"I Love My SBI"
Marketing Video

I Love My SBI This SBI marketing video was made for a video contest sponsored by Site Build It (SBI), an Internet company that helps people create small businesses online. The goal was to make a video telling why you "loved SBI" — resulting in enthusiastic marketing pitches from loyal users that have since been used as marketing videos by SBI.

That's a great way to make a marketing video: Get your users to make one (or many) for you.

The SBI marketing video contest was very successful, with over 140 submissions from around the globe, and dozens of great videos that tell the SBI story in different, personal ways. I made a music video for the video contest, similar to what I did for the global warming video contest that I entered.

For any marketing video, you need to know your audience, and create your video with the customers in mind. I thought a catchy tune and a little humor would be a good fit with would-be small business owners, and it seemed to work. (It earned first place and $10,000, so I can't complain!)

This video uses a mix of photos, including simple animations, and video segments, mostly of my family and me doing silly things. Before shooting the video, I made a shooting plan and had a general idea of what I wanted for the different scenes. However, as often happens, some things worked better than I expected, and other things "got left on the cutting room floor" (that is, I didn't use them).

That's often the case with video, including marketing video: Come up with a video plan, but be spontaneous and shoot a lot more than you think you'll need, since you may not know ahead of time what's going to work.