Ads displaying on your videos are a distraction to users. We just can’t wait to click the ‘You can skip in x seconds’ button. If your video channel focuses on brand-related content, these ads get in the way of your message – and might even be from your competition!

Fortunately, ad content can be easily blocked, if you own all rights to your content. While YouTube does their best to hide this feature, it’s very simple to implement if you know where to look; just follow these simple steps:

1.   Sign in to your YouTube channel.

2.  Click your name to open the masthead ribbon.

3.  Select Video Manager under the YouTube menu.

4.  From the left sidebar menu select Channel Settings, then Advanced.

5.  Finally, select the “Do not allow advertisements” radio button and then click Save.

Congratulations, you now have ad-free video content! Of course, if you feel like your content is a little weak we would be happy to help. Our team has created Emmy award-winning campaigns for some of the world’s strongest brands, and we would be happy to do the same for you.

Njal Larson has joined MK3 as a Strategic Account Executive. With more than a decade of experience, we are excited to welcome him to our team!

During his 12 years at Satuit Technologies, Inc., Njal started as a Sales Representative, moved to Director of Sales and Account Management, and then finally earned the position of SVP of CRM Product Line. He developed sales and product strategies that secured Satuit’s position in Inc. 5000 list for five consecutive years. In 2011, he founded Versegoal Inc., a Goal and Team Performance management system that simplifies management planning and oversight.  Njal conceptualized the idea, creating the initial product and the go-to market strategy for an innovative software suite.

We are excited to have Njal join MK3 and are positive his years of outstanding experience will be beneficial to both MK3 and our clients.

It doesn’t take long for that new company website redesign to start looking old. The freshness date for a new design is probably down to a year at best, and most folks will tell you that their existing design has been curdling for years. It’s not hard to see why. Redesigning a website is a major undertaking, and summoning the corporate will (and resources and budget) to do it isn’t easy.

But you don’t have to rebuild the whole house to create a fresh, new look. The fact is that your homepage is still the front door to your site, and remains the point of entry for the majority of visitors. By redesigning just your homepage, you can create a dramatically different first impression, giving your online brand a breath of fresh air.

Redesigning your homepage provides an opportunity to modernize your look and implement more impactful design styles. Most notably, you can:

• Incorporate full-width, large-scale banner images.

• Reduce text-heavy content and add images to produce a more elegant, spacious look.

• Make more prominent use of video, the web’s most engaging medium.

Of course there are constraints driven by the existing site architecture and platform, plus compatibility with the existing global and interior site design. But it’s remarkable how a handful of key homepage design changes can modernize a look. We’ve done this for a number of clients, sometimes including a matching new interior page or section, and in each case the overall effect on engagement and visitor feedback has been dramatic (not to mention internal joy and gratitude).

So the next time you have a major product launch or new brand message, or are just tired of hearing everyone complain how old the website looks, redesign your homepage. Done right, it resets your brand’s online freshness date.

With the growth of video-driven marketing comes an increasing number of companies taking video into their own hands, and leading with their chins, literally.

The “talking head” video is a staple in the corporate marketing world. When you need to deliver your message or position your company as a thought leader, it’s common to position your executives as one. This often positions you or your executives under the lights and in front of the lens.

On-camera professionals are paid to make it look easy, and they do, which then makes it harder for the rest of us. Here are a few tips when contemplating putting you and yours on-camera.

Cue cards are bad

Video is an intimate medium, and the close-up is always more powerful. Chances are the viewer is going to get a good look at your face, and your eyes. Cue cards cause your eyes to drift further and further away from the camera, and almost never work – so don’t plan on using them. Prepare with a combination of memorization, practice, pre-interviews and perhaps the use of a teleprompter.

Teleprompters aren’t as easy as they look

With a teleprompter, you can just read the words as they are displayed right in front of the lens! Easy, right? Well, yes and no. Delivering a smooth performance with a teleprompter takes some getting used to, so don’t expect the ‘prompter to be an easy solution. You should still do your homework with the script in advance, and allow for extra time during the shoot to get comfortable with the teleprompter.

