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The Importance of Video

Let's talk about video not just viral videos because that's not gonna work for everyone but the importance on the art of communicating effectively through video. So we're gonna have chris johnson who's, the who's, the founder and one of the partners at simply film, which is a great video company that I use and then brendon is going to come back out a cz well round of applause as they come in waves start by showing some of the videos so sure was so this is the book trailers for may full of liars, cheats and charlotte ins who want only one thing. We turn up your attention page views and publicity control what you think you know the stories on the internet to the news on the system is completely defenseless. Manipulators like me spread lies and generate fake outrage. If you were interested in media manipulation here's one way start small. Send your story to a tiny personal blawg from an alias email they get an exclusive, you get an outlet. He then take that exclusive link and send another...

fake email to an even larger site like links in a chain you move your story larger and more influential sites region like build momentum with drink until your story becomes a story this's way really news comes this's remaining and it's up to you using my name is ryan quality trust me, I'm lying. So that was my book trailer? Um it came out about a month before my book came out. I think it's it's gone on to do something like one hundred and thirty thousand views just on youtube alone. It's obviously been seen on shows and they've they played the audio it when I've been on radio it's been tweeted thousands of times is probably the single most of effective driver of sales from my book uh, more important than any other direct form of media period. And then so because of that I realized that there was something to this this book trailer business, but not in the way that most people were doing book trailer. So I had simply film do one from one of my clients, which is robert greene, who wrote the forty eight laws of power this this year you came out of a book called mastery, which sort of has an antiviral message in the sense that the cause of the book is like you have to do a lot of hard work and there's no shortcuts on dh that book ended up debuting at number one on the new york times bestseller list. I think partly because of this video passed a great power is simple it's the path followed by all master's past and present, from renaissance artists to the entrepreneurs of silicon valley now from robert greene bestselling and internationally acclaimed author of the forty eight laws of power the art of seduction and the thirty three strategies of war comes a master work on becoming a master here is the path to mastery entered the career path that suits your uniqueness that sparks your deepest curiosity go through an apprenticeship where you master the necessary skills learned from mentors become socially adept, stay focused and fluid no your environment inside and out now creative powers will come to you as well the command in mastery of your chosen craft anyone can follow these steps fruit of over twenty thousand hours of thinking, researching and writing on power and excellence mastery reveals how to become exceptional at whatever you do how to become the best achieving it takes a lifetime but your path starts with mastery by robert greene available everywhere books are sold so this book trailer came out save schedule it's also done more than one hundred thousand views it was uh um someone else yeah somebody posted it interesting so someone took they like the video so much they had in their own thing to it and reposted it so this video did did quite well too so I think what I wanted to show those two back to back is so you have me I'm a total unknown I've never done a book before you make a really compelling thing it does a lot of traffic drugs, a lot of sails then you taken established author who has millions of fans who sold millions of books, and you do something that gets them excited that tells them about what's new so you're sort of going in two different audiences in two different ways, and video is the way to communicate that. So I wanted chris to come on to sort of explain how you think about video, what your clients ask for and what you tried to direct them towards doing and why that matters to these people. Because the way I explained it to my authors is, look, you spent two years of your life writing this book it's eighty thousand words, it's one hundred thousand words the average blogger has eight hundred words to describe your thin or worse. They have one hundred and forty characters to say why and what this book is about that is asking them to do a lot of work. It's very difficult to express a complex idea in such a short amount of time and video is a way that does that for them. They can say you will like this book, don't take my word for it, here's a video or check out this new book, this is what it's about. And so you will talk a little bit about video. Yeah, one of the things that we think is important is it's got to be content to you, can'tjust be hebei ryan's book. Who the heck is ryan? We have to have some sort of idea that the whole the whole video has to be a story. So it can't just, you know, again, it's gotta stand on its own. So whether or not they bought the book now, you know that the internet is full of liars teaching charlatans and they want paige you and they want your attention. That's an idea that they didn't have before. So we've added to them from the get go and that's the number one thing as opposed to saying, hey, this book is great and there's all these other authors that say this book is great it's, not an advertisement. No, its content it's got to be content. Okay? And so one of you do book trailers, but that's not your company's specialty. Mostly what you do, our demo videos or right or sort of explanatory videos of a product or service? And why do companies do that? Well, you wanted me to make sure that people understand what the product is and what it can do and they have to see it in action and it has to feel like they can actually use it so if its software we want to show this off where I want to show the screens that people going to typing on with and then we want to wrap a visual metaphor around it so we can understand what people what it's supposed to do so instead of telling people how did how