to keep people connected and, you know, keep the momentum going. From that.
[00:19:46] Sam Lembeck: Yeah.
[00:19:47] Michael Hoffman: And is that, I
[00:19:49] Sam Lembeck: would totally agree. And I would even, I don't know if this is the next slide, but, and even for your next event, the material you filmed at the event will be, is useful.
[00:20:03] Michael Hoffman: Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think. Being able to have people see that experience and share that experience. I think that's why some folks mentioned they collect B roll, which is just, you know, that those shots that can be used later, and I'm sure Sam as a professional editor as well, like when you go into a project and somebody has more content.
I mean, I guess to a point, you know, they could maybe have too much content, but the idea, if they come and they say, you know, we've got all this B roll of the event, that's just going to give you as an editor, a lot more choices of how to make something compelling. Right.
[00:20:42] Sam Lembeck: Yeah. And what I, what is the typical way to do that is to sort of talk with the client.
And see, you know what they want to say about their event, you know, I want this event to feel this and I want it to be that and it's important that people know about this and then we're able to look at all this footage that they have in media and sort of craft, whatever it is they want to say based on what they see.
want to say, you know, use the material that they have to really portray the message they want to share. So getting that footage is great, even if it can feel overwhelming to the company. Like we have all this stuff, I don't know what to do with it. You know, if you go back and think about, you know, what it is you want to say, and then you can sort of work from there and not be so afraid The big pile in front of you.
[00:21:35] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, we, we, one thing I'm curious about how you deal with this. One thing that we see a lot of Gathered Voices clients doing is more and more is using Gathered Voices as a store. Place for their content so that you can organize this content. Cause if you collect a, you know, 10 different B roll videos, where do you put that, you know, if they're on your phone, you got to get them off your phone because they're just going to be somewhere.
And sometimes it's like, they're not just somewhere they're everywhere. There's content on hard drives. There's content on YouTube, there's content on whatever. And then they go to somebody like you and they like, we don't even know what we have, it's all over the place. And so that organization thing becomes.
a useful bit of a little bit of extra time, right? Like a marginal amount of extra time saves a massive amount of time later on.
[00:22:25] Sam Lembeck: For sure. And it, so if you're using When you're using gather voices, it sort of helps you see all the material material you have. And then once it's all in front of you, you are better, better able to communicate to whomever on your team is going to be editing, or if you're going to hire a person like C3 or something you say we have all this stuff, you know, even if it's.
You know, even if it's a 30 minute clip of someone walking around the room and it, you know, it's just one piece of footage. It's like, this is a part where he's walking around the room but it's got a lot of useful pieces. And, but, you know, these are the, the ideas that we're thinking about as far as what we want to say, kind of just look and look for something in there.
That's definitely enough information to give to an editor or a person that's editing. And
[00:23:17] Michael Hoffman: that would be, I mean, if you don't have a tool like gather voices, if you're the editor, you, you, you'd welcome a spreadsheet with links to each file or something. Right. I mean, just some organization is better than, than absolutely nothing.
Right.
[00:23:32] Sam Lembeck: Yes, I have worked. With clients that have done both, you know, you know, having links is great. Having, you know, your footage in a Google drive is great. Having it, or a Dropbox anything that you can share in either like a, you know, a, a Google spreadsheet to, to the person and say like, we like these clips or this has some stuff over here.
Being organized is so important to. You know, being able to work on your, whatever it is you're working on. I see a question that came in, because I have my little question and answer window. It says, what are your tips for getting good B roll?
[00:24:11] Michael Hoffman: Yeah. Yes. Love to hear what, what you think about that.
Sure. So I should. What makes good B roll?
[00:24:18] Sam Lembeck: What makes good b roll? Well, what makes bad b roll is shakiness.
[00:24:24] Michael Hoffman: So let's, let's define b roll for some folks, because I know that us who come from the video world
[00:24:30] Sam Lembeck: use
[00:24:31] Michael Hoffman: that term all the time. What do we mean by b roll?
[00:24:34] Sam Lembeck: Okay, so let's just use an event, like an in person event, for example.
