How Video Showreels Shine a Better Light on Your Research

More and more researchers now create video showreels to highlight their findings, make a deeper business impact, and keep it all relatable for stakeholders and executives. But what are video showreels exactly, how do you easily create them, and how can they drive the most relevant actions?

In this article, I discuss the following:

• The history of video showreels
• What are video highlight reels in research?
• How to use video showreels in consumer insights
• The workflow to create video showreels to highlight consumer feedback

The history of highlight reels

Video showreels were initially used and are still used by media personalities, actors, and others who must show off their on-camera, video shooting, or editing work. In addition, market researchers have used video showreels for years. But the way either version of video showreels was created in the past has been manual. Basically, the workflow used to look like this:

• Look through the footage to identify what should be included
• Mark the footage that is considered for inclusion
• Trim out the footage
• Edit the footage back together

Often, that used to be a workflow that required the help of another person specializing in video editing. With technological advances, creating highlight reels has become easier for anyone running research projects.

Read next: What is Agile Research for Business Success?

What are automated video showreels in research?

Automated video showreels rose to prominence in the market research arena when the team at Voxpopme determined that there needed to be an easier way to create highlights from video surveys. Easier than having to follow the long-time four-step process of manual tasks.

Today, the Voxpopme platform uses artificial intelligence and machine transcription to start the process of creating video showreels from short and long-form video content. First, all videos are analyzed, and pieces can be easily combined into video highlight reels, built by people with the assistance of AI for intelligently suggested clips when preferred. 

“The barrier has always been, I can’t analyze that much data. I have to watch all the videos. That’s impossible,” said Jamin Brazil, managing director of HubUX at Voxopme. “But now we don’t have to do that. We can analyze that data at scale for quick insights and automatic highlight reels. This is a really big moment for our industry. I believe that video is a way that people communicate with us, and it is going to solve a lot of problems. It’s going to help build empathy across brands to their constituents.”

Here’s an example of a video showreel from our popular weekly consumer studies series:

How to use AI-assisted video showreels in consumer insights

Video soundbites are a great way to bring the customer’s voice to the boardroom table and permeate it through the company. Add the highest impact customer quotes into a video and show that at the right times in a meeting to get stakeholders’ attention and create customer empathy.

“You can really get a lot of deep insight from just a few of our responses when we’re talking about short video answers to questions,” said Matthew Handegaard, Voxpopme’s research panel manager.

The workflow to create video showreels to highlight consumer feedback

Creating video showreels to highlight customer feedback has never been easier. On the Voxpopme platform, highlight the appropriate transcript and add it automatically to a video showreel. The platform automatically creates the reel, and you can easily combine consumer soundbites into one video. No video editing skills are required!

Here’s an example of how that looks:

You can then ask for intelligently suggested alternative clips to refine your showreel and ensure you have the best clips.

The final video highlight reel then looks like this:

As you can see, it’s way easier than cutting up clips and reordering them in video editing software. Customers agree.

“He said, ‘With Voxpopme, I highlight the transcript and add it to a clip. It’s so much easier,'” Voxpopme product leader Betsy Nelson recounted a customer’s story.

Creating highlight reels from the video responses is “pure gold and so much better than pasting open ends into a deck,” said insights leader Ashley Shelley, principal consumer insights researcher at Yahoo.

Read next: Unlocking Consumer Insight Trends: Analysis and Making Sense of It

The future of tech-assisted video showreels

The future of automated highlight videos will continue to evolve. No doubt. At some point, artificial intelligence might even pick the best clips for us. “We created what we think are the best soundbites for the goals you mentioned.” Done.

“As we enhance the showreel creation process, we remain attentive to our customers’ needs and are constantly exploring creative new ways to improve,” said Ian Craig, product manager at Voxpopme. “Our goal is to streamline the process and enable our customers to extract more value and share that with their internal and external stakeholders.”

And while the future certainly will see more improvements, the present has already come a long way. With the right technology, the tedious nature of cutting together consumer feedback videos has been made so easy it takes moments to create videos that influence decisions in the boardroom.

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