10 Children Picture Books That Encourage Creativity

Alright here it is, my most researched topic to date, nine years and counting. Bedtime reading is serious time in our house and we sometimes test the limits of our library check outs (so far 71 books out is ok), but finding books to help inspire and encourage curiosity in my kiddo’s as they grow is one of my favorite things to do.

So if you know a kid that you want to help spark or drive their creativity, check out some of these books!

1. Ish

‘Ish’ is the story of a boy who loves to draw, but gets discouraged when his older brother makes fun of his drawings. He soon discovers his sister loves what he makes and offers him a whole new way at looking at the world. He realizes that not everything he does needs to be perfect and he can be creative without limiting himself.

Written and Illustrated by:
Peter H Reynolds LINK

2. The Book of Mistakes

This is one of those books that makes you think twice about your own process of creating work. This story follows the creation process and the all too real moments of mistakes that occur. However they show that being creative isn’t about NOT making mistakes, but rather about finding intentional solutions during the process.

Written & Illustrated: Corinna Luyken LINK

3. If Found Please Return

Elise Gravel is an amazing artist who not only has a style that is simple, but really connects with kids. The first time I saw this book it reminded me exactly of the kind of drawings my 7-year old makes of aliens and monsters. She’s written so many amazing books, with “If Found” being a great introduction to all the work. The book is a collection of her muses, thoughts and messages to encourage children to embrace themselves, be authentic and create more. She also has this entire series on crows, like the bird, and now my son is convinced crows are the most amazing creatures on earth. Good crow PR.

Written & Illustrated: Elise Gravel LINK

4. Boxitects

Great book that inspires the builder in children. The book is about a little girl who loves building things with boxes and everyone in her world uses different materials to make things. She ends up learning how to deal with working on a team with someone that may be more talented than you.

Written by Kim Smith LINK

5. The Cardboard Kingdom

An awesome comic book geared towards kids that is about all having your creations and imaginations come alive in the world. Great lessons about friendship and going through challenges together, as well as how to express yourself through creativity. My nine year old devoured this book (as well as Doodleville) and it was a great change from his normal brain-eating-zombie literature.

Written by Chad Sell LINK

6. Dog Loves Drawing

Cute book about a dog whose drawings come to life and go on an adventure. Great for teaching kids to really imagine what their creative work can lead to if they let it grow as well as how to tell stories with your artwork. And if the little ones like this book, Louise Yates has a few more with our hero Dog.

Written & Illustrated: Louise Yates LINK

7. Drawing on the Wall

Keith Haring is one of those artists that you don’t know but you do know. I’ve seen his line art on shirts and in pop culture and used by other artists - but never knew of the person who brought this to mainstream. The book is illustrated with his style and really makes his amazing story come to life.
Written: Matthew Burgess
Illustrated: Josh Cochran
LINK

8. Never Get Bored Outdoors

Next time you hear the dreaded “I’m Bored” you can just hand the little one this. This is a fun book just packed with little ideas and icebreakers to help you figure out the next adventure that day. Written by James Maclaine, Sarah Hull, Lara Bryan ·LINK

9. What do you do with an idea?

Story about having ideas and sharing them with the world despite what other may think.

Written by Kobi Yamada, Illustrated by Mae Besom
LINK

10. Be a Maker

Inspiration and a reminder to make things every day. We go through a little girls day as she uses her imagination to play and eventually begins to build with her community and create a change in her world.

Written by: Katey Howes, Illustrated by: Elizabet Vuković LINK

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More blog posts to get you inspired to start creating!

Getting Started with a Cooking Show

Cooking shows always have had a special place my in my heart. The Naked Chef lit a fire in myself as a young lad and I’ve been hooked on watching the best do their magic in the kitchen ever since. During my teenybopper years I even had a short lived cooking show “Chaos in the Kitchen” with my co-host Thomas Bouchard. The show had an abrupt cancellation….we eventually ran out of different types of calzones to cook. I still love watching other’s share their passion and it’s been fun watching youtube explode with all different types of chefs, creatives, and foodie filmmakers giving Food Network Channel a run.

