Tom Wohlmut and Brianna Klus-Osban of WMS media, Inc. accept award.

We love helping our clients achieve their goals. Winning an award for it is like icing on the cake.

CreaTV San Jose, the most prolific nonprofit public TV center in California, threw its red-carpet bash of The 2011 CreaTiVe Awards on January 7, 2012 at downtown’s historic California Theatre. What the Academy Awards are to Hollywood is like what the CreaTiVe Awards are to “Valleywood.” So what an honor when WMS media, Inc. won the award for best nonprofit PSA under two minutes!

The mission of the winning video is to increase subscribers to Ballet San Jose. We’re happy CreaTV San Jose has recognized this video as one of the best to promote and celebrate the arts.

Nada. Zip. No one.

Imagine getting a chance to show much more! That’s where the importance of B-roll comes in. We’ve all seen it – cutaways during a newscast that show visuals enhancing the story. No PR effort with the national TV/cable news media is complete without having a B-roll handy to send them. Your B-roll helps the TV/cable station show video about your company while the CEO is talking. It’s a sweet opportunity to get out in front of the message by showcasing your company and its products at its finest!

Don’t leave the video editor scrambling to find visuals! Even worse: They might use images of your competitor because that’s all they could find. Give them your visuals on a silver platter; make their job easier; and you’ll be in a better position to control the visual message.

Case in point: Sheri Baer of The Hoffman Agency was developing a PR campaign for their client IDT. Working with WMS media, she created one snappy B-roll file that was picked up when Fox Business News aired a story about IDT. Sheri says: “Whether we’re pitching CNBC, Bloomberg or Fox Business, one of the first questions we get asked is, ‘Do you have B-roll?’ Everyone knows video makes for a much more engaging segment — and being able to provide those supporting visuals can make or break an opportunity.”

B-roll: Don’t leave your office without it.

Recently we had great fun working on a humorous piece. The goal was to poke fun at old-school, stodgy marketing and presentations. We started with footage of ineffective corporate pomp and brouhaha. But then we created deliciously funny commentary by inserting perfectly timed sounds of cuckoo clocks, snoring, and of course clucking chickens and chirping crickets.

Sound effects are just one more way to enliven your media message. But don’t worry; we also know when not to add the chickens!

Life at WMS media is always interesting and increasingly international. Last week we taped an interview in San Jose that was then sent overseas to be completed by a Chinese team and distributed for viewing in Asia. We had a language challenge: The subject spoke little English and his presentation was entirely in Mandarin. While we did have a Mandarin speaking consultant present, it was obvious when our speaker was communicating well. When he was most successful, the music of his language flowed and engaged us. Many universal cues are also clearly evident on-camera. Body language, facial expression, flow of delivery and tone of voice convey a world of meaning that video captures, even when we speak different languages.

Alison Collins on the opera stage. Click the image to hear a sample of her work.

The polish of professional media may cost more than a homemade or bargain job, but the difference in results can be staggering.

When I was a young, starving performer, I made a momentous decision – to invest in quality media to represent my work. It wasn’t easy. Recording just 10 minutes of music cost over half my monthly income. Little did I know how powerful that 10 minutes would be. When that CD landed a gig that paid me back all I had spent, I was thrilled. And that was not the end of the story. The conductor of that first concert recommended me for an audition I would have not had access to before. That job led to another and then another. In the end, my initial investment resulted in rewarding work for several years and earned more than 40 times the cost!

What is true for artists is true for business: High-quality media opens hearts and minds to the benefits and solutions of your services or products. It keeps working for you even when you aren’t clocking time. It helps you be in the right place at the right time.

Invest well in professional media. I’m so glad I did!

by Alison Collins, associate producer at WMS media

Alison Collins

In her spare time Alison loves to spoil her two retired racing greyhounds and peruse thrift stores for fabulously funky fashion and décor.

Video sharing sites like YouTube are a great way to break the ice, because nothing online is as personal and human as video. And right now, few activities online are more popular. A few ways you can use online video to execute your communications programs include:

• Kick off a campaign
• Respond to a crisis
• Uncover communities
• Extend your brand
• Connect with media and bloggers
• Measure the reach of your videos

Monica Pica dropping kids off at the school bus

LiveOps filmed a documentary to showcase the competitive advantages of its remote call center operations around the country. LiveOps decided to feature a day in the life of Monica Pica in Pennsylvania. Tom Wohlmut and John Vande Wegge, DP for WMS media, flew to the east coast to videotape the Pica family in action for an entire day. From sunup to sundown, the resulting program looks at the busy life of Monica Pica and how she manages to earn great money working from home while still spending quality time raising her family – thanks to LiveOps.

Filming Monica Pica at LiveOps desk