Category Archives: Video

Charlotte Metro Replay: Delivering Value in Video

08 Friday Jul 2016

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Last week, the Communications Media Management Association hosted a Metro Meeting at the Bank of America Broadcast Auditorium in Charlotte, where attendees gathered to learn and discuss how to deliver value in video.

For those of you who couldn’t attend in Charlotte, we wanted to share the recap video from the meeting, featuring case studies where media managers from Bank of America, Wells Fargo, SAS, Globecomm, and more discuss their recent initiatives, projects, and success stories.

Click below to watch the recap of the June 29th Charlotte Metro Meeting: Delivering Value in Video.
CMMA_Charlotte_Metro_Video

Be sure to attend our next Metro Meeting at a location near you! Follow us on Twitter, or stay up to date on future events here!

How Video Moves the Customer Journey

06 Friday May 2016

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SAS has been using video as part of the marketing and sales process for almost 40 years, and we’re often asked how important is video in the various phases of the customer journey? Or, if you have budget or resource constraints, what are the most important touch points in that journey? In truth there isn’t any “one size fits all” answer. However, in our experience, video now plays an important role at every point in the customer journey.

At SAS we sell an intangible product – analytics software – that is at the same time critical to organizations and difficult to explain. Video helps make our products and solutions real by showing how they help customers solve problems and maximize opportunities. It also creates personality for our brand, and humanizes our company.

Over the years, we’ve seen video evolve from presenting demos and highlighting product features to serving as a ubiquitous element across all of our sales and marketing activities. That’s because our prospects respond positively to video throughout the cycle. At SAS, we define the customer journeys as a continuous loop with seven way stations (see illustration below), and we have identified different types of videos that work well at different stages.

Customer_Journey_Marketing_Image

NEED – We use video to accomplish two important goals in this phase. First, video helps to generate awareness of SAS and to communicate our brand. In a world where products evolve quickly or become commodities, customers want to know what type of company they are considering doing business with; what does it stand for; what are its values. Videos for this purpose use a storytelling approach and focus on higher-level messages about the essence of our company.

For example, the video, IOM in Nepal: Hope, armed with answers, can overcome hardship, dramatizes how advanced data management and analysis impacts people’s lives.

IOM in Nepal

This video performed extremely well for us, building awareness of SAS and humanizing our brand.  In less than six months on our website, there were over 100,000 impressions, and just under 15,000 views. Given the position on our website and comparing these numbers to other videos on our site, we are convinced that there is a serious interest in this type of content. We will undoubtedly pursue more of these types of videos in the months ahead.

Second, we use video in this phase to demonstrate thought leadership, showing that we understand the issues businesses are facing today and communicating that we are looking ahead at where technology is going. We’re not pitching SAS solutions at this point. Rather, we are demonstrating the value our solutions can bring to solving complex customer problems. In the example below we highlight this type of thought leadership by showing the linkage between advanced analytics and the Internet of Things through the lens of one of our customers, the Director of Smart Grid Technology and Operations for Duke Energy.

Jason Handley on Analytics and the Internet of Things

RESEARCH – In this phase we want to make sure we show up on a prospect’s list of solutions to consider. We do this by showing that SAS has solutions to solve a prospect’s business needs without getting too specific. In addition to straight videos like the demo of our Visual Analytics offering below, our live webcasts and social media integration of video come into play here. Buying the right SEM search words is also key.

SAS Visual Analytics Overview Demo

DECIDE – This is where prospects are thinking about becoming customers, and we use video for demos and customer case stories that highlight our unique differentiators. Videos such as the product demonstration and customer reference examples shown below are supportive in nature. We recognize that the sales executive plays the key role in driving the customer decision at this point in the buying cycle by highlighting specific details about how SAS will address the customer’s unique needs. These videos lay the groundwork for those efforts.

SAS Visual Analytics Forecasting Demo

Lenovo Captures the Voice of Customer with SAS

BUY – We use video a little differently at this point in the customer journey. For large opportunities where our sales team is meeting with the prospect onsite, we often produce a short, personal video directly from our CEO and senior management demonstrating our commitment to their business.  We’ve found this a very effective closing tool for large international sales when our senior management is not able to travel to meetings.

ADOPT – SAS uses video for tutorials to help customers understand the software they just acquired. Videos such as Get Started with SAS Visual Statistics, which you can see below, help customers get acquainted with our software, and engage actual users in the onboarding process at an early stage.