So if YOU are thinking about sharing your tastes with the world and getting started with your own ‘cooking show’ - here’s a great place to start. I put together 5 videos that use simple set ups and keep the editing and production process easy peasy.

1. One Camera

Simple and quick one camera set up. Use phone or camera on a tripod at about a 5-6ft height pointing down. Then cut by ‘zooming’ or ‘cropping’ into the picture a little bit. To keep it looking crispy use a higher resolution setting like 4k.

Warning: With the camera so far away you’ll need to get some additional audio. If you search for “wired lav” you’ll find long microphones to clip on you and go direct to your phone or camera.

2. Voiceover

Binging with Babish has exploded as one of the biggest Youtube cooking shows in the last few years. Now a days Andrew Rea has put a little bit more production value into his videos, but they still stay true to his voiceover and food focused style structure.

Keeping himself ‘off camera’, a medium shot on the food, with a scripted voiceover recorded later. This makes filming easier by not worrying about a narrative and focusing on the cooking. Then allows you to create something feeling a bit more polished after with a scripted voiceover.

3. POV / First Person Cooking

If you really want show people how you cook, strap a camera on your head! Grabbing a Go Pro and head strap mount could be the simplest and easiest way to walk people through. Plus audio should be great if you want to talk while you cook. Notice in this video he uses his phone as a monitor for the Go Pro.

Be aware when filming: your head is now the camera! So keep fast movements down and try to ‘look’ with your eyes and not head in order to keep the ‘camera’ more stable. And if you don’t want to talk during it, no worries. Here’s “Peaceful Cuisine” doing a silent POV cook. Which leads us to…..

4. ASMR / Silent

I gotta say this is new to me and I kinda like it. If you don’t like your face or voice on camera - then just let people enjoy watching and hearing the natural sounds of the kitchen. Still shot with one camera, it’s moved around to show close ups of different parts of the process. Be sure to go all out with audio for best results.

5. Story Style

Last, is treat it like a social media ‘story’ and film the whole process in short clips that you publish to your platform. Tabitha Brown got a lot of attention on TikTok for her cooking videos created in this style. She brought in a lot of personality and laid out the video with a structure and short step POV process. Plus it was easy to record and publish. This is more similar to a ‘Tasty’ type recipe, quickly showing the steps, but better suited for social media consumption. Also using an app like TikTok you can record voiceover, place music in later, and easily have a version done for youtube, instagram, linkedin, etc.

The best part, no editing! Now you have no excuse, get out there and start cooking!

5 Remote Recruiting and Company Culture Videos

Who said you need nerf gun battles and happy hours to make a good recruiting video? Here’s a few companies showing how their team works remotely and giving potential employees a quick look into the culture and lifestyles they provide. Whether you are filming Zoom interviews, using animation, or sharing social media posts - you can produce great videos that make your company stand out and share your mission.

This is also a great example of Low Views-High Impact. The goal of these videos are not to get high engagement or views, but to attract the right type of people to apply to your company and repel the wrong people. Lets dig in…

1. Okta

• Narrative: Candid Interviews via Remote Video Call

• Visuals:

  • Photos

  • Office Footage

  • Event Footage

• Story Structure: Chaptering

Okta does a great job collecting employee interviews via remote video calls and putting together a story about work life. The story structure uses title chapters to guide the viewer and provide segues to different topics. They then use archive footage such as events and office broll to help enhance the story visually and show more of the human connections that happen within the company.

2. Help Scout

• Narration: Voiceover

• Visuals:

  • Company Retreat Footage

  • Employee Self-Captured

  • Software platform footage

  • Software Explainer Animation

Leah Knobler has become Help Scout’s own Kathryn Bigelow producing top notch internal and external video content. This video is very on brand showing the playful side of Help Scout, the remote-first culture, and a quick introduction about what the company does. She uses a voiceover narration to help guide the video through the talking points while crowd sourcing footage from employees. Also if you are a remote company, consider using future retreats as a great way to collect content for your upcoming projects.

