San Francisco Filming Opportunity

March 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Bay Area Advisors: We will have our mobile studio setup in San Francisco the week of March 18th. What does this mean for you? Well, it means you can utilize our video services without the added expense of commuting to Omaha or having us make a trip from Omaha to your office. If you’re in the area and have been considering integrating video into your marketing strategy, this is an opportunity you don’t want to pass up.

Get in touch with us to talk about an individual profile video, company video, or strategy overview video for your firm!  http://advisorstudios.com/Contact.aspx

 

Filed under Announcements, Events, Marketing, Studio

Money Talks

January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Grimm-SchlipmanWe recently had the pleasure to work with Quincy, Illinois advisor Mark Schlipman. Mark hosts a weekly financial tip series on his local NBC affiliate called “Money Talks.” These thirty second spots contain topics ranging from naming account beneficiaries to talking with your children about money; simple, everyday financial advice that the average viewer may not have previously thought of.

We met Mark at an industry conference and quickly realized he was an advisor who invests in his clients, business, employees and himself. From what we’ve seen, this is a wise investment.

Mark realizes that when it comes to marketing, networking or growing a book of business, one must be willing to put in effort and patiently wait for results. Can he measure the ROI of a weekly financial tip on the news? Maybe not precisely, but then again, what’s the ROI of a relationship formed over lukewarm coffee on an airplane or at your kid’s little league game? Who knows? What we do know is relationships are valuable; and Mark is building these relationships. They may be one sided for now, as the viewer is simply listening, but he is introducing himself, his personality and his expertise to people in his community… every… single… week. Read more of this post

Filed under Marketing, Studio, Video, Virtual Set Tagged with , , , , ,

Take 15

January 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Orion

In the spring of 2012, we were challenged with the task of updating a featured element of the Orion Advisor Services homepage. The design was a  ”pull tab,” which illustrated a number back-office tasks that can come between an advisor and their clients. When a user pulled on the tab the hurdles slid out-of-the-way, bringing the subjects together. A simple tool, but one which powerfully communicated the idea that, “Orion brings you closer to your clients.”

Despite it’s effectiveness, the faceless illustration style was beginning to look a bit dated… and with the launch of a new website eminent, Orion needed a way to tell the story that fit the clean and elegant update to their brand.

Our team devised the concept of using a parallax, a multi-layered photo montage that a user can move through by scroll or touch. This new technology let us tell the same story using photography, but in an almost 3D environment. It was and is the most collaborative project I’ve ever worked on. It took everyone on our team to build, from the photography to the design to the interactive build for the web. I am very proud of the work our team did, and hold it up as Exhibit A for the power of Hypermedia. Read more of this post

Filed under Marketing, Video, Web Development

A Marathon Video (literally)

October 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This past Saturday, four members of our team (and my wife) set out to film the 2012 Market-to-Market Relay race between Omaha and Lincoln Nebraska. Covering over 78 miles, with twenty exchange points, it is difficult to find the words to properly portray the epicness of the day… or our attempt to capture it. Therefore I won’t try. Instead, I invite you to view the above video. Besides, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then the 120 clips in this video should greatly surpass a 120,000 word essay.

- Christopher Norton

1620-NFS-10/18/2012

Filed under Events, Marketing, Video Tagged with

Orion Blog Video Series

August 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Orion Advisor Services, LLC (Orion) recently rolled out a new website and requested we create a video each month to accompany a newsletter article on their blog. The video would need to be informative without giving away the whole article and of course, an element of humor needed to be involved. July’s featured article highlighted future reporting enhancements at Orion.

Most technology companies are extremely cautious with the amount of information they share about upcoming innovations for fear of the competition catching wind too early. This hesitancy of information is completely understandable… and laughable if it turns to paranoia. So we thought, who better to poke fun at the line between caution and paranoia than Nathan Thurm, the shady and defensive lawyer played by Martin Short and best known from a 1984 60 Minutes sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Since hiring Mr. Short was likely out of our budget, we chose to recruit from within. Joe Leyboldt, Director of Technology Support at Orion, played the defensive roll perfectly in this interrogative interview on Orion’s future reporting enhancements.

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Working with a Theme

May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Conference themes can be an exciting, yet challenging component to a video invitation. It can be a very powerful way to stand out, differentiate this year’s conference from last, and be memorable.

It can also be very easy to slip into “cheesy” or “they tried way-too-hard” corporate video land.

This is where hiring a professional can really make a difference. Of the in-house produced, theme-based conference videos I’ve seen (and it’s a lot) I’ve yet to see a good one. Most fall into the “cheesy” category, and some even left me feeling embarrassed for the organization that created it.  Not a great way to promote your conference.

We were recently presented with the opportunity to produce an invite video for the 2012 Advisor Forum.  This conference is the joint effort of Gemini Fund Services, LLC and Orion Advisor Services, LLC. The objective was to highlight this year’s conference activities, venues, and speakers in a creative way, while respecting the distinctive style of each organization (Gemini is more traditional, Orion is a young technology company.) That alone was a challenge. Add to that, this year’s theme:

Western.

Now, western can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It could be wagon wheels, bbq, and a whole lot of denim. It could be Clint Eastwood. Or it could be a more modern take on western like “Cowboys and Aliens.”

If I was going to identify our solution with any of those it would be the later of the three. A classic take on western with a bit of special effects technology thrown in (without the explosions.)

What do you think of our solution?

Filed under Conferences, Events, Marketing, Video

QR Code – Business Card

April 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

By now you’ve probably become familiar with QR codes and Microsoft tags. You see these icons of organized squares and triangles on advertisements, in the mail and plastered on the side of buildings.

This “quick response” technology offers some logical benefits. Because the code is assigned to a specific link, you can control exactly where the code goes and ensure the visitor doesn’t end up on the wrong site. They are also completely trackable; you can see when someone scans a code and determine which of your communications has the greatest reach.

Maybe you already use this technology and are embracing the benefits. Or maybe these little icons have become so commonplace that they’re just the latest thing you’ve learned to ignore. Let me pose a few scenarios that show practical QR code usage.

You’re at a conference where you network with lots of people, over multiple days and have a variety of discussions. You get back from the conference and start sorting through your collection of business cards. It’s easy to forget who is who and names, faces and conversations all start running together. But one of those business cards has a QR code on it. You scan the code, a video pops up and suddenly the person you spoke with is on your screen delivering their value prop. You think, “I remember this guy, he was knowledgable and relatable. I should give him a call,” or, “All this guy did was talk about himself,” and you throw the card away. That video attached to a QR code allowed you to reconnect a name with a face with an opinion.

Or maybe you make the wise decision to attach a QR code with a video to your business card: Read more of this post

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