Get Started with SAS Visual Statistics

USE – At this point, we use video to focus on how to perform specific tasks. Training videos such as the one below, which demonstrates how to perform Cluster Analysis with SAS, accelerates the onboarding process and serves as a refresher resource, reducing ongoing support costs.

Perform Clustering Using SAS Visual Statistics

RECOMMEND – This is where satisfied customers step up to become our reference stories, sharing their endorsement of SAS with others. In this example, our customer Enerjisa talks about using SAS to lead the energy sector in Turkey.

Enerjisa Uses SAS to Lead the Energy Sector in Turkey

Collaborating with Key Influencers: Using Video As a 2-Way Street

In addition to supporting prospects through the customer journey, we also use video in innovative ways to communicate with analysts, and to bring their perspective back to our organization. As part of our annual analyst briefing, we create videos to inform the analyst community about SAS product direction, our vision of where the market is heading, and how we plan to address future market needs.

We use video in an entirely different way with analysts because we are very careful not to market to analysts. They don’t want a sales pitch, so we provide appropriate product information, roadmaps, and demos.

Perhaps the most interesting use of video comes at the end of the analyst meeting, when we use video to capture analysts’ honest feedback on what they saw and heard. We use this video internally to provide feedback to our marketing, R&D teams, and senior executives so they can gauge how our message was received. Video shows the real impact of our messages on analysts – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Prospect Expectations and Behavior Are Changing

Going forward, we will continue to see major innovations in how we use video to accelerate and enrich the customer journey. The length and role of video is evolving quickly. The trend for all types of video is toward short-form – two to three minute segments. Prospects and customers are looking at video on a myriad of devices, in-between other activities. If we have a broader topic with more than 10 minutes of content, we break the topic into a series of smaller, more digestible chunks to adapt to fast-changing viewing habits.

We’ve also seen evolution in customers’ expectations of video. Today, video represents our brand and therefore must reflect the same quality and professionalism our customers expect from our company and our software solutions.

Video marketing advice in a nutshell: plan, produce, and develop different types of video to support the different phases of the customer journey. And if you are not yet using video to accelerate your prospects’ paths through that journey, ask yourself, “why not?”

This article is contributed by Bill Marriott, CMMA Board Member, SAS Sr. Director of Video Communications and New Media.

Media Managers Bring Brands to Life

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

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When someone mentions BMW… most people think about great engineering and high performance. And when someone mentions Apple… they probably think about clean, simple design and reliable technology. What do people think about when they hear your organization’s name?

Video, more so than any other media brings your brand to life. As Media Managers, we have an opportunity and responsibility to be active brand stewards.

Think about your organization’s brand attributes…the aspirational characteristics you want your organization to stand for. We are swift, agile, customer focused, innovative, etc… Now look at the video being produced in your company from the POV of your customers, and stakeholders. Does the video look, feel, and sound like those brand attributes?

We’ve all been trained to know the guidelines around proper use of our organization’s logo. These are generally clearly spelled out and very specific. These guidelines we’re driven and perfected by the print industry. This was a challenging task, but, at the end of the day, it only addressed one static image – the logo itself.

But as motion media has evolved and been democratized – we suddenly realize that people will judge our brand by the pictures, we show, the sounds we include, the pace and cadence of the video and most importantly, in the emotions we express. All of these components and more become our brand.

Writing guidelines around these elements is far more challenging, but, vitally more important than the guidelines around use of a logo.

As a Media Manager, you have an opportunity to champion the cause of bringing your brand to life. But, it comes with the challenge of developing guidelines that are clear, measurable and enforceable.

Well written video standards and guidelines are an important key part of governance. And as user/employee generated content becomes more commonplace, standards and guidelines become more necessary. Being proactive in developing these standards and guidelines helps position you and your team as the experts and gives you the tools to manage and control the video that is produced in your organization.

Without clear guidelines and standards, video becomes the wild, wild, west leaving you and your team with the feeling of trying to address a forest fire with a small garden hose. And more importantly, the raging fire of video that looks, sounds and feels arbitrary and inconsistent, is creating an impression of your brand and organization that can at best be inconsistent and at worst be detrimental to the brand your organization has worked so hard to create and maintain.

