Corporate Video Production for Trade Quote App

Late last year an old friend and client from Mackay contacted me about a new product he was developing.

It is called Trade Quote App and it’s a smartphone application for people in the building industry to create professional-looking quotes for customers, on the spot, right there at the job.

Apparently in the building trade, quoting is quite a tedious task, often taking many hours and done by tradies late into the evening after working all day. Trade Quote is designed to save tradies heaps of time, plus provide a professional quote for customers on the spot.

So when Andrew got in touch, he said he needed a corporate video to promote the app. He gave me a rundown on what it does and how it solves these issues for tradies. There wasn’t a lot more creative direction, so the brief was very open.

I then worked in conjunction with Mitchel from iApps on how we would best create some killer ads for Trade Quote.

We decided to go with humour, simplicity plus something unexpected.

Humour is always a great way to convey a message, and it’s lots of fun to create. Simplicity arose from having a limited budget, resources and time constraints. Something unexpected in an ad can really catch people’s attention and make it memorable. The other thing was to create a format that could provide a common foundation for a number of different ads to be shot at the same time.

So our thought process was something along the lines of this – Trade quote saves you time, so you have more time to do what you love. Most people would assume that for tradies this means fishing, football, drinking, or other such blokey pastimes. So that’s when we decided to introduce the unexpected. Take the ad somewhere to hopefully achieve the humour, simplicity and unexpectedness we were looking for. Importantly, it had to be something we felt tradies would appreciate and connect with.

We had two days in Mackay to shoot all the video footage, plus a bunch of photography stills for promotional work. We had 3 ads in mind, all following a similar format, but obviously needing distinctly different footage.

To cut a long story short, we had a couple of really big days but shot it all in the time we had available.

A big shout out to Mitchel who then cut the footage into the final ads that you see here.

I’m very pleased with how these corporate videos came together and they’re a great way to start what could be lots more as Trade Quote evolves. I think this app has amazing potential and will make life a lot easier for many tradies out there. It might even improve some ballet, knitting or florist skills too 🙂

The first ad is at the top of the blog, whilst the other two are below:

Ad number 2

Ad number 3

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6 Comments

Rod Harvey on May 13, 2016 at 8:14 am

Brilliant videos Dean! Love the humour to sell the product. The ballerina’s our favourite…so unexpected and eye catching. Hope it goes well for them.

dean whitling on May 15, 2016 at 6:40 am

Thanks Rod, I think that’s my favourite too. It was a lot of fun to shoot.

Lyndy Summerhaze on May 16, 2016 at 11:14 am

Brilliant ads! Absolutely hilarious and engaging Dean. My fave is the sock knitting.

dean whitling on May 18, 2016 at 8:39 am

Thanks for commenting Lyndy, you should have seen the place we used for the sock knitting. It was the home of a lovely old couple and it couldn’t have been more perfect

Richard S on January 25, 2017 at 4:19 am

I think that a cut-and-dry reality that many new photographers do not fully comprehend is just how challenging it can be to get into the field. Not only do you have to make the right contacts and secure your first couple of real gigs, but it also takes a fair amount of an investment to first buy all of the stuff you’ll need to be able to ensure you get detailed pictures. Having a good camera is not going to be enough going to cut it: you will also need to buy a variety of lenses, flashes, backup equipment, and plenty of additional batteries and storage media to be ready for nearly any situation. Plus, expect to wind up investing in external hard drives to keep your pictures on. This can be a lot of cash to spend before you actually get your photography business up and going. Of course you can generally rent equipment the first few times, and this can help for a little while, but if you’re really serious about becoming a professional photographer – especially photographing weddings and other important events – you are going to have to make a real investment eventually.

dean whitling on April 4, 2017 at 4:38 pm

The truth about doing photography for a living is that photography is only a small part of what you actually do. Your success in the other areas of business will determine your overall sucess and longevity i.e. marketing, accounting, cashflow, IT, staff, etc etc

Rod Harvey on May 13, 2016 at 8:14 am

Brilliant videos Dean! Love the humour to sell the product. The ballerina’s our favourite…so unexpected and eye catching. Hope it goes well for them.
- dean whitling on May 15, 2016 at 6:40 am
  
  Thanks Rod, I think that’s my favourite too. It was a lot of fun to shoot.
Lyndy Summerhaze on May 16, 2016 at 11:14 am

Brilliant ads! Absolutely hilarious and engaging Dean. My fave is the sock knitting.
- dean whitling on May 18, 2016 at 8:39 am
  
  Thanks for commenting Lyndy, you should have seen the place we used for the sock knitting. It was the home of a lovely old couple and it couldn’t have been more perfect
Richard S on January 25, 2017 at 4:19 am

I think that a cut-and-dry reality that many new photographers do not fully comprehend is just how challenging it can be to get into the field. Not only do you have to make the right contacts and secure your first couple of real gigs, but it also takes a fair amount of an investment to first buy all of the stuff you’ll need to be able to ensure you get detailed pictures. Having a good camera is not going to be enough going to cut it: you will also need to buy a variety of lenses, flashes, backup equipment, and plenty of additional batteries and storage media to be ready for nearly any situation. Plus, expect to wind up investing in external hard drives to keep your pictures on. This can be a lot of cash to spend before you actually get your photography business up and going. Of course you can generally rent equipment the first few times, and this can help for a little while, but if you’re really serious about becoming a professional photographer – especially photographing weddings and other important events – you are going to have to make a real investment eventually.
- dean whitling on April 4, 2017 at 4:38 pm
  
  The truth about doing photography for a living is that photography is only a small part of what you actually do. Your success in the other areas of business will determine your overall sucess and longevity i.e. marketing, accounting, cashflow, IT, staff, etc etc