82. Maximizing the Impact of Marketing and Fundraising Videos For Schools with Helen Saks

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Tara: Welcome to Mindful School Marketing. I’m Aubrey Bursch. And I’m Tara Clays. Today we’re joined by Helen Sachs. Helen is the CEO and founder of Striking Media, a visual communications company based in Falls Church, Virginia, that specializes in videography and photography. British born, Helen got her break at BBC Television Centre in London in comedy and spent years on the British equivalent of Good Morning America.

She’s been in northern Virginia since 2016 and is thrilled to work with local businesses and nonprofits to create visuals that make an impact and get results. Welcome, Helen. Thanks so much for joining us. Good morning. I’m thrilled to be here. Yes. 

Aubrey: And we’re excited you’re here. I’ve had the opportunity to work firsthand with you since we’ve shared a couple of clients.

So I’ve seen the impact of your videos and I’m really excited to dive in more on this topic. But before we get started, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your work? 

Helen: Absolutely. As you shared in the intro, I don’t come from Northern Virginia. I’m from London and I always wanted to work on the television shows that I used to watch.

I thought that seemed like a fun way to spend your time. So I got my break at Television Centre and I started working in comedy. It was a low budget, late night comedy sketch show, which was a wonderful training ground because it gave me the opportunity to do everything from script writing to location hunting to managing budgets.

So that’s a pretty unique experience at the BBC normally as a lowly, recent graduate you’re tasked with making the tea. So it was actually a great place to be. But I quickly realized that I loved human interest stories. I love to tell people’s stories and I made a beeline for a show called This Morning, which was the morning television show.

It still is. And a lot of celebrity stories, cooking, fashion, you name it, but I loved human interest stories. So I had this amazing plethora of storytelling opportunity with ordinary people that had amazing experiences. And that is an avenue I chose to continue as I set up my own company.

Tara: So interesting and how fun that you started in comedy, but you have some good stories about that too. One or two, one or two. 

Helen: Riding the elevator with Mr. Bean on my first day at work. Oh my gosh. 

Tara: Wow, how fun. We’re going to talk about a video for independent schools today. Many schools, most schools have some kind of video that they use whether it’s when they made themselves or when they’ve had professionally made to showcase their fact facility.

The students their programs. So in your perspective, what do you believe sets apart successful video content for independent school specifically? And we know storytelling is important. But how do you approach crafting compelling narratives that resonate with their audience with their perspective audience?

Helen: I think first of all, you need to be thoughtful about what you’re trying to achieve. Many clients come to me and they have a list of wishes, and knowing that you can’t achieve all of those wishes in one video, I think is a smart place to start. So working out who is your audience, what is it they are looking to hear, and what can we reasonably tell them within the duration of this video.

Where will the video be placed? Is this for social media? Is it for the website? Is it for the advancement office to send out to prospective families? How long should it be and which voices should be in that video? So to me, so much of the success of a project comes from the planning. And I am a planner. I love the planning process.

I will do endless pre production meetings. I will talk to my interviewees in advance, sometimes in person, if that’s what’s required, to make sure that we know what content we’re going to capture before we go into the filming process. I’m a producer, but I’m also a mom. I’ve navigated the school system.

I’ve navigated the independent school system personally from overseas, trying to figure out which schools would be a fit for our family. So I truly understand what the schools need to communicate and also what families are looking for. So making sure that content is in a targeted video, very often a longer video can be cut down into shorter content.

We’re always looking to give the client as much as we possibly can. So just because you’re making a three or five minute video doesn’t mean you can’t also make a 30 second video. But if you’re making a 30 second video, you can’t have six voices. Often I’m planning a video with my calculator and I’m working out if you want to have six voices in X number of minutes, they’re each going to get this amount of time because really, at the end of the day, that comes down to the math.

I can only give the client what the time will allow, and we want to make sure that their key messaging is in there. 