You're going to have people speaking, or you're going to have these sessions. And that, that is something you're going to use as a promotional tool, or you're going to, you know, put the whole thing online eventually. B roll is footage. of people walking in or it's extra footage of the event. Someone walking in a shot of someone signing the ledger, checking in, or it's a shot of the sign outside of the conference hall that says, this is the gather voices event of.
2022. It's a shot of two people getting their water and talking before the event. It's someone in the crowd asking a question and the person responding on stage laughing. All that extra stuff is b roll. And the theory
[00:25:25] Michael Hoffman: there is that People, if it's a longer clip in particular, people don't want to just watch a talking head for 30 minutes or whatever that when you cut other imagery in front of that.
That talk track will actually just keep the viewer's attention more. So having a variety of shots that you can use and it's called B roll, right? Because like the A roll would be like the thing with the sound and the B roll. That sounds right. You don't
[00:25:56] Sam Lembeck: actually know for certain why, but that sounds right.
Like you have. You're a camera shooting the actual event. You're B camera shooting the extras,
[00:26:04] Michael Hoffman: right?
[00:26:05] Sam Lembeck: Don't quote me on that, but it sounds good enough. So we, for today we can buy that. And so in an
[00:26:09] Michael Hoffman: event, you, the kind of B roll you mentioned would be like the outside of the venue, the walking in people doing some things the booths, all the, all the different things that you would want to have to give somebody a feel.
[00:26:21] Sam Lembeck: And I would say that, you know, You can hire a crew to do these kinds of things, hire a person to film in the back, but you, you don't necessarily always have to be a good piece of B roll. You can hold your phone horizontally, you know, not up and down, but horizontal because it's going to look, if you want to be a bit more professional, that's the way you should be filming these videos.
It's not to say shooting vertically for social media is not important, but, you know, for longer pieces or more professional look, you hold your phone sideways and you can literally just walk around. And I would just recommend taking your time and counting to 10 on every time you film something. Because if you're just like going like this or going like that, it's going to just be shaky and it's not going to work in the things you're editing.
So, you know, if you're not going to, Have a tripod for your phone or you'd want to just walk around. Just, I would just say count to 10 on everything. Someone's signing in, just be as still as you can and you can get really good stuff and it, you don't have to be scared or you don't have to worry about not having a professional person with a 4k camera, because at the end of the day, this is all going to get turned into something you post on your website or your YouTube.
And
[00:27:37] Michael Hoffman: And you don't even have to worry about the background noise. Or anything there, right? Because 99 percent of the time, you're not going to use the sync sound, the sound that's in that video. You're just going to use the video clip on top of some other sound, right?
[00:27:52] Sam Lembeck: That's right. So at the end of the day, when you or your team or the person you hire is editing it, they will use the soundbite from the person speaking at your event.
as the main audio and they'll take the audio away from, you know, the two people in the crowd of people around you, whether, you know, drinking their coffee in the morning or, you know, getting their name tag as they walk in.
[00:28:17] Michael Hoffman: I've seen a couple techniques that I don't know if you like or feel cliche, you know, at this point, but I see, for example kind of doing something close up to something happening and then kind of slowly panning out, you know, where people can kind of see the context of it.
Sure. That's, that's a shot I've seen in b roll, you know, that it works. Another one is like, Starting with people's like hands or, or feet. I know, I know some organizations that have, that work with children or, or medical things, and they don't want to necessarily show the faces of people, or they have restrictions around those get around that by showing the feet of lots of people walking into something or, or hands, you know, signing in or doing something like that.
[00:29:06] Sam Lembeck: I mean, you sort of have to think like, if I was just taking photos of this event, how would I want to tell the story of what happened? You know, if I was walking around with a still camera, it's like, Oh, look, there's people walking in. Oh, look, they're walking in. Let's get their feet. Oh, this is a really big space.
Let me walk really back really far back and take a, take a wide photo. But you know, you're just doing the same thing, but You know counting 10 keeping your phone steady. Another fun thing to do if you have an extra camera or phone is just sticking it on a tripod or leaning it against the wall somewhere and you know getting there early before the room fills up and just Lock setting your camera just so you can go from an empty room to a full room just to show, you know, you can speed up that clip.
