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Spring’s right around the corner, and that means it’s time to start planning for your annual guys weekend sports-betting and obnoxious debauchery trip to Diamond Joe’s in Iowa for March Madness!!! … Wait, I mean it’s time to start planning for your property’s annual photography and videography shoots.
That’s what I meant to say! Because your big budget photo/video shoots need to happen in late spring or early to mid-summer, right? When the flowers are in full bloom, the grass in front of your casino green as a golf course fairway (or if you live in Minnesota like me, you have to wait for snow to melt). If you want your casino to look its best on film, you need to be ready to shoot in a couple months. So let’s make a quick list of things you need to think about when making your plans!
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:
- Don’t bet on a Minnesota team. We just never win. I don’t care if we have been playing well and have some significant upsets under our belt this season … Wait! This isn’t about March Madness. (Sorry, distracted by hoops.)
- Don’t try to shoot it yourself. That’s just … not a real idea. Just don’t.
- Make sure you have an idea. Not a shot-list. Not a plan or a strategy. Your TV commercials need to be lifted by an idea. And that idea MUST emphasize/showcase/lean into what’s different about your casino. Different from the others in the market.
- Try your hardest to avoid being boring. Don’t show/tell your audience things they already know. If you want them to pay attention to your message, you need to surprise them, delight them, make them laugh, make them think! Be interesting! Think of it like dating. If you are boring, you will go home alone at the end of the night.
- Hire a company that is good at what they do. Good writers, good shooters, good editors, etc. Not the cheapest. Don’t fall for that false logic. Less money means less talent (that’s a universal truth — sorry, it’s true), and less talent means boring, obvious work that suggests “my casino doesn’t know how to do things right.” And you don’t want that. You do not. If your GM suggests you hire your local TV station to shoot it (they will likely do it for free if you buy some media from them), tell that GM, “Boss, Chad says that’s like putting all your money on the Minnesota Gophers to win the National Championship.” Even your GM will recognize you can’t make a crappier bet than that!
- Shoot lots of extra b-roll. Make sure you budget for it. Buy the models out, so you can use the footage all year long wherever you want to use it. Because you will want to use as much as you have. Everyone is spending more time on screens than ever before. TV is dying, you’ve heard? No, it’s not. Not even close. The opposite even. It just seems like it because a big chunk of what used to be living room couch TV
watching time has moved to internet-connected mobile.
Which is the point of this article (finally getting there): Video works much harder for you than photography or text. Much more than you’d think. Here’s a crazy AF quote to chew on.
“The average American spends 7 hours and 4 minutes looking at a screen each day.” — Josh Howarth, Alarming Average Screen-Time Statistics (2024)
That’s insane, right? Anyone saying that TV commercials are going away just doesn’t understand what’s happening. Americans are spending MORE TIME staring at screens than ever before in history. We LOVE our screens. And the trick — actually there are two tricks — we need to learn/master:
TRICKS TO LEARN/MASTER:
- How does my media strategy/buy FIND those eyeballs (now that the traditional media landscape has fractured into a million pieces) — which is not something we learn/master today. That’s a different Red Circle + TG&H article.
- WHAT do I put in front of their eyeballs when I find them? The WHAT is in fact the point of this article. When I find them, what is the content mix I’m using to catch their attention, and hold it so I can deliver my message
The answer — and I’ve written about/talked with Chris at Raving about this in the past — is VIDEO content. More video content, always. Video, video, video. Video content beats photographic content which beats copy content. Video is king. Now more than ever. Way more now than ever.
Don’t believe me?
From a recent Forbes magazine article: “Social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and image content combined. And viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.”
Another piece of Dark Side of the Force data (Facebook is evil, Zuck is Darth Nerdface): “According to a study conducted by The Motley Fool (Feb 14th, 2023, article) Facebook videos receive 135% more organic engagement than photos. Not only do they perform better, but the platform prefers them as well.”
Wow, right?! But is that true for casino ads, for casino customers? Yeah, it’s very true. Based on the digital and social work we do for a Native Casino client (located in the Northeast part of the US) reporting shows that video + static image campaigns create 21x more engagement than static image campaigns alone. 21x more engagement!
Video is king. You have to start using it. Everywhere and always.
So back again to the point of this article. When you are planning your upcoming photography + video shoot, you must increase the amount of B-roll you collect. Get as much of it as you can afford. Buy out the talent, so you can use it however you like. And then start using it in your digital and social media marketing campaigns. It’s so much more effective.
When we organize shoots for our casino clients, we always suggest stacking up as much B-roll as possible. As much as possible. Always.
Is it more important than wearing an authentic Micheal Jordan jersey (original rookie jersey with the script-y font is the one I own) and some white AJ3’s when drinking beer and betting on March Madness games? Depends on your marketing budget, how many digital or social ads you create each month, and how much you are willing to lose on that dumb Draft Kings app. For me, the MJ jersey is critical. Because MJ’s the GOAT, and any talk otherwise is blasphemy. All silly AF Kobe comments will be laughed at. Always.
Chad Germann
Red Circle
612-670-1606
