Hiscox has released its new television advert for the campaign ‘As good as our word’, and like most TV ads I should imagine it came with a hefty price tag. This is increased when you realise that Tomas Alfredson, the director behind ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, directed the advert and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes) does the voiceover. Now it could be that Hiscox had a favour to call in from these two Hollywood professionals, but I suspect they simply parted with a tidy sum of cash. And good for them for being in a position to do so, it’s a good advert, have a look.
My point is that B2B video and video advertising, for TV or online, is increasing and I don’t think it’s possible to do it on the cheap. We’ve been told many times that it can be cheap to produce. ‘Afterall, everyone has a smartphone now’, well I’m just not convinced that whipping your iPhone out and editing using iMovie is going to get you a video that you’re really going to want to share with your customers and show to the board.
Clearly the Hiscox advert is at the extreme end of scale as far as price is concerned, but I’m just not convinced that you can produce any sort of quality video without professional help. If you have someone on your team who already has the skills to produce quality video then you get an A+ for your recruitment skills. But they usually cost money and so does the equipment. Video is no longer the new channel on the B2B block, you can’t get away with okay video and expect it to deliver the returns that great video would. When you’re competing with the likes of Hiscox, I think it’s time to call in the professionals.
