Bestie Brand Shoot: SF Bay Area Brand Photos & Video To Promote An Inaugural Event
How can you drive an audience to your inaugural event using brand photos and video, if there’s no photos or video from prior events to do that with?
That’s the conundrum Michelle King of Sole2Soul and Cynthia Abbott Kerr of Wellpay.ai found themselves in.
Excited to launch Revolutionize, a new event for HR professionals in the SF Bay Area, they needed a way to let audiences know what the event was going to be about and why they should come.
Not having prior event footage to work with left us with two options.
☝🏻Use stock footage to create a promotional video.
✌🏻Stage an event to capture footage.
We decided to do a hybrid of both.
A brand video for Revolutionize by by SF Bay Area brand photographer Bernadette Marciniak
Why Not Just Use Stock Footage?
We could have just used stock video to promote Revolutionize, but we knew a video like that would fall short. It wouldn’t connect to Michelle and Cynthia’s audience, or get anyone excited about the event.
At Solhaus Media, we pride ourselves on cultivating and nurturing community. Because of this, wrangling together a small group of people that could act as attendees was an easy feat. Between our makeup artists staying late to sit in as bodies, and team members inviting their spouses, we had a good, diverse collection of folks that sat in for the shoot.
A speaker reel for Wellpay.ai Founder Cynthia Abbott Kerr by SF Bay Area brand photographer Bernadette Marciniak.
More Bang For Your Buck And Time
Gathering a group of folks together for a quick one-minute video seemed excessive, so we decided to use the opportunity to get more content for Michele and Cynthia.
Being former HR veterans who now run their own businesses, they also have a goal of booking speaking engagements, and they knew they each needed their own speaker reel.
The same conundrum presented itself – without existing footage from any prior speaking engagements, it was impossible to create a reel.
So we used the fact that there was already going to be a group of folks in the room who looked like event attendees, and Michelle and Cynthia would present their keynotes as if they were speaking at an event.
Since the space we were using was also available to us for the whole day, we decided to also record interview-style A-Roll of Michelle and Cynthia speaking to the camera about their respective businesses.
We finished off the day with some simple B-Roll for both of them that we knew was needed for their brand videos.
A speaker reel for Sole2Sol Founder Michelle Joy King by SF Bay Area brand photographer Bernadette Marciniak
The Deliverables
What started as a simple venture to get a video to promote their inaugural event turned into a media library full of assets that can be used for a multitude of purposes. In addition to the event sizzle reel, both Cynthia and Michelle got full recordings of their keynotes, as well as a brand video for each of their respective businesses. Oh, and we also snuck in a few headshots for each of them because we can’t help but to give our clients the most!
Want to get photos like this for your own business? Click below to schedule a call to talk about how Solhaus Media can work with you to create powerful and authentic imagery.
like this post? check out more like it!
MEET BERNADETTE
Hi! I’m Bernadette Marciniak, founder of Solhaus Media, a woman-owned brand photography and video production company. We work with coaches, healers, podcast hosts, educators and creative business owners to create powerful imagery that converts audiences into clients.
Bernadette is a cat mom of two, who loves good pizza, craft beer and red wine. She’s usually bingeing on the hottest new true crime documentary, or finding solace in the upteenth repeat of Ted Lasso or Friends.
Solhaus Media is based in Los Angeles, the SF Bay Area, and New York City.