If you want to check out more about how Leah uses video to help keep their remote culture connected, check out her talk at WistiaFest.

3. Tax Jar

• Narration: Candid Interviews

• Visuals: Live Action broll

Love love love these videos from Tax Jar as they take a look at nine of their employees and how remote-life at Tax Jar has enabled them to have a more fulfilling daily life and allow them to pursue their own passions. The videos were produced by Tax Jar’s Heather Wilson and production company Setter Studios. The result are some amazing stories of people living their best lives while doing great work. Check out all the videos here!

4. HubSpot

• Narrative: Interviews via Remote Video Calls

• Visuals:

  • Title Cards

  • Social Media Posts

  • Remote Call Screenshots

With global offices all over the world going remote, HubSpot produced a video to show how the company has shifted to working remote. They use remote interviews with employees to talk about what remote life has been like. They were also conscious of what supporting visuals to use and refrained from using archive office broll at this time. Instead they leaned heavily on the interviews and used Zoom gallery screens to show the team working behind HubSpot.

5. Colt

• Narrative: On Screen Text and Online Reviews

• Visuals:

  • Text/Copy

  • Stock footage

  • Company Culture footage

  • Glassdoor Posts

Now if you don’t have interviews or you want to create a video that is more neutral and doesn’t feature people, consider creating a presentation style video - A cross between an explainer animation video and slide show. Colt along with other companies below use text to drive their message, photos to show off their culture, and glass-door posts to use for credibility. If you don’t have Glassdoor reviews consider asking past and present employees to write a few thoughts on working for your company to use instead.

Here’s three more videos that use a similar approach and feature no voiceover/interview narratives. But instead use on-screen text, company culture photos, and glassdoor/social media posts.

At the end of the day your goal should be to create a video that encourages the right people to apply and allow potential employees to see if your company aligns with their values and worklife expectations.

Spicing up Remote Testimonial Interview Videos

How do you continue to make engaging and effective videos - while remote? I rounded up a ton of examples to get you started and to see the balance between low quality and higher quality videos. There’s also some really creative ideas to help give an extra polished ‘pop’ to your videos.

Testimonials

At the end of the day what really matters most is your customers authentic voice. After all, people are watching in order to build trust and credibility with you, sometimes a simple one-take no-fluff video is all that it takes.

Here’s a few different quality and formats you can expect. If you want higher quality have people film on their phones (or camera if they have one!). Keep in mine vertical vs horizontal. Also understand that most people don’t have an eye for composition, so giving direction for what room to film or lighting helps.

If you want a more targeted message considering scripting. You can either use a real customer who can deliver well to the camera, or an actress to build a promo around:

Having a more scripted or direct testimonial is good when trying to tell a specific story, or your customer is comfortable delivering a written ‘speech’. You could either have them write something up, or do a pre interview call with them and you edit into a script.

I wouldn’t doubt she an actress. But none the less having an energetic persona on camera always helps. Also note that filming people outdoors may be a solution if you still want a film crew involved.

Additional graphic design or animation to your videos can really help give them a more ‘commercial’ look or be better suited for advertising purposes:

Making a simple ‘frame’ around your videos can work great when trying to give your videos extra branding design. They also are effective on social media where having your companies graphic on screen during the testimonial helps give the viewer the information they need.

If you want to pull them out of a physical location, consider green screen and keying a neutral backdrop. Zoom and other webcam software can now easily do this, or do it in post and work with your subject to find a solid background in their home.

Story Driven

Looking to make something that’s a little more than just an interview? Create engaging stories by collecting your remote interviews, social media posts or user generated content and delivering it in a format that is engaging and entertaining.

Add animation and design to your videos to keep things more engaging.

One on One Interviews

Having a two person interview discussion may be the best solution for your testimonial. Have a long form conversation and then use the content to edit shorter videos to use in future projects or marketing efforts. This video by ‘AQ’s Blog & Grill’ takes a creative approach by filming the host in person and keeping the interviewee on screen and mix with full screen.

