Why one good film beats ten rushed ones
Most corporate video budgets get spread too thin. Kate Bennett on why volume is usually the wrong answer, and what happens when you put everything into one film worth making.
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What we tell clients who are scared of being on camera
Most people who say they are bad on camera have never been properly directed. The fear is real, but the cause is almost always a production problem, not a personal one.
The trust signals buyers look for before they call a studio
Most studios lose the enquiry before anyone picks up the phone. The buyer has already decided, and they decided on evidence you either control or ignore.
How to brief a video team so you get what you pictured
A vague brief produces a polished film nobody wanted. Kate Bennett on the exact questions that have to be answered before a camera moves.
The real daily cost of an evergreen brand film, reframed
Every business that hesitates on a brand film is using the wrong unit of analysis. Change the denominator and the conversation with finance changes too.
The series that built a pipeline while we slept
A four-part video series, left alone for fourteen months, quietly produced twelve warm leads. Here is the mechanism behind it and the maths that makes the case.
Why a video podcast outperformed the audio-only cut
The audio-only version was more convenient to consume. It was also watched by fewer people, shared less, and remembered by nobody who mattered.
What good corporate video does that an internal team usually cannot
Kate Bennett on the capability gap that isn't about cameras, and what changes when a professional team takes over the interview and the edit.
Why the cheapest quote cost the client the most
The client saved four thousand pounds on the production day. They spent fourteen thousand pounds fixing what that saved them.
The brand film that aged badly in a year and how to avoid it
A client called twelve months after we wrapped to ask whether we could reshoot. The film we had both been proud of looked wrong.
What we cut from every corporate script now and why
For years I thought a longer script meant a more complete brief. It meant a more boring film.
The two-minute film that closed a six-month deal
The deal had been in proposal for six months. Budget approved, champion in the room, legal cleared. A two-minute film from a reference client unstuck it in a week.
Why your last agency video felt expensive and looked cheap
A marketing director showed me a £250,000 brand film with four thousand views. The production was excellent. The brief was not.
The internal video that quietly cut onboarding time
I nearly axed our internal video budget. A team member stopped me with a spreadsheet. Looking at those numbers changed how I think about corporate video entirely.
What a CFO actually wants from a brand film
The creative team loved it. The CFO killed the budget in three minutes. He was not being difficult. He was asking the only question that mattered, and nobody in the room had an answer.
The corporate video nobody watched, and the one fix that changed it
We spent three days on a film I was genuinely proud of. It got forty-two views in six months. The problem was not the production. It never is.
What changes when your studio is a 5-minute walk from the office
I tracked three shoot days across two London boroughs and added up the travel time. Four and a half hours of crew time. That is where most production budgets quietly disappear.
Why investors now expect a virtual studio backdrop, not a boardroom
I sent a client into a Series B round with boardroom footage that read immediately as a company that had not thought about how it looked. The feedback arrived six weeks later.
The green-screen myth that keeps brands on expensive shoots
Most brands reject virtual production on the strength of a technology they stopped using years ago. The assumption is costing them ground they will not easily recover.
What a virtual studio actually costs versus a week of location hire
I put a location shoot in front of a client as the aspirational option. A week of watching the invoices arrive taught me what I had actually done to their budget.
Three video moves London competitors are using to take your market
I sat in on a pitch we lost. The winning firm was not better. They were on screen more often, in three specific ways, and the buyer never met us in person to compare.
The corporate documentary that travelled across the whole company
We set out to film one department's story. It ended up running in onboarding, in sales rooms and at the all-hands, because we filmed the truth instead of the brochure.
The five most expensive corporate video mistakes, and how to avoid them
A client showed me a £30,000 brand film his sales team had never once sent to a prospect. It was beautiful. It was useless. That video taught me the five mistakes that quietly waste most corporate video budgets in London, and how to spot them before you sign anything.
Why London brands are quietly moving keynotes into virtual studios
A FTSE comms lead told me she'd stopped booking ballrooms. Her keynotes now run from a virtual studio in central London, and her board never noticed the room had gone. Here is what changed her mind, and what it should change about yours.
What two years does to a video
We make AI people at Disruptive Live. So this is not an argument against AI video. It is an argument about what happens to content at 18 months old — and why the calculation most marketing teams are running is the wrong one.