So it, it populates is just a good, useful tool to show people that that's
[00:30:02] Michael Hoffman: great. We, we definitely have some clients that gather voices where the video request is an internal one for staff and it's basically a shot list. You know, it says get people's feet, get the booth, get, you know, the food station, get whatever.
And so then, you know, let's say you could have 10 people on staff who is like, Hey, check out the shot list, get what you can. And then. The quantity of potential B roll is just so much greater than you would get with a crew, you know, you're going to get all kinds of things at different times a day and different people and different perspectives.
[00:30:38] Sam Lembeck: And absolutely. Yeah. And everybody's got you know, the movies that they've seen are the shots that they like that they don't even know that they know. And they'll you know, they might do that shot that you mentioned where they start on the, you know, some hands and pan up to the room. So getting people to do that is a great idea.
[00:30:55] Michael Hoffman: Yeah,
[00:30:56] Sam Lembeck: three.
[00:30:58] Michael Hoffman: Yeah the horizontal so we have a comment thanking you for that. I know, I know it took me a long time to be okay with vertical video. You know, as somebody who's done professional production, I always feel like, oh my God, you know, when phones first came out. And we know that today, and like, if you're doing tech talk or you're doing Instagram or other things, and that's why, you know, we built into gather voices, actually cropping ability, because we know you may have that horizontal.
You know, the traditional video, 16 by nine video, but you want to put it on Instagram. Well, we can, you can crop it to four by three and it's going to look really good on Instagram. And so there are things you can do in post. And I think the point is that. You have a lot more versatility if you shoot horizontal.
Yes, it is
[00:31:47] Sam Lembeck: harder to go backwards from you. It's harder to go from vertical to horizontal because you're locked into shooting this much of me. You know, just look at the shot of me right now. If if you only shot this much and you blocked off. Let me see. If you only shot this much, you know, you can't stretch it out.
It's going to be a thin shot of me. But if you were to shoot it widescreen like this, you could then just crop off these side parts and still use it vertically as needed. Always put a title card right here and use it for this shot. And it's a habit that nobody is in and it's just the nature of things and there's always way to fix stuff.
If everybody shot vertically, it's fine, but it looks weird when you're on a widescreen putting a piece of vertical footage. So that's a new. And I
[00:32:34] Michael Hoffman: think people, you know, again, depending on what you're doing. You know, with the, the montage creator in the gather voices tool. Now we, I've seen lots of people who have, you know, you have five shots and one of them happens to be vertical and you want to use it because it's a really great story.
And so we enable you to have a kind of blurred sides to that. And it's not ideal, right? It's not the same. But in a, in a montage kind of mix of things that feel really authentic, it's not a deal killer in the way that maybe it would have been 10 years ago. For sure. This looks terrible. Today you'd be like, oh yeah, people are used to seeing that.
You see it on the news, you see it everywhere. So, you know, not, not your ideal, but you can use it, right?
[00:33:17] Sam Lembeck: Yeah, for sure.
[00:33:19] Michael Hoffman: I want to get to some examples. I want to just run through really quickly. A couple things and just show and we could show some videos because I think talking about some videos would be would be helpful.
So, you know, we we've got and I think Caitlin put in the chat some different links to things that people want to see them. But and I'll, we'll show a couple examples, but the idea of before the event. You know, using video for getting introductions for promoting the event for the speaker sessions that we talked about during the event, having a variety of kinds of, of things we talked about B roll and those kind of attendee insights, you know, that's, that's really good.
But also the awards. So that's something we see in a lot of events is awards. And there are lots of opportunities within awards to get people who are getting the awards, get people to talk about the people who got the awards all of that. We were just one of our clients, Exhibitor Live, just did something in their Las Vegas conference where every time somebody won an award on stage, they went up.
On stage, they got their award, you know how they step aside and they get a picture taken with the award. And then the third thing was to go right to the kiosk and record their award video. And every single person did it because it wasn't a afterthought request. It was like the third place you are brought to, you know, after that award.
And now they have all this social content with the award winners that they can use and put on their website and, you know, and do. And it was a really marginal additional effort. Because they already have the people, they already have the situation, they already have the award, you know, they're not building something around making video.
They're just adding video to something that they're already, that they're already doing. And then we talked about after as well. So the idea of testimonials, feedback of sponsors. So that's another thing is like, there's a lot of challenge around getting sponsor value. So being able to let sponsors have some more.
