What My Eighth Grade Graduation and a Multibillion-Dollar Company Have in Common
At Referential, we are acutely aware that the success we experience is directly tied to our clients’ success. To that end, we love to help our clients tell the story of their own customers’ wins.
Allow me to pull back the curtain and walk through how a graduation gift laid the path for me to create testimonial videos for Fortune 500 companies and SMBs, alike.
Upon graduating from eighth grade, my parents gave me my first video camera. This went with me everywhere; from Europe to Alaska to my own backyard. You could usually find me with a pocket full of MiniDV tapes, ready to swap into the camera when the current one ran out. As the years progressed, and with each technological improvement, my passion for capturing the world around me has remained steadfast.
Filming customer testimonials is a gift, one that has provided an opportunity to travel the world and meet incredible people – from CEOs managing some of the biggest networks in the world – to Security Professionals protecting orphanages and the most vulnerable populations.
At this time last year, Referential Principal, Jennifer Doyon, and I were tasked with filming customer testimonials for one of our clients at its annual conference. This is a team process, one that can involve multiple hours of focus, which includes reviewing existing case studies and potential client interviewees. While this is going on, we maintain regular touch points with the client to ensure there is a full understanding of participants and products, and also to formulate pertinent interview questions.
In addition, we provide a variety of weighty, state-of-the-art camera equipment for each shoot we perform. This includes multiple 4K video cameras and lenses, Sennheiser Lavalier microphones, audio recorders, lighting, monitors, tripods, hard drives, sliders and more. If a client has a need for drone footage, I’m licensed to do that too.
Between unloading, set up, and site diligence, there are numerous factors involved that mustn’t get overlooked when meeting the client’s demand: “We need to get some customer videos!”
As I alluded to, a lot of diligence and hard work goes into everything we do at Referential. On a personal note, this is something I am extremely passionate about. I celebrate what we do; I go back and re-watch older clips and envision ways to enhance them while thinking through the processes involved.
One of the highlights of my career to date – and an example of hard work paying off both for us and by us – was when news came from our client manager that one of our videos was played during the keynote speech at its Sales Kickoff event.
We have had our videos featured at sales events on projections as well as being designed to feature on cinema sized screens, but to be included in the keynote of one of the global leaders in security: To hear the well-known CEO speak so positively about how the customer voice was captured – almost as a bonus to have a Referential-created video uploaded to their home page – was just incredible.
Without a doubt, creating customer testimonial videos is a team effort. Traveling, filming, post-production work and getting approvals for the videos takes a whole village. Seeing our effort featured front and center at a multibillion-dollar company puts into perspective why we, at Referential, are industry leaders when it comes to developing great content for our clients. Our passion is about making our clients and their customers look fantastic while making their lives easier.
And to think, it all began with me graduating from middle school!