So, if you have not begun creating some brand standards and guidelines for your organization, get started. It’s not easy, but, the rewards can be huge for your organization and can help you and your team gain credibility as not just technical and creative advisors, but as a core part of preserving your organization’s most valuable asset – your brand.

This article is contributed by Bill Marriott, CMMA Board Member

A CMMA Leader Requirement: Rely on Your Rookie Smarts!

21 Friday Aug 2015

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While attending a recent leadership conference, I was peppered with numerous helpful and inspiring leadership messages. These were all good, and for the most part, satisfying. I love this stuff, and the more leadership ideas, the better! Thinking back on the two-day conference, I realized that I had heard versions of these subjects before; these were “refresher” lessons in leadership development. I saw some of the brightest minds on the leadership spectrum, and one message delivered by author and consultant, Liz Wiseman, stood out from the others: Apply the skills you came into your career with in everyday interactions, decisions, planning and thinking – apply your “Rookie Smarts”.

Rookie Smarts is a concept of going back to the basics that launched our careers and our passion for learning and leading. The idea is to capture that youthful energy and innovative spirit we all had when we began our careers. Use that energy again to foster a culture of learning and mentoring the workforce that’s creeping up behind us…the future leaders, and future members of CMMA.

Admit it. We’ve seen them; the rookies in our organization who think they know everything about anything, and they aren’t afraid to let you know. Sometimes these rookies fall flat and learn lessons the hard way. These rookies also move quickly through organizations with their new ideas, new energy and relevant skills for today’s workforce, and find success. I’m attracted to the concept of Rookie Smarts, and believe that as CMMA members, and leaders within our own organizations, we have an obligation to continually canvas the talent landscape for those rarest of rare jewels: future leaders with vast potential. Face it; many of us will be hanging up the business suit for a canoe paddle in the next ten years (more or less), and it should be incumbent upon each of us to chart a course for developing these new leaders in our organizations. We were the rookies at one point in our career, and if we look back to the traits we employed to bring us to where we are today, just think how we can inspire the rookies of this day. Why should we look back?

Wiseman says that in a rapidly changing world, experience can be a curse. Careers can stall, innovation pauses or stops and strategies grow tired and stale. The concept of being new, naïve and clueless as being an asset is a hard one to grasp; however, I see this as the perpetual learner. This is the experienced leader who is always looking for the new twist to solving an age-old problem (analog to digital, anyone?).

So, take this advice, and invest in your past success, and embrace being a rookie again. Love learning, and embrace mentoring. And by the way, “Rookie Smarts” is also Wiseman’s new book. Embrace the thinking and behavior of that young, energetic person you were, and ponder hanging up that canoe paddle for a few more years. You’re just getting started!

Article contributed by Warren Harmon, CMMA Board Member

Hanging with “My People”

06 Wednesday May 2015

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I just got back to the office after attending CMMA’s Spring Development Conference at Marriott’s World Headquarters outside of Washington D.C. It was my last conference as CMMA President, and in the couple days since then, I have been in a reflective mood about my tenure in that role – and about CMMA in general.

Bottom line, it’s been a great ride as President and with CMMA. But why exactly?

I’ve been an active member for over 9 years. For me, to put it simply, the essence of CMMA is to learn and share. Looking at the conferences we put on the last couple years, the themes were respectively, “The Innovation Conference,” “Communicating in a Digital World,” “From Hollywood to Topeka: Differentiating our Value through Story and Craft” and “Become a Center of Excellence.” My hope is that the events not only gave us an opportunity to stretch our thinking (maybe even disrupt our thinking) and deepen our knowledge, but also to share and learn from each other’s experiences so that we would be that much more savvy going back to the office.

At its heart, peer to peer learning is arguably the most compelling benefit of CMMA membership. In all the busyness of the D.C. event there were a couple of moments where I took a step back and thought about who I was in the room with, thinking to myself, “These are my people! I’m in a room hanging with my counterparts from Bank of America! Mayo Clinic! Kate Spade! Sandia National Laboratories!” Those guys handle nuclear weapons! What an eclectic bunch!” (Feel free to name any other combination of companies or organizations that attend our meetings).

It’s awesome knowing these folks, all of their experiences and know-how are accessible: across the table from me at breakfast, in the bus on the way to the President’s Dinner, just an email or phone call away. In D.C. I certainly took advantage and engaged with them on a number of topics.

