May 2022 | Przegląd Piekarski i Cukierniczy (Baking and Confectionery Review)
How does one create a bakery’s media message?
Why should a bakery promote itself? Everyone already knows our bakery and confectioner’s shop anyway? We sell hundreds of products every day. Would it not be better to concentrate on new products, better logistical solutions, or improving employee relations?
Unfortunately, since time immemorial, promotion and advertising have given the highest rate of return on investment. I once worked for the Blikle family of confectioners, well known in Warsaw. This confectioner’s shop had its best period in the 1920s. The Blikle confectioner’s café on Nowy Świat street was a cult venue. Artists, writers and poets came there, the whole social cream of pre-war Warsaw. They did not come because of the best cakes and excellent coffee. They came because the place was a cult venue. And this happened thanks to Antoni Wiesław Blikle, who, through various cultural events, promoted this place as the mecca of the capital’s artistic bohemia.
Cult venues are characterised by the fact that one has to be seen there and pay exaggeratedly high prices. These are places not for everyone; they are for the chosen few, they build a sense of self-worth among customers. Cakes and pastries from cult confectioners’ shops are something more than just confectionery products. One could discuss this at length; that is why for some time in these publications I have been showing how to promote oneself. How to become popular in the local environment.
Today we will deal with promotion by means of short films. At present 3–5 minute videos have become the most effective forms of communication. Making a good video is relatively simple, because everyone carries a high-quality camera in their pocket. Publishing videos — that is, reaching the customer — is also easy. So why not try it?
W-MOSZCZYNSKI ppic 5-22Let us move, then, from the storytelling zone to the zone of technical tips. In making videos one should be guided by very specific rules. Contrary to appearances, there is not too much room here for creating one’s own film style. Videos are technically very similar to one another. If a video departs from the well-worn standard, nobody will want to watch it.
Where to start? Find a topic
If a bakery or confectioner’s shop wants to promote itself, it has to show itself, but in the context of some event. Promotional videos are usually based on defined events. I strongly advise against making a video in which someone will be praising goods. The video has to give the viewer hope that there is something interesting in it. It may be interspersed with black-and-white photographs of the confectioner’s shop from the 1960s. It could be a video about a relief action for Ukraine, or a report from a harvest festival at which our company had its own stand.
In a video, sound is the most important thing
We can film a video even with the worst-quality camera. It may consist of a collage of photographs or even just a background. This will not significantly affect viewing figures if the narrator’s voice is clear and the content interesting. If the sound is unclear, too loud, too quiet, or there is some rustling, nobody will stand it. Sound quality is the most important thing. It is a good habit to record sound on online recorders. To have really good sound it is worth buying a studio microphone; for my part I can recommend the Blue Yeti family of studio USB microphones.
The teleprompter as a recipe for long statements
It is very difficult to speak for a long time and interestingly, to say something coherently so as not to make a mistake halfway through and have to start everything again. Speaking in front of a camera can be a very laborious and irritating activity. Fortunately the teleprompter was invented — a device which displays a previously written text on a phone or computer monitor. Thanks to it we can easily record long, error-free statements. An additional advantage of the teleprompter is maintaining constant eye contact with the viewer, which is one of the important elements of behaviour in front of the camera. Free teleprompters can of course be found on the internet.
How long should the video be?
The time of our report should not exceed 10 minutes, nor be shorter than 3 minutes. The exceptions are long interviews or historical narratives. Such videos, however, fall into the category of radio dramas. Usually then the background is static, and the weight of the video is placed on the content. Kitchen and confectionery guides may also be somewhat longer; this is an intermediate form between a report and a radio drama. The viewer usually glances at the length of a video before starting it. When they see that the video is too long, they simply will not start it.
The recording time of shots in a report
When recording, long shots should be avoided. When we record we should use the following example recording times: 5 seconds for a general shot, e.g. of the stand, then a 3-second shot of a person at the stand, a 3-second close-up on the products, after the close-up a 4-second panorama shot. Then we can conduct some interview, which should not last more than 100 seconds. In this way a dynamic video is created, which is hard to take one’s eyes off. It is easy to notice that most news reports on television are created within such a time regime.
Special shots
These are most often interludes inserted repeatedly into the middle of the video — e.g. a company logo, or a slow-motion shot, or a scene with great acceleration. Music is usually added to this type of shot. There are very many inspiring guides on the network on how to create interludes. In this respect, apart from duration, there are practically no restrictions on form. Special shots let the viewer rest and gain some distance from the video. Shots of this type are not obligatory, but they raise the video’s status considerably.
The first 5 seconds of the video
The video should not begin with the laconic caption „Harvest festival in the commune of Żabia Wola”, but with a dynamic invitation. A person should appear who says something interesting and interests the viewer from the very beginning. Exaggerated gesticulation is recommended, because a video by its nature has the feature of eliminating facial expression and gesture.
Where should one edit the video?
A promotional video must not be a raw video straight from a phone. It has to be properly edited and enriched with captions. Just a few years ago this was quite a problem. Then, editing was done in professional editors such as DaVinci Resolve or Sony Vegas. Professional productions are edited on such editors, and their operation is not simple. Particularly irritating is the necessity of transforming the source materials into the required formats. One has to devote weeks of learning in order to operate professional video-editing programs relatively well.
Meanwhile, on the network one can find free online video editors, whose operation is very simple. Importantly, the final appearance of videos created using simple tools will not differ significantly from videos processed by means of professional editors. For my part I can recommend the free online editor Canva.
Videos should be put on YouTube
Every properly filmed video should be put on the YouTube platform. Of course one can paste videos directly into Facebook or other social media, but in this way it will be harder to keep one’s own videos in order.
A good habit is to create a free YouTube channel with a legible company logo and a legible name, e.g. „Marysia’s Confectioner’s Shop”. Someone who becomes interested in our harvest-festival video can click on the channel logo and in this way watch our other videos. This solution is also very practical because of the possibility of observing videos’ viewing statistics. We can easily find information about what was most interesting and when viewers decided to turn off our video.
How does one reach the viewer?
Reaching the viewer solely through YouTube is practically impossible because of the search algorithm. Usually the events filmed concern the local community, and that is why one should promote oneself on local Facebook pages or other local social media. One can set up one’s own bakery page on Facebook, or send links to the YouTube video to general local-community pages. Let us remember to post links to the video on YouTube, and not entire videos, for the reasons I described above.
Summary
In order to be present in the local environment and thereby discreetly promote one’s products, one has to learn to create a media message. This has to be funny memes, interesting videos, or legible infographics. A media message reinforces our involvement in the local environment. We should therefore think about how to become present in social processes, in order then to reinforce and disseminate our stance thanks to media messages. To show our involvement and in this way build the company’s brand.
Wojciech Moszczyński
Wojciech Moszczyński — graduate of the Department of Econometrics and Statistics of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń; specialist in econometrics, finance, data science, and management accounting. He specializes in the optimization of production and logistics processes. He conducts research in the area of the development and application of artificial intelligence. For years he has been engaged in the popularization of machine learning and data science in business environments.
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