This series by New York Times uses facetime/phone calls with different media and graphics mixed in.

Presentation

When presenting information or wanting to create more of a show format, here’s a few videos you can pull ideas from. These use an on-camera ‘host’ who guide the viewer and use elements of design, images, interviews, screenshots and audio to create their message.

Mr. Wonderful uses a two camera set up for his videos, with a wide shot on an automatic slider to give a more produced look.

Whatever you do, remember you are connecting with YOUR audience so keep your customers voice authentic and personal.

Check out more blog posts:

5 Branded Documentary Series that Connect with an Audience

Behind the Scenes of Help Scout’s Against the Grain short doc series

Over the last few years branded documentary story telling has been on the rise as more companies are looking for new ways to market through brand affinity marketing. Brands and companies are now creating consumer content they own, can distribute and leverage how they see fit for years. Documentaries have always been a source of discussion and discovery, now brands have a chance to create a mission or tell stories that will allow them to be apart of larger social conversations, cultures and movements. In addition, brands can have content that connects with their audience at a different and deeper level than your product solution can.

Documentaries generally fall into two categories, short form (5-20 minutes), long form feature (50 - 120 minutes) or a series with multiple episodes that follow a story and show structure. In this post we will be looking specifically at the Documentary Series. A series allows you to release more marketing attention over time vs one piece of content. Plus it allows you to go deeper with your audience by creating episodes that can explore niche stories and topics. And by creating multiple ‘binge-able’ episodes with a specific feel, people are willing to engage and continue watching more.

Here’s 5 Brands making awesome Documentary Series:

1. Mail Chimp: Second Act

Mailchimp was one of the first brands to dive head first into creating binge-able content. They did this by partnering with producers and agencies to create a wide variety of content from narrative shows, to podcasts, and of course documentaries. They released a number of stand alone documentaries, but Second Act was a 5 part series released in partnership with Vice Media.

Second Act featured stories of people who where transitioning careers and creating new ventures. Mailchimp is a service that most new companies use when starting a business, so makes sense to target an audience that enjoys stories of people following passions and creating new ventures.

“One of our guiding principles has been to create content that is immersive and captivating enough to stand on its own.”

— Sarita Alami, Production Lead of Mailchimp Presents.

2. Yeti Stories: The Hungry Life

“For the show Hungry Life, we were shooting a non-scripted series. What that means is, everybody from the audio technician to the film guys, to the director, to even the camera assistant, everyone just needs to be ready, because you don’t know when the fish will bite. You don’t know when the sheep will be present. You don’t know when anything will happen. Whereas a scripted show, you kind of plan it, one, two, three execute, right? So that’s probably one of the greatest challenges.”

— Eduardo Garcia (via Flylordsmag.com Interview)

Yeti was one of the first brands to create their own online content that highlighted people’s stories as the focus vs the product. They began by highlighting outdoors-people who used Yeti, and at times they’d wrap their story into their products. But over the years they’ve gone full force into telling stories that resonate with audience and don’t focus on sales.

While they have a lot of stand alone stories, creating a series gives a greater chance at hooking a viewer in and creating “bingeable” content they will continue to watch. Hungry Life is one of my favorites from Yeti. It follows host and chef Eduardo Garcia as he goes on adventures with Yeti Brand Ambassadors learning about the environment, fishing and eating good food. The choice to use a Brand Ambassador or someone within your company can be a good decision as those people align with your mission and can serve as better ‘guides’ through your story. Plus in these video they aren’t selling or pushing a product. You are really just watching them have the adventures that they have in normal life.