What’s also awesome is that these relationships turn into lasting friendships and can blossom in a myriad of ways as we journey through our careers together. The challenges, the opportunities, the highs and lows. And the same dynamic happens with our Partners too.

I can’t think of any other organization that is so elegant in its simplicity. Professionals getting together, learning, sharing. That’s CMMA.

This article was contributed by Chris Barry, CMMA Board of Directors

The Most Important Person in the Room

06 Monday Apr 2015

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Peter F. Drucker once said that “The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not being said.” We have a similar paradox when we’re developing a project or a presentation: the most important person – the audience member, is typically not in the room.

When starting a project it’s easy to not consider the audience. To start, we’re likely in a hurry and are already behind schedule. Then, we’re probably smart enough, have plenty of experience and have done many projects like this before. It’s easy to believe that we know just what to do. Sometimes that may be enough to communicate successfully. But, considering the barriers an audience might have to receiving our message can challenge exactly those preconceived ideas we’re banking on to get the message right.

It’s Communications 101 to remember that communication is a two-way process between sender and receiver. Communication doesn’t happen until the message is received. Understanding the audience perspective can make all the difference in crafting an effective message. Knowing what the audience is willing to receive should shape what message you send and how you send it.

Consider a presentation you’ve made in the past that didn’t go as planned or a project that wasn’t very successful; chances are you learned something during the process that, had you known or considered it earlier, would have changed your approach. That’s a hard way to learn and I know that I’ve had more than one lesson. At the same time I can think of many other successes and I can recount clearly one project where considering the audience was not only effective, it was essential in even continuing the work.

The project was to introduce to a sales force a new line of copiers. Interviews with the sales reps revealed that they were still fuming about the current line which had suffered from a lack of features, a non-competitive price and repair problems. The sales reps were working extraordinarily hard to move these machines. While they were eager for the new equipment, what they also wanted was an apology from Management. This was not on Management’s radar as we started the project. Our interviews with sales reps revealed the true “temperature” of the audience and enabled us to shape the new message in an acceptable way. While Management never apologized, they did acknowledge the problems with the current line and thanked sales reps for their hard work. That was good enough for the audience and they were able to rapidly begin moving the new products.

Having a full understanding of your audience makes a world of difference in your work. This holds true whether you’re creating a presentation to thousands or for a one-on-one budget meeting with your boss.

When you sit around the table to start creating, be sure to leave a seat for someone from your audience.

Article contributed by Jeff Boarini, CMMA Board of Directors

Standards of Quality

06 Friday Mar 2015

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Is your team operating under a well-articulated vision, with an expectation that the quality of work will always be at a certain level – or are they simply responding to customer requests and doing what they think makes sense? A simple but succinct vision for the standard of quality is at the forefront of every project my team produces. This started years ago shortly after my introduction to the business.

My first job as a media manager was at a large pharma company.  After getting my new assignment I decided that in order for my team to support our customers I needed to know everything there was to know about big pharma. It didn’t take long to realize that the pharmaceutical industry was extremely complex and not something this director of Creative Services was going to have to learn in short order. As I looked at our various buckets of work – Training and Development, Marketing, Executive Communications, Public Relations, Research – I saw a consistency in the stakeholders in each of those areas. That thread was a highly educated, highly experienced, passionate workforce. And that’s where I found my answer. I realized, or rationalized perhaps, that I didn’t need to know their business at all. Rather, my team and I would commit to them that we would be as good at what we did as they were at what they did. After all, they own the content; we simply help them communicate it. This thought process has served me and my teams well over the years and through various assignments.

In my current role at Mayo Clinic, this philosophy means that my team doesn’t need to know how to perform open heart surgery in order to support a cardiac surgeon – thankfully. Rather, our commitment to each physician, administrator and public relations professional we support is that we will be as good at our jobs as they are at theirs. It’s really that simple.

Mayo Clinic was recently named the Best Hospital in the Nation for 2014-2015 by US News and World Report. If our hospital is the best, then it follows that our Media Support Services department has to be the best as well. Luckily, one of our guiding principles in Media Support Services in Florida is continuous improvement. Yes, our standards are very high at Mayo Clinic as I’m sure yours are where you work.

Bottom line, it’s critical to have a commitment to quality, regardless of your role or your clientele. If you don’t have an articulated standard of quality, I recommend you establish one, shout it at the top of your lungs and review your teams’ work on a regular basis to make sure it meets the high standards of your customers, the company you support and your personal brand as a leader.

