When I was 18, I got a new passport.
When I was 26, excited to be jetting off with this Australian girl I’d met… We opened my passport and there stared this 18 year old version of me.
I had rebranded by this point. But my old packaging was there to haunt me.
She would either laugh. Or run.
Be prepared for rebrand
Companies rebrand. It happens. They mature. Fashions change.
Just recently Uber and The Premier League have done it. Maybe you will too.
Here’s three scenarios:
1. You rebrand. Your business changes its logo, colours, font… but all of your videos have the old branding
2. You make videos that include a member of staff… who then leaves - maybe under a cloud of bad PR, or maybe they switched to a competitor
3. You change one of your products, or drop it from your range, but… yep, your videos still reference it and are out of date
Now, in a perfect world your original video producer will still have the edit sessions and all of the footage and can take out the old branding, put in the new, etc.
But what if you can’t contact them?
What if they’ve closed down?
What if the original marketing manager who booked them has moved on and now no one can trace the company?
What if the production company can be found but they no longer have your originals?
All of the above happens. More often than you might think.
The solution
In the past year I’ve been asked a few times to salvage/re-edit videos because of these reasons. But here’s the thing, it’s far from ideal. You end up using editing tricks to make the best of the situation or have to charge more because you need go through frame by frame masking old branding…
3 ways to protect yourself
- Ask for a copy of the raw unedited footage, ‘the rushes’, of your video
- Request an edit of your video without any graphics
- Get a copy with no music on the soundtrack
When you have a video produced, do all of these three things and you've protected your business from its future marketing self. Without any real hassle you can put in new graphics, cut bits out (easy, because without music, no one can tell what you cut) and keep your videos up to date.
Repurpose
Another benefit of keeping clean footage like this, is at some point you might like to repurpose it, to use it again in a different promo.
You know you filmed that model having her hair done for 2 hours and yet only 10 seconds is your video… what if you could take a different section and make a cool video for Instagram or a How To for YouTube? You can only do that if you’ve got the originals.
Make a new one!
I realise the crux of this post is telling you don't need to make a new video. Of course, there are good reasons to make a fresh one. Video styles change. Viewing habits change (make it short and snappy now!). Publishing platforms change. So don't rule it out.
But I also appreciate the costs and logitsics involved. So if you have videos already, it's better to be armed to quickly re-edit rather than start from scratch.
Embed from anywhere but YouTube
I've said countless times that you shouldn't embed on your site from YouTube and for a variety of reasons. But for this post let's take one important point to do with rebranding. On paid-for hosting sites like Vimeo, Wistia, Vidyard etc, you can swap the file over behind the scenes.
See what I'm saying? You keep your embed the same. Everywhere your video has ever been linked to, like other websites or social media, the url stays the same... BUT you've swapped the old video file to be your new branded video file, so your image is refreshed.
With YouTube you have no choice but to delete the old video and upload a new one. All links go dead. All embeds need to be re-coded.
Be prepared for makeovers
Don’t feel stuck with your old identity.
Don’t feel you have to pay a lot of money to the government just to be issued a new a passport so you don't lose the girl of your dreams. I mean,... not have to pay to have a brand new video made and lose the customers of your dreams.
If however, you do find yourself in this situation, just contact me. I’m happy to take a look and advise what you can do with what you’ve got. I’ll be like the Gok of video for you. Just get in touch.