Many thanks to Peter Coyle, Senior Partner at Coyle White Devine, for both choosing Take One to work with and for kindly giving us his views on the experience:

PETER: My name is Peter Coyle and I’m a solicitor and the senior partner at Coyle White Devine,a firm of solicitors in Amersham and with an office in London as well.

INT: Now solicitors, lawyers, they’re not the most obvious candidates for using video to promote themselves. What made you decide to use video?

PETER: At the time, I hadn’t heard of other solicitors using video as a means of publicising themselves and their services, so I thought it was a way of looking a little bit different as a firm of solicitors, and I thought that presenting a moving image showing our faces, who we are, was a better way of making it more real life, as opposed to brochures or distributing flyers as we would ordinarily have done. Of course, since then, others have followed our lead!

INT: How did Take One help you to achieve that?

PETER: Take One talked to us about what we wanted to achieve with video; they took us away for half a day’s filming, put us at our ease and produced within a short space of time a video that was perfect for our needs. They gave us the perfect end product which allowed prospective clients to see why we are passionate about what we do and why we are different from the competition. It’s now presented to the world on our web site.

INT: What response or feedback have you had?

PETER: The video has worked brilliantly, we’ve had some very positive feedback from those who’ve watched it on our website, and we’ve had new work as a result too, some great pieces of work – one client came to us cold, he was a marketing director of a major corporate and he chose Coyle White Devine specifically because he liked the video so much on our website.

INT What other sorts of businesses could benefit from using video?

PETER: I don’t think there’s a business that wouldn’t benefit from video; any business is a real life organisation and actually presenting a real life situation in film seems to me to be the best way of presenting what you actually do. And I have to say that Take One were brilliant, they really got to the hub of who we are both as a business and as individuals, the skills they used to help us put across our value proposition were invaluable.

INT: Cost effective?

PETER: It was the best bit of money spent from our marketing budget last year! It was very cost effective, particularly when you put it on to your website – the only cost is actually producing the film, from then on in it’s cost us nothing yet it’s there every day 24/7 and we’re getting feedback virtually every day from our clients and prospective clients. Plus we’ve also done more video now to use as video newsletters highlighting specific points of interest with potential clients, and at seminars and events where not all the staff can be there.

INT: What are Take One like to work with?

PETER: Take One were a pleasure to work with. Being in front of a camera is a bit daunting when you first do it but they put us all at our ease and it actually ended up being a very enjoyable day. They were lovely people to work with and I would happily work with them again, and again – and have!

INT: What would you say to someone contemplating video for their business promotion?

PETER: If somebody had a choice between distributing leaflets or making a video, there is only one choice to make in my view – it’s making a video and presenting your business to the world so that they can see you, they can see what you’re doing first hand rather than just reading about it on a glossy brochure. The video is there for as along as you want it to be, it’s your shop window and with people so often researching services and products on line before they buy these days, in my opinion video has got to be in your marketing mix.

INT: What difference has having the video made to your business?

PETER: I think it’s made a crucial difference to our business. It makes us present differently to other solicitors; often clients are considering coming to talk to us about sensitive subjects so giving them an opportunity to ‘virtually’ met us before they call is a real benefit. In fact, we had one client come to us who had scoured the internet and looked at 23 or 30 different firms in the region and had chosen to instruct us specifically because of the video on the website which he said he hadn’t seen anywhere else.

If you'd like to exlpore ways of using video for your own business, do get in touch and we'll arrange a free discovery session to highlight any opportunities that would be suited to you and your company's ethos.