Aubrey: That’s great. I think the planning piece is so important. I know you and I have had these conversations before about you have to understand, what you’re putting together and the goals that the client has so that before you even go to film so that you can really plan out everything.

Helen: Yeah, I always say no surprises. There shouldn’t be any surprises in the planning process and in the delivery process. If you know what you’re doing, the client knows what they’re getting at the end of it. The only surprise will be it’s better than they’re expecting. But in terms of the content, we all know what we’re hoping to get.

Very often individuals will say something to me. off camera or in a pre interview chat. And when the cameras are rolling, they might forget. They gave me that beautiful phrase. So I’ll always have my notes and I’ll say, Hey, you said this before let’s pick up on that and roll with that a little bit so that we can get that content, but also packaged up in such a way that the audience is engaged from beginning to end, and we keep them all the way through.

Aubrey: I think that’s so important. Now, you just said engage the audience, engage. And that makes me think about how important video has become in our society. Like it’s a great way to emotionally connect people to a cause, to a school, to something, a mission, anything, right? So I’m curious what are some strategies that really You have schools can use to help create that emotionally impactful experience and videos.

Are there specific themes or approaches that tend to resonate with, our prospective parents, current parents, students and the school community. And, are there certain video types or themes that you have seen successful in independent schools? 

Helen: So I think you need to be mindful of what the content is.

A capital campaign is different from a fundraising gala video. It’s different from your marketing video that is going on your website. But I will say, in my mind, the school belongs to the kids. I do not want to engage for five minutes listening to a head of school talk about her mission and her vision.

I want to see the children. I want to get a sense of the feeling of the school. Will my child get a hug at this school if they fall over and graze their knee? Will my child be nurtured in the learning environment if they’re struggling with their reading? I want to get a feel that you cannot get through copy, and that is where video truly shines.

When I look at school websites, I very often see reams of copy, read more. We know that people now have the attention span, like it or loathe it. of a goldfish. 10 seconds, 15 seconds, unless there’s a click here button. Nothing portrays a school and its mission and vision in the same way as video.

So I like to hear children telling their story. I like to see children at play because I think that speaks volumes more than a member of the faculty can. So I always look to engage the kids and sometimes, yes, that means we don’t end up using the content because kids are not going to always deliver, but then sometimes you do get wonderful kids that are able to express themselves and that is more engaging and captivating than anything else.

Tara: Yeah, I think that’s really important. And as a web, someone who makes the websites, we have the same conversation right about what you’re saying and what you’re depicting on your website needs to be something that’s resonating with the parents not something that’s resonating with you as the person who works at the school it’s different.

What you think is important about your school is not always what your audience is going to be drawn to so bringing in someone like you to help them with that story I think is really important. Something that I get asked a lot with websites, especially is how long a video should be. I know you mentioned different lengths, and I know we like to repackage pieces of videos, but when it comes to, let’s say, not the social media clips, but like the feature video or videos I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that.

I’ve done some, Judging of some school informational videos and sometimes they’re 10 minutes long, and sometimes they’re two minutes long, and sometimes there are five of them because they’re covering all the different program areas. Can you talk a little bit about what you think is necessary in terms of length.

Helen: Yeah, I think the school arena is slightly unique when it comes to duration of videos. I would say that for a marketing video, three to five is where I start. And from there we look at what is the content? How interesting is it? And what are the visuals that we’re going to see? Because it’s all very well and good to be able to speak to your messaging, but you have to show, not just tell.

That’s absolutely key with video messaging. The exception that I speak to is more around kind of gala fundraising. When you have a room full of parents and you’re looking for them to donate, they love nothing more than seeing their kids on the screen. So I always try and get as many of those beautiful little faces in on the screen as possible, group shots of kids playing on the playground, group shots of kids in the classroom and then picking out some key voices in amongst it.

But, I think three to five for a regular video is a good starting place. 

Tara: Thanks. 

