Promotional Videos For Charities

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Working Wednesday: Promotional Videos For Charities

You're sat there, watching your shows and an advert break comes on. Then it hits you; the charity commercials. They make you sit up and pay attention by pulling on your heart strings.

As a filmmaker there are factors you need to take into consideration when producing promotional videos for charities:

Understand your audience:

You can't produce anything without getting to know your audience. So know your typical demographic and where the promo will be shown. Where is important as it will also determine the length of the production. For example, if you are showing the video online it can stand to be a little longer.

Have a strong narrative:

Don't just fill the video with all the information out there. Be brave, less is more. Make it as simple as possible so the audience focusses on the issue or message you are trying to put forward.  The production needs to follow a strong storyline, to set out the reason and goals of the charity and the call to action.

Make it emotional and shocking:

You want the audience's hair to stand up on the back of their neck. You want your video to be one of the most poignant things of their day, so much so that they can't stop thinking about it. Try and put your audience in the shoes of the people who need the charities support. A great example of this is the UNICEF advert:



Don't forget your facts: 

Using the emotional and shock card is great, but you need to back it up with statistics in order to install the all important trust factor. For example the NSPCC advert below shares one facts, 1 child in 9 are abused, those figures are showing enough to stand alone.


Have a call to action

Make it clear what your viewers need to do now, have the number clearly displayed and often and make the call to action as easy as possible. Many use a text call to action as it's quicker and easier for the audience, but they also display a phone number. However, don't overload the viewer with all the contact details of the charity, you will only be masking the main contact channel.



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