Video Brochures Australia: When Are They Worth Sending?

A video brochure is a printed brochure with a screen built into the cover. Open it and the video plays straight away, with no app, no QR code and no link to click. Ridge builds them A5 hard-back with a 7 inch screen, at a minimum order of 50, with cover artwork included. They exist to reach people who delete your email.

What is a video brochure?

Physically it is a hard-back card folder, roughly A5, with a screen set into the inside face and a battery behind it. Playback starts when the cover is opened and stops when it is shut. The standard Ridge unit carries a 7 inch screen, 200Mb of memory and a USB cable that does two jobs: recharge the unit, and swap the video for a new one later.

The cover is printed with artwork designed to your brand, and at Ridge that design sits inside the unit price rather than being billed on top. Direct mail people call this lumpy mail. An envelope with something solid in it does not get filed with the rest of the post.

Sizes vary, and the size you pick changes both the unit cost and the postage. There is a premium hard case, a lighter CD style soft case, and a business card size unit built for volume. Compare the three video brochure sizes if you are working out which one suits the run you have in mind.

What does a video brochure cost in Australia?

Ridge quotes video brochures per unit, at a minimum order of 50. They are made to order, so the figure moves with the size of the unit and the size of the run, which is why it is quoted fresh each time rather than read off a rate card. Ridge has run orders of 50, and once 100 for a single client. Anything larger goes back to the supplier for a fresh quote rather than being promised off a rate card.

The video is quoted separately from the hardware, and how it is quoted depends on what you are sending. One video that goes on every unit is a single production job. A different video for each recipient is priced per unit, because each one is scripted, filmed, signed off and loaded individually. Personalised videos are quoted per unit on that basis.

So a 50 unit run carrying one shared video and a 50 unit run carrying 50 personalised videos are not the same product, and they should never be compared on the hardware price alone.

When is a video brochure worth sending?

It is worth sending when the person you want will not open an email from you, and the deal behind that person is big enough to carry the cost of the unit. That is the whole test. Ridge uses them for cold outreach into a named target list, for reconnecting with contacts who went quiet, and for referral partner campaigns where you need the partner to actually watch the explanation rather than skim it.

It is the wrong tool for a broad list. Priced per unit, 500 names is not a mailout, it is a budget. A video brochure is a precision instrument aimed at a list short enough to write out by hand, and it only earns its cost if you know every name on it. If you are working out where physical outreach sits alongside everything else you publish, the video strategy guide maps the channels against each other.

Ridge's own best result came from a single unit. Chris Schwager, Ridge Films Founder & CEO, sent a cold video brochure to a financial planning CEO he had never met, then followed it with a phone call. The CEO picked up, they met, and thirty thousand dollars of business closed. One brochure, one call.

What do you put on the screen?

Something short, and something specific to them. The three rules Chris teaches in the Video Confidence Collective coaching sessions cover most of it: tell them up front how long they are in for, personalise the generic corporate video, and always follow up.

Telling them the running time matters more than it sounds. "This is two minutes" is permission to keep watching. Without it the viewer is guessing how long they are committed for, and the safest guess is to close the cover.

Personalising sounds like the expensive part, and usually it is not. One Ridge client, a mortgage broker, recorded 50 personalised videos of about 40 seconds each in a single sitting: 36 minutes, start to finish. The method is a fixed script with one line that changes, read off a teleprompter so the eyeline never drops to a page. If you are recording a batch like that, getting your script in without formatting problems and knowing how to drive the teleprompter are the two things that decide whether the batch takes 36 minutes or a whole afternoon.

Why do video brochure campaigns fail?

Because nobody rings. The unit gets designed, the video gets filmed, the box gets posted, and the campaign is treated as finished at the letterbox. It is not. Chris puts it plainly: "If you don't follow this up, you are wasting your money."

The brochure's job is to make the follow-up call a warm one. It buys you a reason to ring and a fair chance of being remembered when you do. Nothing about the hardware closes anything on its own. Plan the call before you order the units, decide who is making it, and split the list if one person cannot get through 50 names properly. On a real campaign that is the difference between a mailout and a pipeline.

Frequently asked questions

What is a video brochure?

A video brochure is a printed brochure with a screen built into the cover. The video plays as soon as the brochure is opened, with no app, link or QR code. The standard Ridge unit is A5 hard-back with a 7 inch screen, 200Mb of memory and a USB cable for recharging the unit and updating the video.

How much does a video brochure cost in Australia?

Ridge quotes video brochures per unit, at a minimum order of 50, with cover artwork designed to your brand included. Units are made to order, so the figure moves with the size of the unit and the size of the run, and it is quoted fresh rather than read off a rate card. The video is quoted separately from the hardware.

Do you have to order video brochures in bulk?

There is a minimum order of 50 units, because they are manufactured to order rather than held in stock. Ridge has run orders of 50 and of 100. Anything above that needs a fresh supplier quote rather than an assumed volume discount.

What sizes do video brochures come in?

Three formats. A premium hard case unit, a lighter CD style soft case, and a business card size unit for higher volume distribution. The premium unit suits a small, high value list. The smaller two are cheaper to produce and cheaper to post.

Can each brochure play a different video?

Yes. Personalised videos are priced per unit, because each one is scripted, filmed, signed off and loaded separately. It is faster than it sounds. One Ridge client recorded 50 personalised videos of about 40 seconds each in 36 minutes, using a fixed script with one line changed for each recipient.

Working out whether it is worth it

The honest answer depends on your list, not on the brochure. If you can name the 50 people who would change your year, a video brochure is one of the few things that reliably gets in front of them. If you cannot, the money is usually better spent on video you can send every week. Book a call with Chris and work out which one you are.