Helen: That makes sense. Yeah, I think with something of that length, you have the opportunity to have multiple voices. And I think that’s quite key. You don’t want to just have one voice you want to have, maybe three to four voices in the video, if the team, if there is the faculty that can speak to the messaging, but that gives you some kind of wiggle room to have different perspectives.

While then being able to make the shorter versions that you speak about. 

Aubrey: Now, along with length, I know quality is really important in videos. So could you speak a little bit about, how, what are some pitfalls schools making when they’re trying to produce? They’re a video maybe for marketing or fundraising.

Maybe what are some recommendations you have for like when a video maybe should be in house produced and when you need an expert to come in and really take the reins? 

Helen: Yeah, that’s a really good question. We’re obviously all pulled in a multitude of different directions all the time. If something doesn’t keep your attention, You’re going to flick away.

If you can’t hear somebody properly, if you cannot see them properly, if there’s a lot of background noise. Filming in a school is challenging, right? Because there’s a lot of background noise all the time. Finding a quiet space to film. If you’re doing that on your cell phone, It’s not really going to captivate and hold the audience.

I would say really the only time something should be in house is when it’s for your internal audience. The parents will fully accept a video that’s coming through with a weekly roundup, for example, that showcasing, the local lacrosse team, the school lacrosse team winning a game or, the art project that’s on show in the cafeteria, That kind of thing, absolutely, you can get away with self shot.

But I think when it’s coming to key messaging, especially to attract new prospective families, you can’t self shoot that kind of content because if you’re not representing yourselves as professionals, then how is a prospective family who’s going to pay you a significant amount of money every year going to take you seriously?

I don’t think you can shortcut that. I think that needs to be done professionally, with all of the planning that we’ve been speaking about in, in, as part of the production. I know that some schools have some in house videography, but also I’ve found that their capabilities can be limited.

They can’t necessarily do a full lighting setup, they can’t necessarily interview more than one person at a time. So having professional lights, cameras, audio, all of that. You can’t be good at everything. I acknowledge that, I pull in resources when I need resources to support my work.

I think we all do that. We’re all better when we work together collectively. And having a professional videography team takes you to a next level that often cannot be replicated internally. 

Aubrey: Yeah, that’s really well said. I do agree. There’s a difference between professional video and what you can shoot on your iPhone.

And I, what I’ve seen schools do when they’re looking at their budgets, it’s saying we need these key videos done professionally because those are the ones that the prospective families are seeing and so on and so forth. But then maybe for their social media shorts and for their internal audience, that’s when they’re doing more their in house, more informal stuff.

So I appreciate you mentioning that. 

Helen: Absolutely. 

Tara: Yeah, I have a technical question, which is about captioning. I know when especially on social media, now there’s a lot of AI generated captioning that can happen. How do you approach captioning and what are your thoughts on captioning videos? Is that something you automatically do?

Helen: No, I don’t automatically do it, but I do think it’s a very useful tool. I do not like to rely on auto generated captions because they can give you errors. And especially if somebody has an accent. then it will not correctly caption an accented voice. So we have learnt over the years to put captions in as an additional extra.

It is not an expensive extra normally but if you have an indecipherable voice, which is not normally the case, with a school video, I will say. I learned this more when I was asked to caption a rap video and the voice was almost indistinguishable and they didn’t want to give us a script. So it spent so long, it took us so long to caption this video that we learned to, to price it separately.

But to answer your question, I think it’s advisable. Many people watch video without audio on their phone. But I think it has to be done right. So even if you’re choosing to auto generate, check it. Check it, that it’s correct, and if it’s not, it’s very easy to do, you know. The edit machines that we, the edit software will allow you to do it very simply.

You check it, you place it. It’s not a timely or difficult thing. There are a 

Tara: lot of tools that do that, even for the longer videos. I’ve been to galas where it’s loud and the video is playing and you can’t hear the voices speaking. So I’ve often thought, and wondered about captioning for that type of thing, too, because that’s really important to get that message across.