Article contributed by Clifton D. Brewer, CMMA Board Member

When Videoconferencing Gets Personal

26 Monday Jan 2015

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It’s been a sheer pleasure to watch videoconferencing grow up and get personal all at the same time. In just a handful of years we’ve gone from fuzzy analog images over phone lines to razor-sharp content flying over the Internet. We’ve gone from viewing on dull oversized tube TV’s, to thin bright HD monitors in a conference room…and in my hand.

It’s a dream come true to be able to join a video-based conference using many different tools; a codec in a dedicated meeting room, my PC in the office, or my tablet or phone from anywhere. It allows me to tell my story with passion or collaborate with others valuable to my cause. That’s where it gets personal. It’s become a tool that allows individuals to reach into an organization or for the organization to reach out to the individual.

There are a number of excellent tools currently available. I love watching the healthy and burgeoning competition amongst providers. I eagerly await the creation of new providers and innovative software. I can’t imagine corporate life without a personal conferencing tool. But what will it take for companies to fully embrace this burgeoning technology?

Bandwidth: We must have multiple megabytes, both up and down, wired and wireless. It has to be available everywhere whether it’s work, home and between the two. Think ubiquity.

Security: We must have confidence-inspiring security solutions for IT departments. Executives have to know that their conversations are secure. No one wants to be responsible for the leak of key information.

IT Integration: We must have apps and software that will be accepted by IT and the many requirements they have. The tools must play well with various operating systems, hardware, and software that already exist inside the enterprise.

Perception: Key stakeholders in an organization need to acknowledge that personal conferencing is a serious tool for business. It isn’t simply a novelty used to allow geographically distant grandparents to see their grandkids.

Corporate Climate: People at all levels of the organization must WANT to be available. They need to actively promote their ability to connect with video, audio, and data sharing. They need to set boundaries and timeframes of availability. This could be a big shift of reality for some people and their businesses.

Evolution: Continued change and improvement in this communication segment for business is inevitable. Companies continue to tighten travel budgets. Reporting structures span continents. People need to be “present” more than ever. Personal conferencing will become a strategic advantage to those who chose to embrace it.

I think that CMMA members are uniquely positioned in their respective organizations to be leaders in this area. Who is going to investigate the options and facilitate the demos? Someone has to organize the effort and champion the cause. I suggest that you pick up the banner or throw down the gauntlet….sooner than later.

Article Contributed by Roger Hansen, CMMA Board of Directors

Advice for College Graduates

06 Thursday Nov 2014

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LeAndra Martinez is an aspiring producer living in Los Angeles. She graduated from college in 2011 with a degree in film production and has since shuttled through low-paying jobs, burdened by massive student debt. She told The Huffington Post that she does not want to accept government assistance even if she qualifies.

As we look this month to bridge the chasm between LA and Topeka, we need also to consider how we raise awareness in the viability of the latter as a possible future, for many talented graduates entering the job market. Ask yourself, where does your succession and sustainability plan fit into your corporate culture and its future? What happens after you leave? As an association, are we here solely to acknowledge and celebrate our presence in the current circumstance, or, are we here to plant the seeds, and nourish the future of Enterprise Media Communications for generations to come?

The above article highlights the predicament with colleges and universities in which, they tend to hype the “Go to Hollywood, NYC, Vancouver or Toronto and make movies and television productions” ideal as the only alternative for people pursuing a career in media. We know this is a very hard world to break into and maintain. Your success relying as much on luck and the whims of those established, as it does on your ability and expertise in any given position. It sometimes takes years to generate a consistent living. None of these institutes, it seems advises, “Go, and fulfill your dreams in Topeka!”

Rarely do any of these centers of higher learning acknowledge the existence of the Enterprise Media Communications world, which thrives in places like Topeka and Jacksonville, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia and Dallas. They don’t recognize these opportunities, which pay for the cars, the kids, and the house; and offer the 401k, the vacations, and other ‘perks’ from which, a financial or technical degree would result. Media is a business, and so many outside this community, do not appreciate the amount of business acumen involved in media production. Average people don’t realize a producer’s degree emphasizes the business of media, rather than the actual creation of films and videos.

