Stop Wasting Your Video Budget on the Wrong Production Company
If you need to hire a production company for government video work, stop overthinking it and start asking better questions. Most departments get this wrong not because they don't care, but because they're focused on the wrong things.
Price. Tick boxes. Lowest quote. Done.
That's not a communication strategy. That's just procurement on autopilot.
Your Audience Doesn't Care About Your Budget Process
Here's what nobody says out loud in government communications meetings. The citizens watching your video don't care how many quotes you got. They don't care what your SCM process looks like. They care whether the video actually helps them understand what they need to do.
And right now, most government video content is not doing that job well enough.
South Africa has one of the most diverse audiences on the planet. You're trying to reach people across eleven official languages, across urban and rural settings, across generations with completely different media habits. A 45-year-old in a rural KwaZulu-Natal community consumes information very differently from a 25-year-old in Rosebank. Both of them are your audience. Both of them deserve communication that actually works.
When you hire a production company that doesn't understand this, you get a video that looks fine in a boardroom and does nothing in the real world.
Live Action and Animation Are Not Interchangeable
This is where a lot of government video projects go sideways. Someone decides the department needs a video. A production company is appointed. And then, way too late in the process, someone asks whether it should be live action or animated.
That question should come first. Because the format shapes everything else.
Live action works when you want to build trust. Real people on screen create a connection that animation can't replicate. If your department wants citizens to feel seen and heard, putting real South Africans in front of the camera is one of the most powerful things you can do. A real face carries weight. A real location carries context. Animation can't do that.
But animation is unbeatable when the content is complex. If you're explaining a multi-step government process, a policy with a lot of conditions, or a system that requires the viewer to follow a sequence of steps, animation gives you total control. You can show exactly what you want, in exactly the right order, without the logistical headache of a live shoot. And when the policy changes next year, you update the animation. You don't reshoot everything.
A lot of departments now mix both. A real interview with a department head, combined with animated graphics that explain the detail. It works. It's practical. And when it's done by a production company that knows what they're doing, it lands well with audiences.
Compliance Is Not Optional
Let's be direct about something. When you hire a production company for government work in South Africa, compliance is not a nice-to-have. It's the entry requirement.
The production company must be registered on the Central Supplier Database. They need a valid BBBEE certificate or affidavit. They need to understand how the RFQ and RFP processes work and be able to operate within those frameworks without holding up your project.
A company that's done government work before will have all of this sorted. A company that hasn't will cause delays at exactly the wrong moment. Ask for their CSD supplier number before you go any further. It's a thirty-second check that saves weeks of admin.
BBBEE compliance also matters beyond the paperwork. South Africa's creative industry has incredible talent, and working with transformation-aligned suppliers puts your budget to work in a way that benefits the broader economy. That's good for your department and good for the sector.
Your Brief Is the Real Product
Here's the truth that most government communicators don't want to hear. The brief you write before you hire a production company matters more than the production company itself.
A tight brief produces good proposals. Good proposals make it easier to choose the right partner. And the right partner, working from a clear brief, produces a video that actually does something useful in the world.
Your brief needs to answer these questions clearly. Who is watching this video? What do you want them to do after they watch it? Where will it be shown? How many people need to approve the script and at what stages? What's the deadline and what's the real budget?
If you can't answer those questions before you approach a production company, you're not ready to commission a video yet.
The Only Metric That Actually Matters
Government communicators spend a lot of time worrying about production quality. Camera specs, editing software, colour grading. Those things matter, but they're not the point.
The point is whether the video reaches people. Whether it changes what they do. Whether it makes a complicated thing feel simple. Whether a citizen in a small town watches it and understands, for the first time, exactly how to access the service your department provides.
That's what good video does. And that's exactly what you should be demanding when you hire a production company. Not just a finished file. Actual impact. Hold your production partner to that standard from day one, and you'll spend your budget on something that genuinely matters.
