Following up on yesterday's post discussing how lawyers and law firms can use YouTube and online videos in general as a marketing tool, we've decided to periodically review videos posted to YouTube by law firms and individual attorneys and provide some feedback and pointers.
Our first "contestant" is a DLA Piper video we found when we plugged the phrase "law firm" into the search box at YouTube (see embedded video below at the bottom of the post). The video caught our eye since DLA Piper is the second largest law firm in the world. So we were hoping for a treat.
It's a short (1:29) video featuring an unnamed partner from the Silicon Valley office of DLA Piper (whom our resident Sherlock Holmes surmises is Brad Rock - towards the end of the clip, the speaker says his first name is "Brad" and we then matched up the partner in the video with what appears to be his photo on the DLA Piper website). Brad is introducing a meeting of the Silicon Valley New Technology Meetup group, which DLA Piper is hosting.
Unfortunately, we would have to say this video is a wasted opportunity for DLA Piper to promote itself to the Silicon Valley startup community. Brad says that DLA Piper is the second largest law firm in the world, but from the quality and staging of the video you'd never know it. We don't know who uploaded this video to YouTube, but there's no question that DLA Piper should have made sure that any video added to YouTube about the firm was professionally done and cast the firm in the best light. After all, this is a video where a senior partner at the world's second largest law firm is introducing a meeting for startups in Silicon Valley - the hub of high tech innovation. If DLA Piper is hoping to promote itself to such a tech savvy community, the quality of its YouTube videos should match.
A couple of quick pointers. The video cuts in somewhere at the beginning of Brad's comments - no introduction so you don't know who this guy is other than what he shares during his remarks. Brad comes across as sincere and helpful, but there is no staging - seems like Brad is speaking from some corner of the room; he should be at the podium (and who is that guy in the background he turns to? could be the founder of the next YouTube - just the kind of client that DLA Piper is hoping to attract at these meetings - but we never find out).
Halfway through the clip the URL for DLA Piper's website homepage - www.dlapiper.com - flashes across the screen. But anyone who jumps to the DLA Piper homepage wouldn't know where to start looking for information about DLA's services for startups. Instead, the link flashed on the screen should have jumped to the page on DLA's site devoted to its "emerging growth and venture capital" practice: http://www.dlapiper.com/us/services/detail.aspx?service=40 (DLA Piper could have registered a domain like "DLA-Startups.com" to redirect to this section of the site and added that to the video).
Brad also makes reference to a DLA Piper sideline called Venture Pipeline through which the firm helps startups find venture capital. Great service to promote to Silicon Valley startups, but it isn't highlighted effectively in the video. Here's where to learn more about it:
http://www.venturepipeline.com/ - why wasn't this URL flashed across the screen?
We'll stop here. As we said in yesterday's post, law firms seeking to attract new clients with online video need to invest in professional video production. Poorly done videos that look cheap and amateurish hurt a firm's brand. Remember - on YouTube, it's only the whole world that is watching.
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