The main types of corporate videos and when to use them

Brand and company profile films

The profile film answers who you are and what you do, for someone who has just encountered the business. It belongs on the homepage, at the front of a pitch deck and in tender submissions.

The discipline here is subtraction. A profile film that lists twelve services communicates less than one that explains a single position clearly. Length: 60–90 seconds. Production: one shoot day, sometimes half.

Product and service explainers

Explainers exist to remove the same question from every sales conversation. They work when the product has a mechanism a prospect must understand before they can evaluate price.

Physical products favour live action and, where detail matters, high-speed or macro capture. Software and services usually favour a blend of screen capture and motion graphics. Length: 45–120 seconds.

Testimonials and case study films

The most persuasive type of corporate video, because the claim is made by the customer. A strong testimonial follows a plain structure: the situation before, what changed, what the result was.

Shoot at the client's premises where possible — the environment does half the credibility work. Allow a half day per customer and agree the approval chain before filming, since sign-off is the usual cause of delay.

Recruitment and culture films

Aimed at candidates rather than customers. The measure of success is application quality, not view count. These films fail when they are staged; they succeed when they show real working conditions, real teams and honest description of the role.

Training and internal communication

Onboarding, safety, compliance, systems and process documentation. Rarely shown externally and frequently the most valuable video a company owns, because it converts a recurring training cost into a one-time production cost.

Produce these in modules rather than as a single long film, so individual sections can be re-shot as processes change without reworking the whole.

Event films

Two distinct deliverables from the same event. The highlight film is short and released within days while interest is still live. The archive — keynote recordings, panel sessions, interviews captured on the day — becomes content for the following twelve months.

Social-first short form

Vertical, subtitled, designed for the feed. This is not a cutdown of a longer film; it is shot with the frame and the first two seconds in mind. Volume matters more than polish, which is why it suits a monthly content retainer rather than a one-off production.

Choosing the right type

• —New audience who do not know you — profile film
• —They know you but not how the product works — explainer
• —They understand it but hesitate — testimonial or case study
• —You cannot hire fast enough — recruitment film
• —The same internal briefing is repeated weekly — training module
• —You are invisible between campaigns — social-first short form

Producing more than one type at a time

Because most of the cost sits in crew, lighting and location, several types of corporate video can be produced in one block. A single planned day can yield a profile film, two testimonials and a set of vertical clips.

Rates for half-day and full-day production are published on our rate card, and the scope behind them is described on the corporate video production page.

Questions clients ask us