Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

This is part of my series of posts called “Brand Yourself As.” Today, I decided to interview Tom Clifford, who directs corporate videos. As you can see to stage right, there is a picture of Tom in his director’s uniform (notice the hat). If you have an angle or a unique personal brand, please email me and I’ll try and include you as well.

Tom is an award-winning filmmaker and he thinks “remarkable organizations deserve remarkable videos.” For 23 years, Tom has been helping companies tell their story by producing award-winning remarkable documentary videos. Companies from Fortune 500’s to non-profits use his films for marketing, recruiting and retention, sharing corporate values and more. From CEO’s to the front-line, Tom makes people feel comfortable being in front of the camera.

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Me: What are 3 ways you’ve branded yourself as a director online?

Tom: The first, and foremost, is through my blog, “Bringing Brands to Life!”

I remember in the summer of 2006, scouring the web looking for blogs, not static sites, from other corporate filmmakers. I couldn’t find any. That “void” prompted me to put a stake in the ground and start writing about my 20+ year experience as a corporate filmmaker. “Bringing Brands to Life!” has recently been picked up by Advertising Age’s Power 150 List, so I’m thrilled at this honor!

Second, I created a Squidoo lens, “Corporate Video: Is Yours Remarkable?”

Being a Seth Godin fan, I was first in line two years ago when he launched Squidoo. The lens continues to generate a lot of traffic to my blog and it’s one of the best moves one can make to start “finding their voice” on-line. That lens has really paid off. When searching “corporate videos” in Google, my Squidoo lens consistently appears high in the results, appearing around fourth or fifth, or at least in the top ten. Once a person lands on my lens, it points them right to my blog.

Third, my LinkedIn profile has been extremely helpful in growing my network in ways I’d never thought possible. Plus, creating a custom url of my LinkedIn profile usually puts my name on the first page of Google searches.

Me: What brands need the most help in coming to life?

Tom: In my own experience, I’ve found that it’s brands that are trying to express and capture that “invisible and human spirit” in each of us. When companies talk about “innovation, values, team spirit, caring, diversity, support and team work” and such, video can show these qualities in action very clearly.

Imagine hearing different employees sharing their personal points of view about these concepts while seeing them “in action.” The documentary format lends itself incredibly well to these ideas. Most times, it’s as “real, authentic, emotional and engaging” as possible. And just to clarify, I favor the documentary and “real people” approach only because this is how I’ve been capturing stories for many years. It’s not to say other forms and styles do not work.

Me: You produce many videos, but which are the most successful? Are you looking to generate buzz by making a viral video?

Tom: The most successful videos are ones capturing personal stories. It doesn’t matter how small or large your organization is; an organization is made up of people. And people have stories.

Since we are hard-wired to tell and share our stories to one another, it makes sense, to me anyways, to discover and capture those stories and feelings from an employee’s (or other) perspective. My approach is to capture one person or perhaps a few people to tell a company story. I’ll look for diversity in the voices and diversity in the stories. These voices wind up creating an interesting video story; a story creating an emotional connection with the viewers.

Viral videos? Think about this for a moment.

What’s the first thing that happens when a video story fades to black? Silence. Talking. Conversation. Sharing. What’s viral? Talking and sharing, of course. Of course, new technologies enable more eyeballs to see these stories. But the premise remains the same: ignite conversation. In the end, I’m interested in igniting conversations and sparking action…all aimed at helping clients solve problems or raise awareness about an issue.

Me: What are your thoughts about production quality vs blogger “podcast” quality?

Tom: Great question! 22 years ago, my mentor said something to me in the edit room which has never left me. He said, “I’d rather see a great story on paper than a poor story filmed in Panavision.”

So, capturing stories is in my DNA. Since every member of my team is first-rate, I honestly don’t ever have to worry about quality. It’s embedded in everything we do. My focus is always on the story and helping to move an audience to action. “Why are we capturing this?” “What difference will this story make to those watching it?” “What happens when the video story fades to back?” “Who can tell this story?” “What emotions do we want to capture?” These questions drive me in every project.

With that said, “blogger quality” video certainly has a place and one I’m all for embracing.

Here’s how I see it: in the end, all this new technology enables the sharing of our stories. And that’s a great thing!

Me: You own directortom.com, but not thomasclifford.com. What is your reasoning here? I know that you’ve branded yourself as director tom, but what about your real name?

Tom: Well, that reminds me of a story that happened in the summer of 1999…

I had dinner with a client after filming a full day and he said, “You know, you should grab ‘directortom dot com.’ Being busy producing, I never really followed up with the idea. But I always entertained the idea once and a while and I’d often bounce the name off friends and clients to see their reaction. They all loved it..it’s easy to spell and easy to remember. Seven years later, when I started blogging, I remembered that dinner and grabbed the name. If I recall, my name had been taken, so it’s worked out well in the end.

Nothing like a happy ending, right?