something works we're showing them it's it's proof it's more credible I mean you're going to say hey, this offers great or and you can use it is easy or if I show a screen where somebody's typing their name in and then hitting return than getting a result that is about a thousand times more effective and what kind of clients your clients are all over the spectrum from prominent speakers to fortune five hundred companies so clearly this works for kind of everyone, right? It works for a lot of people yeah on dh then brennan I wanted to bring because so brendan you're not making the videos the way that he is but you are mechanisms specialty is kraft in what should go in the video and what triggers to pull and then how to spread it? Yeah definitely I mean, so we're in agency and we're unique and that we've got, you know, creative and strategy and then in house production and then through my team that distribution and so yeah, I like we'll build in kind of the distribution strategy and I think a good thing you brought up was kind of the wrapping, the insights and the education with the content making sure kind of lead with entertainment, I think one thing you know, we both do really well is kind of like we call like the candy with the medicine you want to, like grab somebody's attention and kind of tease thie you know, key messages that you need to communicate, and I think that you could take that metaphor back and also apply it to bloggers themselves, which is the bloggers want to write about you when they know that their audience is very fickle and busy and then posting the video and hosting it, they still get the same amount of choose they have to do less work and they know it's the audience is more likely to be entertained that phone. So like ellen, you're talking, you're launching these thes sandwiches, you're probably not going to do an animated video like he is, but some sort of content based product around that gives people a chance to write about it in a way that I like maybe it's hard to write an interesting article about those eleven new sandwiches but maybe if you are if you made an entertaining or funny or important video about it now they could just post it and link teo lied to that video yeah, I mean for us this is actually really timely conversation so as we approach the ten year anniversary and we've been thinking really seriously about how to use video so everyone on our team is on board but you know we're all varying degrees of small businesses and the truth is I don't know how much that video costs but how can and there's this sort of fear of you get what you pay for, right? So how do I balance getting a fantastic video like what you had produced versus sort of small business budget and this opportunity because again I'm sold on video so that's not the challenge it's how do I find the right person to work with within the budget that I have and the timeframe that I have which is, you know, maybe six weeks I think this kind of goes back to the conversation we were kind of chatting up backstage was like kind of what are the different approaches like where it's going to take? And I think I think there's more ways to approach video than just like let's make a video about our company or like a viral video you can also approach from like let's cultivate a community and you know, we're talking about online influencer is early, and a lot of them have built businesses around themselves and then a lot of businesses I have also built communities through online video, and I think you could potentially approach it that rotten just almost do the, you know, behind the scenes or how to, you know, whatever that is and build up your personality and a community around that, you know, maybe get your subscribers up in that approach versus, like trying teo a one off pharrell video and that's a little bit, I feel like more approachable and you can highlight the personality is behind the and I think what chris is firm does, which is these motion graphic videos is obviously more affordable and scaleable than a cinematic book trailer, which all my other author clients have done and they invested, you know, a lot of money and doing them. And in my experience, if you are wise about the same and in fact, what is so for instance, I think those I can't say that because I didn't make it, but I think those two books trailers are two of the book. Best book trailers that I've ever seen he made them, and I'm sort of saying that objectively even though I'm bythe worst book trailer I've ever seen if if anyone wants to look at it, you should look at the book trailer for abraham lincoln vampire hunter, which is a hugely successful book even though that became a movie. The book tre is terrible like it's embarrassingly bad because you get what you pay for and if you just if you're trying to get like these videos don't feel like they're movie trailers, so you're not judging them against movie trailers, so if you sort of do your own thing and you own that fame and you, you make it good you're not going, you're not spending the hundreds of thousands of dollars of these people are, but you're still making something that's good and compelling. Another thing to think about is can you use this video in multiple ways? So can you make this video put on your website so that's? One news can you use this video as pre roll advertisements like on youtube videos or who or other networks can you use this video as a way of getting press? So now this one video has three usages and that's gonna you khun spread the caught the cost is a little bit more bearable that way than if you were like hey, way want to get some blog's to write about this thing? So we're going to drop five figures on a video that's I do recommend doing it that way. I recommend thinking about it and making it a central part of your launch when it makes sense for that particular launch before I don't know that have a question, I think I just kinda want to point out a just something that I've noticed over the course of the program, so earlier we had was a joke with the designer for the product, so when we're having a conversation around, I believe you stack drank, we had, you know, product, and then you went into was that the brand, and then kind of the more meta around how to, um, and right now we're talking about illustrating more of that culture and creating a community using that brand, I think that's actually, why I typically lead off in a in a pitch with the brand, because