Tom Gutteridge brings humour to 'dry' videos
Nov 10 2010 by John Hill, The Journal
THE world of corporate videos would appear to be a little dry for the man behind shows such as Robot Wars.
However, North East-based TV producer Tom Gutteridge found himself tinkering with the image of BIllingham’s Pearson-Harper after giving a speech to a room full of chief executives.
The founder of production company Mentorn, and former FreemantleMedia North America CEO, said: “I was talking to a chief executive association and they asked why it was not possible to bring companies like ours in to improve the standard of their corporate videos, and I said it was because we were TV producers and we’d never been asked.
“The next day, I got a call from Pearson-Harper’s marketing and finance director, Alex Hayward, saying she would really like to hire me as a consultant to help them create a video that really says what the company does so they could use it as a marketing tool.
“I said I wouldn’t be a consultant but would consider making the film if we could get a decent budget.”
The video featured a script by producer Patrick Low and a presenting role from Byker Grove and Coronation Street actor Daymon Britton. Standing Stone focused on humour to help demystify the role of Pearson-Harper.
The engineering information management specialist recently won a £6.25m contract to assist Chevron in its Gorgon gas project off Western Australia, but has experienced problems making its complex work easy for clients to understand. Pearson-Harper also employed Newcastle’s Creative Image to overhaul its website.
Pearson-Harper’s Alex Hayward said: “Within a few days of it being shown to our clients, we were already getting inquiries for services so, within a few days, it had paid for itself.
“We’ve seen applications for our recruitment campaigns go through the roof, so it’s just done everything we wanted it to do and more.”
Standing Stone has since been contacted through Pearson-Harper by a multi-national client that wants the company to do an online campaign.
Standing Stone is currently working on two TV projects with American networks, but Gutteridge has admitted he would be interested in doing more corporate video work if the right project appeared.
He said: “I think we’re going to do some more of these. This video has been so successful within about three weeks.
“Our video was largely based around humour, putting lateral thinking into what’s normally a pretty serious corporate environment. We’d target any company that wants to be perceived as different from the rest.”
