Facilitator: Lee LeFever
Company: Common Craft
Session #: 304
Session Title: Solving Explanation Problems with Simple Online Videos
Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Time: 11:00am - 12:30pm
Room: Cornell
Description
Is it difficult for potential customers to "get" the value of your product or service? If so, you may have an explanation problem. By understanding explanation problems and how to solve them, you will find new ways to get the right message to the right people.
Starting in April of 2006, Common Craft has been solving explanation problems using short and simple videos in a unique format called Paperworks. Their "In Plain English" series of videos have been viewed over 1.5 million times and they have been hired by companies like Google, Redfin and PRWeb to make videos that solve explanation problems for their products.
Two elements to their success:
1. They use a simple paper-and-whiteboard format that helps to boil complex ideas down to a simple message.
2. They utilize social media sites like their blog, YouTube, Digg, Facebook and others to extend their products to the masses.
This session will be a mix of discussion and a hands-on workshop where attendees will learn about the Common Craft story, process and style and then get a start on their own productions.
You'll enjoy this session if you're interested in simplicity, explanation, social media, online video and video production.
Session Materials
For this session, we'll be asking you to be creative. You'll conceive an idea and then make it into a digital storyboard using a program like PowerPoint. For this to work, we'll need attendees to bring digital cameras and the means to move photos from the camera to a computer.
Additional Information/Links/Materials
Here are links to a few blog posts that relate to the session:
15 Lessons Learned in 2007
Why Paperworks: All About Constraints
The Tools of Our Trade
