For years, Visa has been a key partner for small businesses who want to offer fast, frictionless payment solutions. Along the way, Visa has accumulated considerable insight into the obstacles facing small business owners, and the highs and lows of growing a business. SMB owners face the challenge of accessing reliable, trustworthy resources to help them get through the critical first five years (during which roughly half of small businesses fail). To share experiences and insight, Visa tasked BBD with creating a series of videos featuring real business owners across Europe. These videos were hosted on the Visa Innovation Centre and distributed across social media.
The process began with Visa identifying a set of small business personas. Each video had to be shot in a modular way so that sections could be split and reviewed according to people’s needs.
A human objective
While Visa is not often the first port of call when starting a small business, owners can benefit from the insight and experience Visa gathers with every transaction. However, these videos were not intended to showcase payment solutions offered by Visa. Instead, the aim was to use the connection every small business has with the Visa network to identify the more interesting, relatable human stories taking place.
Leverage insight
Through its Small Business initiative, Visa has invested heavily into research and resources for SMBs. A sample of 6 small businesses from Europe would be sufficient to match the key messaging Visa were looking to promote.
Our film crew unleashed
We created a fixed set of questions that we would ask each subject, covering challenges, solutions and ambitions. We then identified 6 individual small businesses that would give us a cross-section of experiences and environments. Shooting took place over 2 months in the UK, France and Poland, interviewing food service, coffee shop, architecture, PR, carpentry and consumable goods small businesses in turn. By using a small video production team and shooting each subject in their environment, we were able to produce engaging, human content that revealed the passion behind each story.