3. Death Wish Coffee: Grind it Out

If anyone knows it’s community, it’s Death Wish Coffee Company. They spent years fosting a community of people that are passionate about their careers and hobbies - and love coffee. The Grind It Out series focuses on people doing what they love, from tattooing to boxing. In an interview with Fueled by Death Podcast, Art Director Thomas Dragonette spoke about their vision behind the brand. While most brands would use high profile athletics or celebrities to push the word out, they decided to focus on the everyday people that drive their business:

“We didn’t pay these people. These people were
enthusiastic to be part of it because we were gonna tell their story.
By us telling their story, they’re telling our story.
This is our coffee, and this is how it lives.”

— THOMAS DRAGONETTE (Art Director, Death Wish Coffee)

4. Cleveland Browns: Building the Browns

In 2019 the NFL Football team Cleveland Browns created the series called Building the Browns, where fans got a behind the scenes look at the Browns attempt to rebuild their franchise. After a large viewship and winning an Emmy, they rolled it out again in 2020 with new coach Kevin Stefanski.

As they were filming in January 2020 and releasing episode in nearly real time, the Covid-19 shutdown gave them a unique opportunity to document the shift that was made to remotely running operations and coaching players. Including (below) behind the scenes episode of what it took to do the 2020 Football Draft 100% remote. The series’ production team did a great job adjusting to the pandemic remote challenges by taking advantage of the zoom/meeting webcalls, having talent set up their own cameras, film POV moments, and using social media and live footage.

5. Nutella®: Spread the Happy

How could a chocolate company create a video series their customers would engage with? By launching “Spread the Happy” - A series about people spreading love in their communities. Get it? Watching these short stories feel good, gives you a smile, and makes you want more. Just like a jar of this chocolate goodness. This is a win.

No matter what you create, be sure to hone into what your customer and audience care about and will invest in.

If you’re looking to develop your next documentary or original series,
reach out and we’d love to help!

START HERE: Customer Testimonial Formats and Inspiration

We all know customer testimonials do wonders to validate your service and create more trust between your company and prospective customer. But where do you start? What should it look like? Should it feel candid or professional? Should it sell your company or your product? Can you tell a more interesting story than just your product?

Below are 10 different styles and formats you can use to give inspiration on how to tell your customer’s story and show the value your company provides them.

“Survey from the Demand Gen Report that 97% of B2B buyers say that user generated content such as peer reviews is more credible than other types of content.”

1. The Traditional Profile Story

The most common type of testimonial video for tech companies is filming 1-3 interviews in a customers office and show a bit of their operations and team in action for visuals. It’s simple, effective, and generally an easy style to reproduce with multiple companies or production teams.

In this Slack testimonial they focus on Kin+Carta and never actual show the Slack service platform, but yet rely on just the interviews and office broll footage. They film 4 interviews to tell their story with lots of footage of the office and a team. Beware that not all teams are ‘photo friendly’, if you are planning on relying on team and culture footage, be sure to have them onboard and willing or confirm staff’s schedule.

This HelpScout testimonial has similar interview/broll format, yet shows the product in both live-action video as well as screen demo. I filmed this with Tyler Bouchard, we spent most of the day filming three interviews and setting up additional broll footage and product screen shots.

Mail Chimp created a variety of short videos focused on specific features and problems solved for their customer. In this video very little of their platform is shown and the focus is on customer subject. The video becomes more ‘timeless’ as MailChimp doesn’t need to worry about an outdated platform.

2. Keep it Simple

With so many options to craft your customer story, there can be many reasons to keep it simple with a basic one camera interview. Maybe you aren’t in someone’s actual office so need a neutral background, or the product may not be visually appealing, or still under going changes, or just perhaps not relevant to the speaking points. Or you may have limited time and access with the customer and their company, so setting up in a conference room and capturing a 30 minute interview may be your only option. Either way, conducting a good interview that candidly captures your customers voice is still worth the story.

Also, if your marketing and sales funnel is very sale driven or demo heavy, and you want the prospective customer to see a more candid and genuine feedback from a customer. Having your video feel too ‘produced’ or sales-y may not be the right move for your situation.

Snowflake did a similar video and used title cards to prompt questions with some copy throughout to help move the story along and give context to the topics. A great option if you need a bit more control over the story direction or the interview was lacking structure elements.