We Can Tell When ChatGPT Wrote Your Video Script
AI is brilliant for getting a first draft down fast. The problem is that ChatGPT and Copilot have default habits that sound fine on paper and fall completely flat on camera. A few small tweaks make all the difference.
Loss Aversion Is Running Your Deals and You Don't Know It
Prospect Theory says people fear losing more than they want to gain. The deals that close are the ones where the cost of inaction was made concrete, not where the gain was sold hardest.
The Inverted Pyramid I Use for Every Executive Email
Executives scan email rather than read it. Lead with the conclusion. Put everything else below it.
Why Your Business Case Gets Rejected Before the Meeting
Generic ROI calculators and pitch-deck business cases are being quietly filed away before they reach the decision-maker. The deals that close are built around the prospect's specific outcomes.
What Social Procurement Means for Cold Outreach
Buyers are using LinkedIn hashtags like #IAmBuying to pull vendors toward them. The traditional interruption model of cold outreach is collapsing.
The 80% Video That Changed My First Calls
Most first calls are product demos in disguise. A pre-meeting video that answers the questions every prospect asks changes that dynamic completely.
The 57% Problem in Every Sales Conversation
Buyers complete 57 to 70 percent of their purchase decision before they speak to sales. That changes everything about what the first call is actually for.
Why I Stopped Pushing for Yes
Buyers who feel hunted stop talking. The counterintuitive discovery from negotiation research: giving someone permission to say no opens the conversation that pushing for yes always closes.
What CFOs Actually Want to Hear
Talking to a finance director about brand vision is like suggesting a surgeon rely on healing crystals. CFOs care about LTV to CAC, risk mitigation, and business outcomes.
Why the Deal That Went Quiet Isn't Dead
No decision beats every named competitor in B2B sales. When a deal goes dark, it rarely means they chose someone else. It means nobody made the case for change compelling enough.
The Eleven-Stakeholder Problem Nobody Mentions on the Sales Call
Winning the champion feels like progress. It usually isn't. The real buying decision happens in rooms you'll never enter, and most deals die there.
Why Most Business Video Fails (And It's Not Your Production Budget)
We spend thousands on video and wonder why nobody watches it. The problem isn't the camera. It's what we're pointing it at.
Why the Kuleshov Effect Explains Your Confused Case Study Videos
A brilliant testimonial shown without context reads as noise. A 1920s Soviet filmmaker explains exactly why.
Why the Last 30 Seconds of Your Presentation Are the Ones Everyone Forgets
The Peak-End Rule means your audience will remember exactly two things: the most intense moment and how you finished. Most speakers save the ending for last.
Why Eight Out of Ten of Our Social Posts Were Making Things Worse
People share content to look good to their networks. Most corporate social accounts have this backwards.
Why Data Never Persuaded Anyone Who Didn't Already Agree With You
Aristotle diagnosed this 2,400 years ago. Most business communicators default to Logos and skip Ethos and Pathos. Data convinces no one who doesn't already trust you.
Why Nobody Believed Us When We Said We Were Excellent
The more confidently you claim to be the best, the less your audience believes you. The fix is structural, not stylistic.
Why Bad News Needs a Different Strategy to Good News — and Most Organisations Have Them Backwards
Release all bad news at once. Stage good news in intervals. Most organisations do both the wrong way round and turn a bad story into a long one.
What Our Worst Product Feature Taught Us About Trust
Naming your product's obvious limitation before anyone asks does not lose deals. It closes them.
What Silence Taught Me About Negotiation
The person who speaks first after naming a price usually loses. The silence after you state your number belongs to the room.
What It Actually Means to Run Your Business Like a Media Company
The budget you spend outsourcing your content is the authority you hand to someone who will be gone in twelve months.
What a Pool Company Taught Me About Video
The conventional wisdom that all video must be short is wrong. A buyer preparing to spend significant money will watch 20 minutes. Most corporate content gives them nothing worth watching.
What Hitchcock Taught Me About My Slide Decks
Every element on a slide competes for the same attention. Hitchcock worked out the hierarchy problem in 1930. Most decks ignore it entirely.
The Question That Convinced Me to Unscript Every Presentation I Give
A script gives you control over every word and no control over whether anyone believes you.
The £30,000 Video Our Sales Team Never Used
An About Us video is a vanity project dressed as a sales tool. Sales teams do not use them because they do not answer buyer questions.