Post event real estate is another way to continue to add value. And then and that's what's on the right lead lead generating video gallery. So the idea that you can let people meet sponsors, even when the events over, you know, is something that that we've seen. I want to see let's answer that one.
So we answered that question and then I want to just show a couple examples. This, oh, now I'm getting this thing. Video can't be loaded again. Let's see if it can be loaded now. No, that is so strange. I'm going to just stop sharing for a second. And
see, reload the, the the deck here. And
Show you all videos. So so I just wanted to show a couple examples where the video where where videos were used really well. So this is Windy Kristner, who's from the American Pharmacists Association. And I see clearly am having. Issues playing, playing the videos. So and I do not know why this is the second time that I've had that
[00:36:30] Kaitlan Arndt: Michael, I can share my screen.
[00:36:32] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, that would be, that would be great. And we'll have to. Troubleshoot. Thanks, Caitlyn.
[00:36:37] Kaitlan Arndt: You're no problem. What's going on here?
[00:36:40] Michael Hoffman: So this is Wendy Christner.
[00:36:48] Kaitlan Arndt: Sorry, Michael, could you hear it when it was playing?
[00:36:50] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, I think so.
[00:36:52] Kaitlan Arndt: Okay. You wanna introduce it or you want me to just say it? Yeah,
[00:36:54] Michael Hoffman: so I can introduce it. This is Wendy from the pharmacist Association, and they wanted to do something to welcome people who were coming from different countries to to their.
To their event. And so they had this idea that, and it was really super easy to execute, but had a real emotional impact for the attendees.
[00:37:15] Video: Yeah, that that I actually came up with when I was,
[00:37:19] Michael Hoffman: I'm not surprised
[00:37:20] Video: when I stayed awake one night, just wondering how in the world am I going to, you know, get engagement on it, on a computer with my members and, and, and what can I possibly do that is interesting and and and entertaining a little bit.
So I reached out to our team members and I put a call out there to all the staff and I said, Hey, anybody speak a second, third language, let's welcome everybody in various languages. So that's, that's what we use gather voices for. I got great reviews. Witamy na wirtualnym spotkaniu 2021 roku Amerykańskiej Organizacji Farmaceutów w National Mall, Washington, D.
C. Bardzo się cieszę, że jesteście z nami i mam nadzieję, że będziecie zadowoleni z naszego spotkania. Szabetan APHA 2021 Virtual. Apne Pharmacy Basia. National
2021 Virtual
Washington DC 2021, virtual
2021 Virtual at the National Mall. Herzliches Willkommen zu ihrem Zuhause, der Apotheke an dem National Mall. So anyway that was so easy to, to, to, and it made the staff feel more involved and yeah, that was, that was a lot of fun to do.
[00:39:04] Michael Hoffman: So you know, that's an example where the again, doing something where all of those attendees speak English, but just by recognizing them, that In that way, it has a real emotional impact and something that every organization can do really easily.
And I think they started with staff asking if staff had these skills and that actually got staff more excited as well.
[00:39:29] Sam Lembeck: Yeah. I mean, it just put a smile on my face, you know, and it's like, that's the kind of thing where it's like, You can just tell that there's, they're passionate about what they're, even though they're just speak, saying hello, they're passionate.
And that totally translates and makes you smile and engages you.
[00:39:48] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, exactly. I don't the, the the next video, Caitlin, I think that we can let's show that. And then the one after that, we will, we will we will skip, but this is an example where ASAE, which is the American Society of Association Executives, they had a conference, they collected videos at the conference, and then they were able to turn around.
those videos into a montage in the next morning to send out to the attendees thanking them for coming. And I think we, we saw the another client of ours, the the fundraising, Association of Fundraising Professionals, where they did the same thing, but in, but they had a multi day conference, and they used The before the plenary session, they'd have like a two minute montage of what happened in the day before at the conference.
So, you know, the tools, Sam, right. I've just gotten so much easier to, to collect and turn things around.
[00:40:46] Sam Lembeck: If you can budget that in your schedule to get somebody to spend one hour just going, you know, making that it is, it makes you look like you've got Your stuff together. Yeah. And it, and it doesn't take a lot to, to get that.
