Dear Higher Ed, This Is Why Your In-House Videographer Left
Higher ed has an in-house video content creation problem, and as enrollment declines and demands for more and more video content from all sides increase, it’s only getting worse.
A lot of salaried videographers are not happy in their roles at best, and resentful at worst for many reasons we’ll get into below.
It’s up to leadership of creative teams to understand what is causing a high level of overwhelm, lack of fulfillment, drained creative energy, and high turnover among in-house videographers at many colleges and universities in order to stem the tide.
Let’s get into it.
1. The cost of living has skyrocketed in the last few years, and the salary you think is appropriate for such an important role is stuck in 2012.
In 2020 the amount of money my family of 4 spent on groceries and household items (toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.) was $800 per month.
Today it’s around $1600 per month.
Across the board, the increased cost of living has far outpaced the average salary range such that a $50,000 salary feels like a $30,000 salary did 5 years ago.
The job postings coming out for some of these full time in-house videographer positions at colleges are asking for a king’s feast on a peasant’s budget.
The job of concepting, producing, directing, and editing videos, plus managing other content creators like interns or student content creators, interfacing with internal campus partners and fulfilling all their orders, managing a footage library, and and and… should come with at least a $75,000/year price tag, not $45,000.
2. They saw the potential your videos could have on the growth of the institution, but you squandered their talent following the president around with a camera.
I spoke to a marketing director at a sub-school of a large university in the US who used to have her own videographer. The central marketing team decided to centralize all the marketing efforts, took her videographer, and replaced him with a $20,000 budget which was intended to cover any freelancers she’d need to hire for the entire year.
That videographer ended up being reduced to following the president around to non-mission-critical speaking engagements, and doing talking head comms videos that made zero impact on enrollment or brand awareness.
Many videographers working in-house feel like they’re just fulfilling orders and doing busy work that is not moving the needle forward, and this is not only a problem with morale, but a waste of precious budget.
3. They told you they were overwhelmed with busy-work requests from all departments, and you didn't listen.
Making videos is a time-consuming and tedious job. There’s no such thing as a “just do this real quick” type of project. Your videographer has to prep, schedule filming with stakeholders, set up the equipment, film the thing, tear down the equipment, back up the footage, and that’s all before the tedious job of looking for the perfect song, editing, exporting, and reviewing the video for glitches.
When requests like this are coming in from all departments who want something “just real quick” the workload gets out of control quickly.
Leadership needs to have a better understanding of the time it takes to make one video, and prioritize requests accordingly. When this doesn’t happen, eventually that videographer will seek greener pastures.
4. They wanted project leads to slow down and think through the messaging of their video requests, and what they wanted the results of this video to be, but you told them to just get it done.
Any creative that resists being a short-order cook doing random acts of creation is one you want to keep around. It means they don’t want their role to be an expense in the marketing budget, but one that gets a return on your investment. They want their work to have an impact.
Sometimes you do just need to get things done in order to fulfill a time-sensitive request here and there, or keep some stakeholder happy. But a “ready, fire, aim” approach to video marketing is a huge waste of resources, and quickly drains creative energy.
5. They wanted to be involved in the creative planning of projects from the beginning, but you thought you knew best and handed them a crappy idea to execute that they knew wasn't going to resonate one bit with prospective students.
A marketing director wouldn’t want the CMO to hire them and then tell them what campaigns to execute and how to execute them without their input. It would reduce their job to just pushing buttons, and why would anyone stick around for that?
In the same way, your videographer hopefully has a grasp on what makes for engaging video content. When leadership thinks they know best and reduces their role to just pointing the camera at boring stuff and hitting record, they’re going to leave to find a job where their expertise is valued.
6. You made everything an uphill battle. The path of least resistance was to leave.
Higher ed is no stranger to bureaucracy, but bureaucracy is the enemy of fresh engaging content. If the process for doing impacful video work requires a business case for every new idea that needs to be run up the chain of command before it’s inevitably shot down, eventually that person will get tired of fighting for common sense creative decisions.
If you’re going to hire an in-house videographer at your college or university, you need to create a culture for them to thrive, in order for your video strategy to thrive.
You might think that by hiring in-house you’re saving money.
But if what is described above represents the culture at your college or university, you might be a better candidate for outsourcing video production to an outside vendor.
With the amount of budget waste that occurs from pigeonholing an in-house videographer into being a short-order cook and stifling their talent, the process of working with an outside vendor, where every deliverable has a tangible price tag associated with it, might actually force more strategic decision making.
In either case, higher ed needs to do better and put higher value and respect on the role of an in-house videographer.
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