It’s not natural to act natural on camera

Just because the CMO presents great PowerPoint, and your CEO is great in front of his Board of Directors, doesn’t mean this charisma is going to translate in front of the camera. In front of a live audience, pauses can appear thoughtful, struggling to find the right word can be viewed as passion or natural enthusiasm, and wandering eyes becomes an effort to make eye contact. In the lens and under the lights, these traits can be perceived as confusion, indecision and a bad case of the nerves. Winging it is for the birds. Someone needs to summon the gumption to tell the boss he needs to practice and prepare. Good luck with that.

Pre-interview the interview

If you are on-camera in an interview or Q&A format, arrange for a pre-interview with the video producer or director. The questions and answers can be discussed and practiced in advance, so you don’t go into the on-camera shoot “cold”, and the director/interviewer knows what answers to expect.

What not to wear

Green. You never know when a director might say “Hey, let’s use green screen for this…”

White. A white shirt under a dark jacket is fine, but a solid white shirt is not a good look on-camera. It limits the visual contrast and could wash out your skin tone. Plus, you never know when a director might say “Hey, let’s use a white background for this…”

Tight, busy patterns. Your shirt could end up looking more jittery than you do.

Putting yourself or your executives on-camera is a great idea if it works and a bad idea if it doesn’t. Guarantee it will work by preparing, practicing and working with professionals. We can help make it look easy.

Animated 3D fly-throughs of products are common, but how do you communicate the camera moves, choose which areas of the product to show, and decide how the shot relates to the VO with your client? The answer is a storyboard created in PowerPoint with photos of the product. PowerPoint is easy because all of us can use it, as well as make changes. The client can mark things that need changes and send them back to us, which is much easier then over the phone or in an email.

We created a yellow path that shows our animator how the camera should travel. We also highlighted the areas of the circuit board that the camera could hold or swoop towards.

This method made communication clear and simple so we can focus on making a great looking animation and not let the process slow us down.

The final video came out just as planned and does an excellent job at combining VO with product imagery. Click here to check out the final video.

How does one shoot a boutique-clothing store without ever going to a boutique? The answer may surprise you. You may be thinking Chroma key is the answer, but this would take hours in post-production. Instead, you must give the viewer visual cues that say “boutique clothing store.” Just a window and a wall are a great start.

Storyboard

Just as we did in the storyboard above, the shot must be carefully planned, and you have to be willing to spend a few bucks on props. We layered the shot and created lots of depth by using racks of clothing in the foreground, store clerks, tables with clothes, and mannequins.

During the shoot

Creating this faux-boutique looks great on camera and as you can see below, the results are perfect!

Still from final video

No big deal, people have been doing chroma key news sets for years; but how do you make an expensive-looking one without spending much money? First, we started with a couple of real-looking set elements and placed them in the background so the set would have layers and depth. Adding nice lighting and a bunch of reflections made it look posh.

Next, we created a CGI glass-top desk with matching perspective, lighting and reflections.  The trick to selling the CGI desk was making the hands look like they were reflecting on the desktop. A $50 piece of plexiglass with black cloth behind it did the trick.

In post, we combined the real-life reflection with the 3D desk. Since the three elements (background, anchor and desk) are each separate elements, we could do camera dolly shots and keep everything in proper perspective. Important since the camera moves make it look slick. All in all, our client was happy to say goodbye to spending a lot of money on a news set.

Creative people have many virtues – intelligence, energy, playfulness as well as discipline, imagination and exceptional passion – patience, however, is not usually one of them. That’s why Signiant was eager to introduce a personal version of MediaShuttle, their high-speed file transfer software for media professionals. These professionals rely heavily on media transfer technology and require it to be simultaneously quick, easy and reliable. Similar expectations were placed on MK3 when Signiant approached us with only two months until the launch of the new version of the MediaShuttle software, looking for both strategic and creative guidance to get their new product off to a fast start.

To develop a new position for the product, we first rebuilt the MediaShuttle product pages on Signiant’s corporate website, adapting the product voice and messaging to give it an edge that appeals to media professionals – a notoriously discerning audience. We then supplemented those product pages with an unusual introductory video, knowing that presenting information in a captivating and unique way, while always important, was especially necessary for this video-savvy audience.

