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Happy holidays to you and your loved ones, from the video production elves at OurTown Productions.

Meet Russ Swallow. He owns BenefitsLab, and he sells all things insurance. He’s been at it a long time and one of his major assets is his experience. So how to communicate this?

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Russ decided to brand himself as “The 3,700-Year-Old Man.” By creating this character, Russ communicates not just vast experience, but also humor. Let’s face it - insurance is dry enough without having to endure a humorless insurance guy. He also establishes his ability to get rid of jargon and just talk.  (Is there any jargon as boring as insurance jargon?)

Russ decided that the best way to get these points across - that he’s got lots of experience, that he’s got a sense of humor and that he’ll give you straight talk, no bull - was to just tell his story.  Because he wanted the video to be fairly small on his webpage, we shot him in a tight close-up. Because Russ is good at telling his story, we didn’t use a teleprompter. We shot against a green screen so we had choice of background, and Russ chose blue to coordinate with his website.

His video makes an immediate connection. People who visit his website feel like there’s a person behind BenefitsLab, not just an impersonal corporation. They get all the ways his company is different.  And in the insurance business, as in any business, if visitors to your website don’t feel an immediate connection that engages them and pulls them in, and they don’t get how your business is different, they don’t stay long enough to become your customers.