[00:41:03] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, exactly. So let's see a little bit of this.
[00:41:10] Video: Hi, I'm an
brown, the marketing and communications manager at the National League for Nursing, and I am attending for the first time A-S-A-E-M-M-C. And I'll have to say that it has been such an impactful event. I've learned so much, and I especially appreciated being around so many different association professional, professionals who share the same passion as me in marketing communications and attending all the several sessions mostly on membership engagement, marketing engagement, volunteer engagement, so many things to take away.
I'm so excited to be able to learn so much and have such a great experience. Hi, I'm Andrew Riley. I'm with the International Food Service Distributors Association. I'm a returning attendee to MMCC, and this has been a great show. You know, one thing I think that's been very valuable is putting together workforce toolkits to help our members better recruit the next generation, increase diversity within the
[00:42:07] Michael Hoffman: it here.
I want to point out, you know, this was done obviously in the exhibit hall. You can hear all the noise behind it and you, you know, that's mitigated. for the viewer by having the, the captions there, but it also just gives a sense of a very vibrant place that it's happening in. And so that's the kind of trade off of not having the ideal sound, but giving a sense of like, wow, there's sounds like there's a lot of people there.
[00:42:37] Sam Lembeck: Was that shot with the Gather Voices kiosk?
[00:42:40] Michael Hoffman: Yes.
[00:42:40] Sam Lembeck: Yeah, it's good. It's like you can, and there's prompts on there. So people, you know, don't, don't just have to come up with something. It's
[00:42:48] Michael Hoffman: not talk about anything you want to talk about. It's, you know, answer this question. Yeah. It's a lot, it's a lot easier for people to do that.
And I think once you start to see people standing in line to do it, that also brings other people over willing to participate. Yeah, people just love
[00:43:04] Sam Lembeck: being in front of the camera.
[00:43:05] Michael Hoffman: Which is interesting. Some people
[00:43:06] Sam Lembeck: don't.
[00:43:06] Michael Hoffman: Yeah. Well, I'd love to go turn to Well, our, our next, our next video, which I'll just talk about for a second, Caitlin but we'll skip.
The watching it was, was an event promotion video and was just a really simple video. We can put the link to that in the chat if anybody wants to watch it. But what was so interesting to me was they put a thumbnail of this video. In in there, and it increased the click throughs in their pre event email by 300%.
So that's, you know, that's just shows you it's not about gather voices, not about tools, it's whatever. But when people have a choice between a big block of text, and a video, a thumbnail with a play button, they're going to click on that thumbnail with a play button a lot more often than they're going to click on some text link.
And so putting a speaker, you know, Intro video in your pre event email, putting, you know, your your event director talking about why it's going to be exciting, whatever you've got, you're going to get more engagement on that video content than you are on this big text. And we just don't see enough of it.
I mean, the 300 percent more click throughs, right? 3X their click throughs on the email with the video. That's incredible, and it was so easy, so easy to do. And I'm like, why isn't everybody doing this? And it's because, I don't know, they don't know about it. Hopefully, hopefully now they do, but I'm sure you're seeing that Sam, just that the video in general just gets so much more engagement.
[00:44:44] Sam Lembeck: Yeah, absolutely. We try to, even with our marketing stuff, whether it's an event or not having a video in there, it's just another tool to get engagement for certain.
[00:44:57] Michael Hoffman: Well, I'd love to see an example, Sam. We could show an example of something that you worked on. I know one of, one of the clients that you've done a lot of work for is Friendly House.
Will you tell us a little about who they are and
[00:45:08] Sam Lembeck: what
[00:45:09] Michael Hoffman: the circumstances are and sort of what messaging they're trying to get out?
[00:45:13] Sam Lembeck: Yeah, well, Friendly House is a women's rehabilitation center. You know, they've got 12 beds. It's a small treatment center in Los Angeles that does detox, rehab and sober living, and they're a non profit and don't have a lot of money to spend.
And so we sort of We, we give them, you know, at a very discounted rate. We do some basic promotional stuff for them. They have a gala fundraiser video once a fundraiser in person once a year. And we usually do like a big. fundraising video for that, whether it's fundraising or just something to sort of, you know, tug at the heartstrings and get the message out that this is a place that helps people.