3. The Zoom Call

Also known as the ‘covid’ testimonial now. At the end of the day no matter what you do your customers authentic voice is the most important thing and is what people connect with. Even getting simple web calls can work wonders in establishing trust and brand loyalty.

Getting ‘self filmed’ customer testimonials can also be a great way to collect a bulk of material to pull from. Check out this instagram ad by shirt company True Classic that relied on user generated content for their testimonial and advertising video

Panorama Education hosted Customer Panel webinars where after they clipped out some highlights and nods their customers gave them. With production quality expectations lower and more forgiving, now can be a great chance at creating fast low quality content at scale.

4. The Guided Host

If you really want to give it a different feel, creating a more ‘network’ type vibe can give a more produced and entertaining story. NetSuite is a software company, but they choose to look at some of the more interesting businesses they serve. The vibe comes off as a network-travel-show and feels very different than your typical B2B testimonial. They created a series with each one featuring a host who plays our narrater throughout each video.

Using a host for your videos is a great way to craft your story more. During the actual production you now have their questions to be used if needed to seque or give context around an answer. And then in post production you also have much more creative control over the storyline by using their voiceover to fill in story holes anywhere. Or cut down on time.

Here’s one by Beth Israel Hospital, they don’t have a on camera host, but rather use the “Voice of God” voiceover, a voice not on screen done by a voice actor or company employee. You are using a more narrative approach, however it can give you a lot more options for storytelling and enable you to directly get your message across.

5. The Mission

If subtlety is more your style, use your product as a backdrop to your story rather than the focus. Find a customer with a story that your audience will resonate with, or a story that supports your mission as a company. Instead of focusing on how your clients uses your software, focus on the impact that company is having in the world. And then if needed, tie into how your product is a platform for that mission to operate on.

The storage platform Box.com created a story that centered around Internal Rescue Committee, and showed their work in the field while also talking about how they work with Box to host and retrieve all their data.

SalesForce created a video around the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and the roll they played for the non profit as the challenge raised extraordinary amounts of money for the cause. The video starts off entertaining and more of a history lesson and look back at this famous internet challenge from 2014, and then shifts into the more sales message of how behind the scenes SalesForce supported the fast growth the non profit had.

6. The High Production Value

If you are looking for a ‘national’ commercial type look, then you’ll be looking at a bigger production and bit more planning. It’s also a brand decision how ‘polished’ you want to be presented. This gives more of an ‘ad’ feel, but can work if you are trying to make it more a direct sales piece and can find talent that comes off natural on screen.

8. The Animated One

If live-action is not an option, you can still get creative using graphic design, drawing, or animation. This video is heavily scripted, but you could even add some real interview audio with voiceover to help drive the message home.

9. The Bulk Interview

One of the best ways to get a ton of interviews at once - is events. Creating an interview room at events can result in dozens of interviews giving you a fast start at a library of content to use for years to come. Litmus uses their multi-city conference ever year to connect with customers and thought leaders in the email industry and use it as a chance to collect valuable content for marketing and sales efforts.

10. The Sneaky One

My favorite testimonial, the one the viewer doesn’t see coming. If you are looking for something a bit different to engage the customer more, focus on a unique story and really get to know the story’s character at an emotional level. Yeti has countless stories throughout their marketing of capturing the story of an outdoor person, and weaving their product in later. With their series “Tested” they used their brand ambassador’s as their customer voice and authority of their product’s use.

Yeti takes this to the next level with Yeti Presents and telling stories with none of their product featured or mentioned. They create multiple series and stand alone videos that dial into their audiences interests and tell compelling stories. Check out my blog post about how other companies are also creating documentary stories like this.

Check out more Testimonials and Customer Stories on my on-going YouTube Playlist!

