Faces You Can Trust in Business

Does your trust in business people go up once you know what they look like?

We’ve just refreshed our video library here at Cornerstone International Group. It’s been a while but will become a frequent occurrence.

Video in marketing is now ubiquitous. According to various studies:

• Over 75% of global internet traffic is video based
• 87% of businesses use video as a marketing tool
• 50% of companies in North America and Europe will produce videos this year to support brand awareness.
• 96% of people prefer watching a video to learn more about a product or service

These statistics are heavily oriented towards consumer marketing, but they include the rapid use of video for all business communication purposes.

We’re in what’s called the B2B sector of commerce. As an executive recruiter and leadership developer, our customers are other businesses, so our focus is business-to-business.

The B2B sector, as a generalization, has been slower than B2C to adopt digital technology in communications. What we market is not usually brightly colored, visually attractive, makes music, or moves intriguingly.

Our business rationale is deliberative, complex and very customized. Not an argument that benefits from packaging sound and motion. Or so you would think.

We produced six marketing videos earlier this year. We took the occasion of our annual global conference to interview 22 members from offices in 20 countries around the world.   We had a lot of fun doing it and learned some unexpected things.

Here is Unexpected Learning #1.

Cornerstone International Group is among the global leaders in executive recruiting.  Our members likely speak over 30 languages, which is an interesting statistic made more interesting when you see and hear them discussing their work in their native tongue.  If you watch this video, you’ll see and hear members talking in Swedish, Portuguese, Flemish, Spanish and German as well as English — (don’t worry, there are sub-titles).

For the first time in our 30 years, we had finally put a face to some of the most skilled and experienced professionals in executive recruiting, demonstrating at the same time the truly global reach of our services.

In the process, we made use of one of the basic attractions of digital media, visual identity. A majority of participants in social media post their photo because people want to know what you look like. It bonds them just that tiny bit closer.

Same with business video if we go back to trust in business. Benefits are not restricted to product demos or leadership exhortations. Video puts a human face on the organization, as we just did. We’re very diverse, spread all over the planet, but we share common beliefs and represent to our customers a common cause. It’s possible that people in the marketplace might warm to those attributes more once they’ve met our team — even on video.

So, if you are researching search firms or leadership development, check us out on our global website or just hit play on the video up above. You will not only learn important little factoids about how we can be of help to you, you will also see we’re a pretty likeable bunch to partner up with.

Add a comment here after you’ve checked out the video.