And they rely on donors primarily to, you know, sponsor people. So they don't have to spend money or, you know, cause a lot of people don't have money if they're, you know, Well, this is a, this is a place that takes a lot of people that don't have a lot of money. You can definitely spend a lot of money on treatment if you have the money, but they take women in and we sort of try to get that message across to get more donations for them.
[00:46:25] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, that's, that's interesting. And the, one of the big mistakes that nonprofits often make is they show something amazing, you know, amazing program. But the viewer's response to that emotionally is what does it have to do with me? Right? And if you don't tell that piece of the story, which is we need you and here's why you never get the action that you want, you know, and, and so that needs to be in the story.
So let's Caitlin, if you can help us take a look, that would be. That would be great.
[00:46:59] Video: I was there. That's the first time I went to was Betty Ford and Carol Burnett and Carol Burnett's daughter just got trying to get sober. Everything was pretty new and treatment back then and there weren't any friendly houses but friendly houses.
We're talking about an organization that was started in 1951. It's the first women's residential home in the United States back in a time when if women had a drug and alcohol problem, they were pretty much started in that house. And I think about two years ago, two or three years ago, we started to make the transition from a sober living to a treatment center.
I think still don't understand our business model. I think that people think that we are a shelter, which we're not, that we're free, which we're not, and don't understand that we are a full blown rehab treatment facility for women. I offer them individual sessions as well as a recovery group every week.
I give the women the chance so that they can learn how to self care. Self regulate their emotions. The groups utilize connection exercises. I think they help people get more in touch with their sense of identity their connection with others, and, but also themselves as well. Aside from the process groups and life skills groups, we do things like art.
And yoga and breath works and equine therapy, and it shows them there are different things that they can spend.
[00:48:27] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, thanks. So this is great. I love just being able to get a sense of the whole thing and what they do. And yeah, obviously when you have somebody who has like an Australian accent that always helps.
Yeah.
[00:48:40] Sam Lembeck: And with that kind of thing, like we were saying earlier, what we did was just, we interviewed these people to talk about, just ask them questions about what they did. And we just pulled the best, most authentic clips, you know, none of those people's had, none of those people had anything prepared.
They were just talking, they were answering questions about what they do. And you can do that, whether it's professionally shot or not. You know, it's, you can get those kinds of answers from the gather voices kiosk or holding up the camera camera and interviewing someone. If you get, if you shoot enough, you can really make anything.
[00:49:15] Michael Hoffman: I want to one of the things that stands out to me in, in that clip was also the music. And so we talk a little about music, the role of music in these kinds of clips and how you think about music and, you know, how does music not drown things out and, and, and what does it serve? What purpose does it serve?
I
[00:49:34] Sam Lembeck: mean, the music really needs to support the tone you're trying to set. It is, it is Not a simple thing to find the right piece of music, but the right piece of music can really add an emotional element to the words that are coming from people's mouths, it is, they definitely work together. You know, Somebody speaking, just something as simple, just delivering some facts can be really heightened by the right piece of music.
And if you can get it together, it can really elevate. Your content and nowadays copyright free music, royalty free music is so cheap. There are subscriptions you can have. I know, I think, I don't know if gather voices has some in their platform.
[00:50:28] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, we do. We've got like 30 clips you can choose from without any addition.
Yeah.
[00:50:33] Sam Lembeck: And it's like, I wouldn't, it's not mandatory, but it is essential to sort of helping, you know, portray a really meaningful piece.
[00:50:46] Michael Hoffman: And sometimes people don't even notice it, right? But it creates some emotional layer that's that's doing it. I want to take a second to just have another, another quick poll.
And, you know, we were, we talk a lot about lifting up the voices of your Attendees or members or donors or staff. And, you know, we call that co creation. So, you know, I want to know how challenging it is for you all to co create video content with your community. And, you know, are you feeling that it's challenging.
And I think Sam, I think one of the things is just about the paradigm we need to shift right like you were just saying you can take your iPhone and you can do some stuff you can get B roll you can, you know, and part of it is we we just have a sense of a way of doing things like when somebody says video it's all of a sudden it's.
