Pitching for video production to a large company, need help!

A

Admir

Well-known member
Hi all!

I would like to hear you out on some tips regarding selling myself and my idea to a company.

This is a huge company with many stores in different coutries selling food and everything that goes along with it. They want me to produce 10 videos where the viewer can follow one of the local producers of the products that they sell in their stores (max 1 min long). It needs to be "down to earth" "friendly" and "humble". This is not an advanced production and really nothing new or revolutionary. I have made quite some productions but nothing quite like this. I have a great idea of how we're going to produce this and how I want it to look. But, of course they would love to see something that I've done that I could compare to what they want, and I don't have that.

So, the question is:

A: Should I just write it all down, short and simple explaining my visions.

Or should I B: Write it down and present it, and also give some examples of other companies work (from say Youtube) and clarify that this is NOT our work but we could use it as an inspiration so that we both know what to aim for.

Or C: Write it down and present it, and with that bring some stills from different productions (both our and others) just to show a palette of colours, the mood and interesting angles that they could be interested in.

How do you do when it comes to meeting a client and selling your idea? Any other great tips that I might have missed? Any help would be appreciated!
 
Thanks for the tip David! Storyboards, IMO, takes quite some talent in order to make them look good and serious. I one of those that makes stick figues in storyboards so yeah, that could look pretty bad when pitching my idea...
 
My biggest problem as well, being able to explain visual ideas with words... And if a picture is worth a thousand words, you need 1.440.000 words to explain a one minute video ;)
 
They don't need to be fancy to get the idea across. Use a digital camera to shoot stills and toss in a few photoshop goodies. Then you convey the idea and make the sell.

The other thing you can do is ask them for examples of what trips their trigger.
 
This is how ad agencies do it:
Absolutely :storyboards (as mentioned by everyone before me - even stick figures, really) and ten show examples of "the look". The examples don't have to be yours - it's called "scrap" - to give the client an idea of what the finished product will look like.
 
For professional work, all of my storyboards, mood sheets, etc. are made from stills. Either I shoot them myself, or find something similar enough on a stock footage website. These aren't shot for shot storyboards, just enough to get a general feel.

I also draw stick figures, except that I don't get the heads right because I can't handle circles. Some of my characters I draw are just circles... I definitely stood out in that one animation class. One time someone behind a camera demanded to see that storyboard I was looking at for myself. He then laughed, and showed everyone else so they could laugh, too. My point is, if all of us were serious artists we probably wouldn't spend so much time being camera technicians and team organizers.
 
I've just done a presentation; downloaded half a dozen video's and edited to show the concept.

Client was very impressed.
 
Thanks for all the great input!

Im going to present a storyboard with real images and framegrabs from different videos to simply show the framing, colors and style. Each image on the storyboard has some notes under it explaining what feeling it it supposed to have, just to be clear with them.

And of course I'm going to bring a paper with crucial notes such as what we will focus on, the feeling the videos should have and what statement we want to give to their viewer and customers.

That said, I will not bring any video to show them that's not produced by us but of course we will show them our own work if they want to see it.
 
Admir,

I'd love to hear how you got a company of such size to listen to your pitch in the first place? Do you know someone already? Why did they not pas you off to their agency they use?

Also, all the best with the pitch.

Thanks.
 
rob norton said:
Admir,

I'd love to hear how you got a company of such size to listen to your pitch in the first place? Do you know someone already? Why did they not pas you off to their agency they use?

Also, all the best with the pitch.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Well I'm not quite sure how they found me. A company of this size (500 million dollars a year in revenue) probably has agencies for all photo/video productions but the marketing manager got in touch directly with me and asked for a quote, and now they want me to pitch a quick idea. So yeah, I'm a bit nervous but I will try to be as prepared as possible with an storyboard and some key things written on a paper.
 
If you can't do it, pay someone else to do it. Not always the prefered way to go about it when it cuts into your profits. But, if it gets you the job, who knows what else it could turn into. Find a local artist or someone still in school to do it on "spec". Build a little cushion into your bid to pay the person and take a little profit hit. You don't even have to tell the client that someone else did them either. Sometimes it takes a village. :thumbsup:

(The previous ideas were good as well.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top