How Litmus Uses Video to Showcase Their Product

Eight years ago I started working with Litmus to help them step into the world of video. In the beginning there was a lot of experimentation, but I’m proud of the content we developed, created and execute across the brand and website. I put together 10 different ways Litmus has used video over the years for brand awareness, marketing, sales, and company culture:

1. Software Demo Teasers and Announcements

In the last few years Litmus has greatly accelerated the amount of new features and marketing tools being developed. So creating videos that quickly showed people new features and and how to use them was crucial.

2. Promotional Videos

In 2015 Litmus made a huge improvement over their testing by bringing email test results that could take up to 5-10 minutes, to appear mere seconds. Rather than just show the improvements, we used people in the company to really drive home the passion the entire team had around this and why it was a big deal.

3. Testimonials

Tried and true, testimonials are a great way to build trust with prospective customers.

While Litmus has long collected written case stories, in the last few years we’ve helped them capture testimonials via video.

To super charge our video library we used their email conference Litmus Live, which brings many of their customers together under one roof. We leveraged this unique situation as a great time to grab multiple customers for 20 minutes and have a quick chat about the value Litmus brings them.

We then spread these videos out on their customers page, social media, and for the sales team to utilize.

3. Updates 

Keeping your customers updated and excited about the ongoing evolution and improvement of your product is key. This year we featured CTO Matt Gore who broke down all the quartering improvements and new features. By putting someone from the company on camera vs a voiceover and screen, you build a more personal connection with your customer and put faces with your brand.

Blog Post Samples:

Litmus Q1 2020 Product Release

What's New at Litmus - July 2019

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“Working together has become nearly seamless — Travis really understands our brand, business, and culture — and has become part of the Litmus team. He has tons of suggestions for creative ways to use video, and doing more videos has helped us refine our processes. We’re less scared of video now, and more likely to experiment without fear of totally messing something up. Trust is also a huge factor, and we can trust Travis to help us create on-brand, high quality content.”

— Justine Jordan (2010 - 2018 Marketing Director at Litmus)

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4. Blogs

Litmus’ Blog has always been a flagship of their company marketing providing amazing education and resources since their early years. Integrating video with the blogs always proved to increase engagement and create a more personal connection with the content.

5. Company Culture

One of Litmus’ key to success was hiring great talent that fit well into the team’s dynamic. Fostering that company culture and capturing it to share with customers and new recruits was one more of the many things I helped create. Whether it was a ski trip in Vermont, baseball game at Fenway Park, or volunteer days at local non profits - I followed the team and showed the amazing team behind the company.

6. Campaigns

When Litmus designed Proof, an innovative way to collaborate and communicate about email designs, they wanted to go beyond just the typical promotional video. The tool was actually developed internally first and refined through real world use by the Litmus team before a consumer version was created. The team put together a script that included employees talking about the creation of the tool and the impact it’s had on Litmus’ internal email workflow. It felt more like a ‘behind the scenes’ of the product being developed and used the Litmus team almost as a testimonial to the product itself.

We also released a shorter version of the story, demo teasers and full demos targeted to different customer groups.

7. Video Series

Back in the ‘High School’ years I helped produce a monthly video series for Litmus’ “Email Market Share” updates. The marketing team scripted and pulled together data, and we’d spend an hour or two with Justine filming then off to editing for a quick turn around.

8. Events & Conferences

In 2013 Litmus created “The Email Design Conference” now “Litmus Live” with a goal of bringing together the email development community and spreading education. It was wildly successful being held in three cities around the world and responsible for Litmus’ brand awareness in the market. I helped create promotions and marketing for the conference as well as create recap videos and capture content during the events.

9. Homepage

With the launch of Litmus’ new page this past year, the team created a video to help tell the story of en email designer who has success on the Litmus platform. The video was created with graphic and stock footage to create an effective and affordable video.

10. Support Videos

Creating support help videos to onboard new clients is incredibly important tool for the customer service team. Not only does it allow people to self service support, but it also saves the team valuable time from answering common questions or issues.

Working with the team over the years has been an incredible experience and I’m looking forward to watching the company not only grow more, but continue to distribute and innovate in the industry.