And sometimes the videos are lost. Those play those events can get very loud. 

Helen: And sometimes with a child, they might speak a little quickly. They might, maybe there is background noise. I think it doesn’t have a negative effect ever. I think it’s helpful. 

Aubrey: That is so interesting. I’m just having flashbacks.

So fun fact, one of my first jobs while I was in college was transcription on the old transcribing machines with the little pedal and now we’ve come so far transcriptions. So I’m just amused. I’m so much glad. So happy. It’s easier than it was before. 

Helen: Yeah, it’s really, it really is easy now. It’s only, it’s only when there’s an accent and then you just go in and autocorrect.

Punctuation is another thing. We all know we’re in the business of schools. Wrong punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence, right? So I always like to go in and just check the punctuation is correct. And it’s a detail, but I’m a big believer in focusing on those details to make sure the messaging is entirely as we want it to be.

Thank you. 

Aubrey: I’m curious, do you have any, do you know if like when schools are approaching, videos and are there common mistakes that they’re making either in the video planning process or when they’re, figuring out which videos to do, what do you noticed in 

Helen: your line of work? I think often, It’s hard to define a mistake, isn’t it?

Because one thing might be right for one person and not right for another. I’m always looking at who is the audience and what do they need to hear and how long are they going to engage in this video for. I think really be mindful that you can’t say everything in three minutes. If it’s a three minute video, who are the key voices?

What do they want to say? planning it almost like a script and making sure that we’re very mindful in what we are communicating. And that can be tough for a school to, hear because, as a production team, we want to give them everything. We want to say, yes, we can give you the world, but realistically, a time limit is a time limit.

So making sure that we’re on target, my goal with every video is that the audience is engaged from beginning to end. They are not distracted if their cell phone pings, they are completely engaged in this messaging that’s being presented to them. So I think that is probably the toughest call. I think around that, just being mindful of, what are the most important Videos they need to create, we’ve just done a video capital campaign for a school in Bethesda.

Very clearly they have a timeline they need to meet. They’ve got a substantial amount of money they’re looking to fundraise for. And we were very strategic in how we created that. We had a little bit of the school history. We had a little bit of the. child experience. And we did engage the children because it’s pretty hard to say no to a kid that’s saying, I’m so excited about our new gymnasium, please help us to fundraise for this.

So thinking about who those voices are as we create those videos, I think goes a long way towards the success.

Tara: Thank you. I noticed in what you just said you use the word mindful, which is a great segue because that’s the next question I’m going to ask you, which is about mindfulness. It’s in the title of our podcast because we like to Bring it everything together after we’ve had our chat with this idea of mindfulness and we like to ask our guests how you define mindfulness and how it applies.

So you just used that word and mentioned it, but maybe you can just say a little bit more about what you think about how you define mindfulness. 

Helen: I define mindfulness of being thoughtful in the approach of everything that we do. So that’s internal as well as external. Like to think I’ve been around the block in the production world.

I’ve seen how some people operate and how others don’t. And, in running my own ship, I’m very mindful about how I run my team, how I manage my team, how I look after my people. I want for my production team to have a good experience and as part of that, there are people that are love people who love to work with kids, for example, we also do a lot of work outside of the school arena in summer camps.

And, I have production team members who. have worked at summer camps who have been rangers in Alaska and are used to presenting to kids. So they’re very comfortable in that arena. So I like to be mindful of who I place on what job. I like to be mindful of how I treat my team. And I like to be mindful of the planning that we’re doing with every project that we’re doing.

Nothing should ever be rushed in my opinion. If I’m doing a gala video, it will never be delivered the night before. Nobody needs that stress. I’m mindful in creating a timeline so that we have a series of deliverables for review, for feedback, for final delivery, so that the client knows that if their event is at the end of the month, by the middle of the month, they have their video.

