Raise your hand if you’ve ever been at an event and the ballroom lights dim, the audience chatter quiets, the video begins on screen, and you notice:

  • Gorgeous drone footage, perfect music, and people in the room who can’t tell you what the organization actually does.

  • Information overload in the form of too many numbers and too many talking heads reading from dry and rehearsed scripts.

  • So much jargon and vague language that it could apply to any organization, and nobody in attendance is connecting.

  • Heads nodding, polite clapping, but nothing more. No next step for the audience, and no reason to engage further.

Your video could be a technical masterpiece. But if it’s not speaking to the audience that you have in the room, then it’s not going to help you reach your goal.

The best event videos don’t start with a grand idea, a board-developed shot list, or even inspo videos of what you’ve seen other organizations do.

They start with curiosity around your audience. 

Who will be in the room? What’s their relationship to your organization? To your mission? What do you want them to feel, to know, and do after seeing your video? What matters to them?

Once you really key into your audience, what you need to say and how you need to say it will become clear.

What This Looks Like in Action:

  • IslandWood

IslandWood’s donors want to hear directly from the kids about the impact of the program - what it’s like for them to attend, what they learn, what they gain, what it means to them. They do not want the adults talking about the education curriculum or statistical benefits of their programs. With that insight in mind, we iterate year after year on this idea, coming up with creative and fresh ways to get IslandWood kids to open up and share their bubbly enthusiasm for playing in nature with their friends. One year, we even went as far as to give the kids a video camera, inviting them to film themselves in class. How’s that for a kid point-of-view?

  • Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle (ULMS)

Urban League’s donor audience loved the mission and the people behind it, but most didn't know the full scope of the work, or what it looked and felt like day to day. Show them that, and you get more folks wanting to engage with parts of the organization they never knew existed before. "Any Given Week" followed staff through one real week: a resource fair with Black-owned businesses, health screenings, and performances from the Double Dutch Divas, a board retreat that included a site visit and a sit-down with the Seattle police chief, an advancement team staff meeting to assess the current plan and if it was working. That vision allowed the room to see how meaningful community change is a vibrant, daily commitment, with an invitation to lean in further.

In both examples, the message doesn't just repeat year after year. The focus sharpens, and the impact in the room gets stronger. The better you understand your audience, the better you understand your organization's mission, goals, and challenges too.

So before you start outlining the vision for your next event video, ask yourself: 

Is the goal of your video to check a box or to transform a room?

I bet I know your answer.

You've got to know your people before you're able to move them. And you've got to stay loyal to that audience insight every step of the way.

Now What?:

Write down 5-7 things your audience needs to feel or learn from your impact video.

Then cross out all but 3.

Then get really cutthroat and determine the one most important takeaway your audience needs to experience in order to do the thing you want them to do.

This is your compass.

Good luck out there, and we’ll see you on the dance floor.