Big video project. There's no other kind of video in most people's minds and it doesn't have to be like that.
[00:51:40] Sam Lembeck: No you know, your example about the email that gets sent out, that gets over, you know, 300%, you know, engagement that doesn't need to be a very produced video, it can be one clip, but it's another, it's another tool.
It can really be one shot. If you're. overwhelmed by the editing process. You don't have to do that much. It's just, you know, doing something is better than nothing. And if you're
[00:52:07] Michael Hoffman: just sharing the results here, definitely skewing to the more challenging side.
[00:52:11] Video: Yeah.
[00:52:12] Michael Hoffman: Again, I think is, and it's also a skill set issue, right?
We, we you know, I think about something like web websites, you know, when in, in 1995, you know, if I told you that your organization would have a website, you might've, if you didn't in 1995, you'd say, Probably because you kind of see where the world's going. But if I told you, you'd have a whole group of people whose job was just to maintain and work on your website, you would say, that's insane.
Where are we going to get those people? And how would we afford those people? And, and I think video is in that category now. It's, we need more skillset. We need when we're hiring people in our communications and marketing, we need people who, who not necessarily are professionals at all, but just have the aptitude and interest to do some of the things that we just talked about.
[00:53:03] Sam Lembeck: Yeah, no question. And it's definitely becoming easier and easier to have find people that are capable of that. It's like, you know, you know, when you went to used to put out job requests for to hire people, you'd be like, must know, Microsoft Word must know this, you can just add things like, you know, would be great if you knew simple editing skills.
You know, that is easy to do.
[00:53:29] Michael Hoffman: Right. Right. And there's new tools all the time that are just making things easier. Chris shares that they do a monthly two minute video called nugget of knowledge. I love that. And, and it's done by zoom, right? So that's something like a tool that we all know how to use.
We're doing it right now. We're having a conversation on zoom. We're recording on zoom. And so the idea that you can't add video content in some way in different ways is. It's clearly not, not true anymore.
[00:53:56] Sam Lembeck: Yeah. And you know, it's, it's, it's okay to feel like it's not easy because it can feel not easy.
But a little bit, you can find the help and, and make it happen. It's, it's, it's definitely out there and much easier than it used to be. So you just sort
[00:54:13] Michael Hoffman: of let the
[00:54:14] Sam Lembeck: fear, you know, hold onto you.
[00:54:17] Michael Hoffman: Yeah. Well, I'm going to run the poll for the CAE credit, but in the meantime, Here's your information, Sam. I think if people have questions and want to reach out to you and get some of your expertise in what they're doing I assume they can just do that.
Yeah, no
[00:54:32] Sam Lembeck: problem. I'd be happy to talk to anybody, give some advice you know, whatever, whatever anybody needs. I'm around, sitting at my desk doing a lot of editing we're filming out in the real world. stuff all the time, but you know, this is my home base right here.
[00:54:49] Michael Hoffman: If I
[00:54:49] Sam Lembeck: didn't have this drop sheet behind me, you would see lots of gear and, and, and material behind me.
This is my, this is where I live.
[00:54:57] Michael Hoffman: Yeah, no, that's terrific. And I assume with COVID restrictions having changed now that you're out much more and thinking much more about, the mix of virtual and, and in person and being able to do in person shoots in a way that was that really not possible. Pretty awesome.
[00:55:16] Sam Lembeck: It's nice. It's nice. You can, even if you're still doing virtual events, there's a lot more options for getting material to use.
[00:55:26] Michael Hoffman: Well, we're at time. Thank you all for who wanted your C will process that for you. Thank you for your nice comments. Ty and Chris and Ryan. And Sam, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share.
These tips and introduce yourself to this community you know, appreciate your work and, and I would say for, for, I am glad that you are, are not spending all your time making entertainment content, but you're helping the amazing organizations that do important work like friendly house tell powerful stories.
So I'm, I'm, I think that's good for humanity and appreciate it.
[00:56:04] Sam Lembeck: Thank you. It's fun to do that stuff.
[00:56:08] Michael Hoffman: All right, everyone. Have a fantastic rest of your day. All
[00:56:11] Sam Lembeck: right. Bye, Michael.