There’s no stress around it. really trying to make sure that the experience is as positive as it can possibly be internally and externally. We are not doing brain surgery here. We’re fortunate enough to do a job that is extraordinarily fun and privileged, and everybody should have a positive experience, no matter whether you are production team, client, interviewee, or anyone that passes us by, quite frankly.

So I think that mindful Nurse serves all of those different perspectives. 

Aubrey: Thank you so much for sharing. That’s wonderful and so important. I am now happy to transition us to one of my favorite parts of the show, rapid fire questions. Are you ready for rapid fire? I’m so ready. I’m so ready.

Great. This is so exciting. If you could put one book as mandatory reading in the high school curriculum, what would it be? 

Helen: So the book I chose is I am Malala, the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban. And I chose this book for a couple of different reasons. My daughters have read it.

I encourage them to read it. I think it’s a very important message. We live in an extraordinary bubble here in Northern Virginia, and we take for granted our right to education, but not everybody has that privilege. And Some girls just don’t have the right to go to school safely. So I think a reminder that the schools that we can take for granted are not the privilege that everybody in the world has access to.

So I think that’s a reminder of not only how fortunate we are, but also the journey that some others experience and how we can always push ourselves to be better and not just sit in a place of privilege. 

Tara: Wonderful. Thank you. I don’t think we have that book on our Goodreads list and I can’t wait to add it.

Next question for you. What is one app you could not live without? 

Helen: WhatsApp because I use it daily to stay in touch with my family and my friends overseas. So that one for me is a no brainer. I do love WhatsApp. What are you reading right now? So the truth is, when you sent this question, I had to go and get my book because it’s been sitting next to my bed for too long.

It’s currently overdue at the library, but I’m determined to finish it before I return it. It’s Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. It is actually the story of a lady that works in an aquarium and she makes a friendship with an octopus who apparently unsolves, unsolves, who apparently solves a mystery for her.

So I’ve got to get to the end of it to understand how this octopus solves the mystery of her life. And I’m not prepared to give it back until I understand the resolution of this book, but I’m told it’s wonderful. I need to give it a little more time. You know what it’s like, you need a vacation to read a book.

Yeah, I am reading it in very short bursts and it’s not really serving the experience very well. I am too, 

Aubrey: rushing against the library deadlines for several books as well. I’m like, oh, I have to get, I’ve maximized my hold on this book. 

Helen: Yeah, I keep 

Aubrey: getting warning reminders. 

Helen: I’m like, sorry, got to finish it.

Tara: Yeah, exactly. Yeah that’s a good one too. Thank you for sharing. We’re so glad that you’ve joined us today. I’d love to ask you our final question, which is, what is one great piece of advice you can leave us with? 

Helen: I thought quite long and hard on this one. And my last piece of advice comes from the perspective of a parent of a parent of teenagers.

And it is just Really be aware of the social media stresses that our children are going through. I think that it is a world that we as parents need to heighten our awareness on and schools undoubtedly in my opinion need to step up. Just because you’re not seeing a problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

With the boys we tend to see the physical hitting one another, getting it out, their systems are moving on. With the girls, it happens underground. And if we don’t monitor, if we don’t talk about it, if we don’t teach kindness, then our girls can really be struggling. And boys, of course, with social media bullying.

So just be aware of it, monitor the phones and teach kindness. Thank you. That’s 

Tara: great. Really appreciate it. Could apply to me too. Yeah, exactly. We’re so glad you’re here. How can people find you online, Helen? 

Helen: So we are strikingmedia. com. We are on every social media platform that you can imagine. We are www strikingmedia.

com. And I would encourage anyone to reach out for a chat. I’m always happy to chat about opportunities. With no commitment whatsoever, just happy to share ideas and thoughts. I love to connect with people. I’m always looking to build my network. So I’m thankful for this opportunity today. And if anyone would like to reach out and discuss any ideas they may have, I would be very happy to chat with them.

Thank you, Helen. Thank you so much. 

Tara: Okay. Bye. Bye.