We know that, many Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, have some form of Enterprise Media Department; and many companies across the country engage with their employees, clients and customers via video. The Board of CMMA has often talked of how to reach out to this talent pool and begin to nurture among them, the prospect of a vocation in Enterprise Media Communications. It’s unfortunate that so many grads in this field are not made aware of the opportunities it offers.

Is it the choice of educational degree, or lack of known opportunities, which hinders the successful transition to the working world for graduates possessing a media degree? I assert it is part of our legacy as members of CMMA, to develop a form of outreach to educational institutions across America, raising awareness among those who endeavor to create great stories, to this profession we hold so dear. I realize in the face of corporate layoffs and fewer resources, it is difficult to look beyond our own set of circumstances to what the future brings. However, we need to be the standard bearers for the future, along the road to Topeka and the opportunities available there in which, a new generation of enterprise communicators could put their skills to good use; or, we are not great communicators at all.

Article contributed by Gerry Harris, CMMA Eastern Regional Director

Inherent Traits/Skills of a Good Production Person

28 Sunday Sep 2014

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Whether a staff person or a freelancer, what skills, competencies and personality traits do you consider being most important? When it’s performance review time, how do you assess performance? What factors determine which freelancer or supplier you hire? Whether it’s a Producer, P.A., P.C., or A.P., what competencies are most essential – leadership, creativity, technical skills? Certainly, there’s a lot at stake if it’s a staff person , but even making a decision about a freelancer/supplier who can become the face (and voice) of your department, can be mission critical. Under the heading of “you’re only as good as your last project,” I’m reminded it’s my department’s reputation that is on the line during every interaction with a client, whether face-to-face, on the phone, via e-mail or text. I’m guessing that like me, one of your responsibilities is to make sure the assigned staff person or freelance producer working on a project is the “right one” to put in front the client.

Related to performance assessment, I’m sure every company has a process. In order to clarify performance expectations my company has defined several “Leadership Competencies that represent the key skills and behaviors needed to drive business success.” Along with the “results achieved” in your specific job, these competencies are used to assess performance and identify development opportunities. The competencies range from “Communicates Effectively and Candidly” to “Leads Change and Innovation” and “Plans and Acts strategically.” Others touch on talent development, teamwork, and the ability to influence others. In addition, my officer has shared the following competencies she feels are important to be a leader in the areas of Communications and Corporate Relations. They include:

  • Intellectual horsepower and curiosity – intelligent and agile, deals with concepts and complexity comfortably, able to make sound, reasoned judgments
  • Ability to deal with paradox – can manage through seemingly irreconcilable differences
  • Composure – is calm and calming under pressure
  • Understands others – can see and relate to different perspectives, sensitive to differing feelings, emotions and cultures
  • Relationship management – understands the importance of building and nurturing both internal and external relationships
  • Creativity – develops new and unique ideas, is original and innovative, adds value
  • Courage – able to take and express a contrarian view in a constructive way
  • Influence – gains trust of others and builds relationships in order to influence effectively

Clearly, these are all good qualities/traits and they play an important role when I’m assessing performance or deciding who I want on my team. Having said that, my experience has led me to put more emphasis on what might be considered the “softer” skills. I look for excellent personality traits and interpersonal behaviors, rather than actual production expertise, technical skills or years of experience. Certainly, experience is very valuable and I usually assume that anyone who’s survived in this business for more than five or ten years, most likely has perfected the majority of the competencies and traits listed above.  So, as I’ve alluded to, I lean towards initially assessing a person’s heart rather than their head. Quite simply, first and foremost, I want to work with a nice person. Someone who;
…has a positive attitude.
…has a genuine passion for the crazy business we’re in.
…can look me in the eye and carry on a conversation.
…can tell a joke, and laugh at one.
…I wouldn’t mind spending a tough day/night in the trenches with.
…I can rely on.
…I can trust.
…is not afraid of hard work, but also knows that hard work needs to produce results.
…understands that actions most often speak louder than words, but also knows when and how to “speak up.”
…understands that you’re not entitled to anything – you need to “earn it” – especially respect.

You can teach someone what a good production schedule looks like or how to frame a good shot, direct an edit session or audition talent, but you probably can’t teach them the traits I mention above. They either have it (the heart, passion and personality for our business) or they don’t. In my opinion, if they have good interpersonal skills and make decisions based on ethics and integrity, they’re more than half way home to becoming a great Producer/Director.

Again, just my opinion – would appreciate yours.

Article contributed by Tom Bowman, CMMA Board of Directors