The video brings the MediaShuttle software to life with a distinctive, modern tone that animates its technical features with a live actor – Tim – and uses a very non-corporate voice. Through the humor and attitude of this free-wheeling video, we highlighted the three primary benefits of the MediaShuttle software: speed, security and simplicity.

Our team at MK3 was thrilled with the final results, and so were our creative counterparts at Signiant. In only two months, we helped Signiant create their online launch strategy, designed and wrote copy for the new MediaShuttle web pages and free product trial, and conceived and delivered a singular product identity video. Together, Signiant and MK3 made great collaborative partners, willing to take a more off-beat approach to turn a professional tool into something remarkable.

Click HERE to see Signiant MediaShuttle’s web page (and don’t forget to check out the video on the landing page while you’re there!).

Recently, MK3 created an identity video for the Boston law firm Nutter McClennen & Fish, a prominent mid-sized law firm founded in Boston in 1879 by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. We are pleased to announce that it is now featured on their website!

When Nutter first approached MK3 to make this video, they had a specific challenge outlined: Make a video that conveys the special attributes of the firm’s culture, values and performance in a fresh, authentic and engaging way. On top of that, the video needed to speak to a wide variety of audiences – individual and corporate clients and prospective clients, other lawyers, potential recruits and interns – and communicate the unique qualities of the firm relevant to each.

Through our initial discussions with a diverse Nutter team, we quickly realized that their greatest assets were their highly talented, personable and committed attorneys. So we decided to show, rather than tell, what Nutter is all about. Our goal was to present the lawyers as both highly-skilled professionals and as people, showcasing individuals to avoid the impersonal feeling that typically pervades corporate videos while also conveying the professionalism that has earned Nutter its great reputation.

To do so, we conducted multiple staff interviews to construct a multi-faceted view of the many special qualities that have made Nutter so successful. We spent a lot of time in advance of the shoot itself with the Nutter team distilling those unique firm qualities into a collection of interview questions. It was those interview questions, posed to 17 Nutter attorneys in individual 30-minute interviews conducted over two days, which enabled us to reveal Nutter’s “core story” and capture the real feel of the firm.

Thanks to some great collaboration between Nutter and MK3- from brainstorming to planning to shooting to post-production – we were able to create a rich, honest and very “real” portrait of a Boston law firm with an illustrious tradition and reputation, in a non-traditional way.

Follow this link to view “The Nutter Lawyer” video on Nutter McClennen & Fish’s website.

Attention-grabbing, easy to understand, convenient and wildly popular, videos are a modern marketer’s dream medium.  So what prevents so many smart businesses from using this all-in-one marketing tool?

One answer we hear frequently?  Money.  Some say it costs too much to make a video, others that videos cost too much to promote effectively.

While modern technology disproves the first misconception, Google is now helping to dispell the second.  Launched publicly in late April, Google AdWords for Video is making video promotion available, affordable and measurable for all.

AdWords for Video works similarly on YouTube to paid search advertising on Google, using keywords to determine which videos appear against YouTube searches.   Advertisers can now target their video audience as well as track and analyze their video metrics. By offering these additional tools to reach the right audience and measure the results, Google is amplifying the organic search value of video with complementary support for outbound video marketing efforts on the web.

Most significantly, Google AdWords for Video offers marketers an affordable way to promote their videos, no matter how small their budget.  With “TrueView” video ads, as Google is calling them, advertisers only pay when a viewer actually watches their video.  For in-stream ads, this means a video must be watched for a minimum of 30 seconds (or the full length of the video, if less than 30 seconds in total).  For ad forms such as in-slate, in-search and in-display ads on YouTube, the video must be chosen by the viewer.   Now your return on high-quality videos can be extended even further through a low-cost, highly targeted viewer acquisition platform, one that we know from the combined success of AdWords and the mass appeal of video works.

So when you think about video, don’t let cost put you off.  Think about all the ways you can leverage that investment in quality video – from your website to email to events to social media, and now including paid search specifically for video in the form of AdWords for Video.

Click HERE to read Google’s announcement of AdWords for Video on their YouTube blog.