If you are running for a public office or need to endorse a specific candidate, you will always need to make a political campaign video.
In this age of video marketing, every single political candidate needs an introductory video to announce their election campaign to their voters, as a written statement alone no longer serves this purpose well.
Whether you are running for a local office or a presidential election, here is your complete guide on how to make a political campaign video.
How to Make a Political Campaign Video?
Here is your step-by-step guide to making a compelling political campaign video that converts.
Research About your Targeted Audience
In any election campaign, there are a handful of talking narratives that are important to voters. And if you are not addressing the needed talking points, your campaign video will make little difference.
List down all the important issues that are at play during your elections. This list of issues will come in handy during your video-making process. The issues which are more important to your voters should be discussed more thoroughly in the campaign video.
See this latest re-election announcement video of Joe Biden.
He touched on various issues, including:
- Gun Laws
- Books getting banned
- Women’s Right to Abortion
- And MAGA Threat
You see, all of these issues will be relevant when voters go to the polls in 2024. That is why he decided to include them in his political campaign video, as they are dear to voters.
Write a convincing Script
Once you have the research in the raw form, it’s time to convert that research into words.
Scripts are the backbone of any video campaign. You have to have a convincing script that could discuss the pain points of voters well and portray you as the only person who is interested in saving the voters.
Script distinguishes a good political campaign video from a bad one.
Obviously, other factors do play a role, but if you are announcing your candidacy with a weak script, you are already one step behind.
Until or unless you are a persuasive writer yourself, hiring a compelling copywriter to write your political campaign script should be a no-brainer.
But if you are writing it yourself, always take care that you are:
- Taking care of your audience
- Explaining your message clearly
- Having a proper structure in the script
- Not leaving any potential exploitation point for your opposition.
- Using compelling words in your message.
Length of the Political Campaign Video
If you look at the 2020 campaign video of Joe Biden, it was 3 minutes and 29 seconds long. And his reelection video of the 2024 elections is just 3 minutes and 4 seconds long. But obviously, he is one famous politician who is already known by many. So he didn’t have any need to introduce himself to voters in detail.
Now, here is the catch. If you are new to politics and people don’t know you too much, it is a great idea to introduce yourself to others. You have to tell people what you have done in your public service career or how you are different from others. How can you solve voters’ problems?
Look at this campaign video of Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the 2018 elections. While she is one famous lady now, she was not relatively unknown in 2018, so she extensively spoke about her achievements and background in that campaign video.
Resultantly, the video went viral, which also helped her in winning the elections by knowing a career Democrat.
This means if you are a political newbie, you can easily take thirty additional seconds to introduce yourself in the video.
If you are recording your message in English, you should aim for 120–150 Words Per Minute of video.
And 2 minutes and 30 seconds of video is a good length for a political campaign video. But you must not force your video to get bigger. If you are running a small election race, even a 1 and a half minute of video will do fine.
Different Approaches of Making a Political Campaign Video
Usually, there are two approaches that politicians follow while making their campaign announcement videos.
Talking Head Video
In a talking head video, you directly talk to the camera and speak everything in it.
Visual Essay
A visual essay video is a type of video that combines visual elements with written or spoken commentary to create an engaging and informative piece of content. Visual essay videos are often used as a tool for storytelling, education, and advocacy.
Combination of Both
In this video, you have the visual essay going on but at some point you also speak while seeing directly in camera.
After seeing the best practices of political campaign video making, it is safe to say that political campaigns which make a combination of visual essays and talking head videos have the most compelling message. Even in both Biden’s and AOC’s videos above, you can see that they are using a combination of both in their election campaign video.
Shooting Your Video
When you have all the things done, it’s time to make the campaign video. If you have your production team, you have half the problem solved. But if you are on your own, no problem; we have complete guidelines for you.
Here are some of the tips while recording the video.
- Find a quiet place where there is no background noise.
- Suppose you have a professional recording camera; it’s a good thing. Otherwise, it’s always advisable to have one as it is one time investment and will be beneficial to shoot campaign related conetnt throughout your journey to public office. Here is our recommendation for the best campaign video shooting camera.
- But if you can’t afford to have a camera right away, you can also record it from your mobile phone (provided it has a good camera result).
- Put the camera/mobile phone on the tripod stand. Having a tripod stand is also recommended since it keeps your video stable.
- Have a professional dress that can resonate with your personality, and that does not look informal at all.
- Have compelling visuals which really reflect what you are talking about in the background.
- Try to adopt a conversational speaking tone.
- Don’t narrate the obvious things. It can give a bad impression of you.
- Avoid making too-long videos. It can get boring. The attention span of the public is decreasing over time, so take care of that.
- Practice before shooting. This will help you deliver your message confidently and without any mistake.
- Don’t be nervous at all. We know that it is your big moment, but calm down, this video will go places, and a bit of nervousness can be dangerous.
- Don’t hesitate to take a reshoot. People who don’t have too much practice shooting in front of the camera may not make a perfect video in the first go, and that is completely normal.
Once you have the video, now is the time to edit it. Editing is such an important aspect of video making that you must not take it lightly.
Whether you are editing it yourself or have a professional editor, always ensure that:
- You are using the proper transition inbetween scenes
- There is no background noise or disruption at all.
- Have copyright-free light music in the background. (Don’t overdo the music, as it can affect the original messaging).
Final Words
Once your political campaign video is complete, distribute it through your website, social media channels, and particularly YouTube to reach as many potential supporters as possible. Remember to monitor engagement and feedback to measure the video’s impact and improve future content strategies. A well-made political campaign video can be a powerful tool in winning the hearts and minds of your constituents.