30 Customer Testimonial Stories

Alright, here’s 30 Customer Testimonial Stories and Case Studies to draw inspiration from and get those gears turning. Handpicked - they’re all shapes and sizes, but in the end share their customers voice and elevate a brand.

As you watch them first think:
1) How are they drawing the viewer into the story?
2) What is the most important feeling or idea they want to convey to the viewer?

1. T3 Real Estate Advisors

2. Panorama Education

3. Quickbooks

4. Promoboxx

5. HelpScout

6. Box

7. Lawrence General Hospital

8. Netsuite

9. NetSuite

10. Slack

11. Lawrence General Hospital

12. Hubspot

13. Sales Force

14. Lawrence General Hospital

15. LearnUpon

16. Slack

17. Vmware

18. Fitchburg State University

19. Salesforce

20. Zendesk

21. Monday

22. Atlassian

23. iAuditor

24. Tomorrow.io

25. Litmus

26. Help Scout

27. Constitutional Capital Partners

28. Nexus 21

29. Fitchburg State University

30. Dropbox

If you need help creating your own video testimonial or customer case study reach out!

5 Ways to Use Video Remotely during COVID

With a remote business world for the next year, it’s been interesting watching companies shift and try different ways to keep engaging and continuing the conversation with their audience. Here’s a few of my favorites I’ve seen around:

1. Customer Testimonials

With Panorama Education no longer able to go to customer’s school district to collect their stories and success case study’s, Panorama started taking their virtual customer panels and create content for marketing and sales. They would clip out multiple testimonial quotes to post on social and used in future webinars. During this time more than ever people are very forgiving towards low production quality and webcam interviews. Take advantage of it by releasing more content from candid web calls or experimenting with different formats.

2. Make a LIVE show!

For many brands, the in-person interviews that they built content around could no longer happen. While doing zoom calls can get you by, giving your show a LIVE element creates another level of engagement with your audience and a priority for social platforms to promote. Entrepreneurs likes Pat Flynn and Gary Vaynerchuck used this time as a way to stay connected with their audience and encourage others during these different times.

Pat Flynn shares the results of live streaming for 30 days

Gary Vaynerchuck talks to business and influencers navigating the pandemic

Chris Lavange over at Wistia also produced a great show and got into the production logistics of filming at home. He tied in showing the behind the scenes of getting a live show set up and gear to use, while also chatting with other creatives and their projects.

(Out of) Office Hours with Chris Lavigne

3. Documentary

In 2019 “Building the Browns” won an Emmy for outstanding sports series and in 2020 they continued the behind the scenes look at how NFL Football team the Cleveland Browns were attempting to rebuild their franchise. During the first few episodes the production crew had access to coach’s, internal offices and player/scouting trips.

With the quarantine lockdown however things drastically changed, yet the production team were still able to follow the progress the team was making. They did this by tecording zoom calls, having coaches and player set up their own cameras, having people send in personal recordings, and leveraging social media. The episode below goes into what it took to do the Draft 100% remote and is a great example of how you can make the most out of any situation and still tell a great story.

4. Virtual Events

With conferences being cancelled for 2020 many were rushing to adapt their events for online viewing. But simply having a presenter in their bedroom read a presentation and show a few slides isn’t going to build engagement. So many started to think outside the box and bring content made for the stage to video form. Keynote speaker Andrew Davis began thinking about this early and as a result created an engaging way to bring give his information to his audience and stay relevant as a keynote speaker.

5. Live Paid Classes

Best known for her work as an actress and on Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough has recently created her own brand called Kinrgy, an expanded dance experience, that was launched as part of Oprah’s tour last year. However, with lockdown happening shortly after the launch her business model had to quickly adapt and change.

Julianne started off using Instagram live (@kinrgy) to offer complimentary 15-minute taster sessions back in March and April and interviews with her team of guides. This has now expanded to a full online schedule of charged video classes four days a week, with classes being offered for $10 to $25. Add into this a partnership with FitOn app and create an on-demand experience globally.