especially in around seattle, like, we're really known for the community that we have helped cultivate in the way that we interact with them and all the stunts that we pull in and around here that generate that buzz, and so our own cultures integrated very much into our product and your sense of humor and style, absolutely, yeah, so and that's one of our biggest differentiators. Right? And so just the way that we think and act and build product of stuff. But I guess I just wanted to get kind of claret because there's two sides of the table there's one that's like, you know, cut out the brand, focus on the product, not cut out the brand. Sorry, de prioritize the brand focus on the product but there's an alternative of help build the community. What these videos are doing are expressing the essence of that product so people can decide whether it's for them or not, like I like. So we got one more video we can look at. This one is for seth gordon's most recent book your work. Does it matter to you no one remembers the ordinary safe, deniable things you create? No one cares about all the hours you spend with the committee wiggling your best work into something forgettable. Our system may push him to polish play by the rules and focus group your way to mediocrity, but that won't help you break through as long as you hide system. You will not achieve your art when you leave the room. Will we miss? What is standard, ordinary and safe or memories, and harlots belongs to those that stood out that made rockets that connected with us in some way for too long we've been trained, pushed and disciplined to fit in to be cause in the system to give our sweat but not our soul. Today the connection economy replaced the industrial world because trust and relevance on love matters more than saving a few pennies at the big box store people you truly care about don't value safe the valium daring they valued guests most of all the world cares about art are everywhere can be hard you missed fly clothe so what I like about this trailer and I think seth was following his own message a little bit the I think the safe route for this would have been to make sort of a cheerful, fun, inspiring trailer, but like that trailer gives me sort of a weird, almost uncomfortable reaction like it sort of challenges you and it stays with you and it's sort of like that made me feel weird and like maybe it's not the kind of thing that you initially go in retweet, but that that book is branded in your head in a certain way and so at the end of the day there's lots of ways to do this not everything has to be funny not everything has to make you angry not everything has to be controversial, but it does have to provoke a reaction that stays with people and I think all of you would be better off would be well off doing video in your own way so first I'd feel like I think video for you is you're going to want to do this sort of glamour in fashion or perhaps the practical how to and then casey thing for you it's like it might be a great way to illustrate like your ideas kind of complex and there's trucks driving around and and chefs and all these moving parts it might be a great way to encapsulating illustrate your idea in a way that words can't write like obviously I can get the description of my book down into a few hundred words that's what the back of the book is for and that's what the title is for but I feel like the video explains the book better than I ever could and you've got to be honest and self aware enough to say like, look, I'm not I'm I'm invest in this video because video is more conducive to my message than words and then for ellen like I think maybe video it's about expressing culture and the sort of intangible like fun atmosphere ambience of the restaurants that's something you could film probably better than someone could write so that might make sense too but but to go to a credit to say it doesn't have to be this big produced thing maybe you're just authentically you're capturing what authentically happens there on a daily basis have a couple of questions coming to do a lot of nasty those actually some really good questions so everybody kind of wants to get to this and you give us a range but what, uh what does a video like that that's from my san diego wants to know on biff you want to just maybe give us a range that's sure a book trailer cost him around seventy five hundred dollars and a anap trailer will be around ten thousand dollars and they can goes they can spend as much as they like it's not about the spend the oh it's about iterating so like you can start with a video and remake the same video over and over again and get better as you go and that's the it's not it's not how much you spent if you're if you got a smaller budget you make something you put it on your site you see how people react to and then you do it again and your place what you have and then you know you grow into it. You get a r o I on something simple that you might make with keynote or something real simple and then you khun you know, grow into something a little more expensive so he's saying if you don't have seventy five hundred dollars right now bootstrapped your way to having it by creating smaller videos that that earned the revenue that you used to go and do that a small business owner should do it themselves if they're not hiring us they should do it themselves they shouldn't hire any of our competitors but and learned and learned what's good and learn what works and what doesn't and that's that's a nice way to make a small bet and then you would grow into something that jason I would make for you I'm curious ryan can you briefly just distinguish from a target audience perspective the message you try to get across river your book or write a client's books and print and the difference I guess psychographic behaviours you're going after when you're going after a video maybe you guys could jump in his well because I feel like what I've seen in print for you on your block and different things and then that trailer talking to different people right? So can you talk of distinguishing that look I mean the medium is the message so you figure out what makes sense to communicate in that message show for tax time I'm linking two things I'm talking about bigger ideas with a video it's I think it's much more mood based and then it's not always video right like joey wasn't we're not here talking about joey's video because joey takes excellent photos off his stuff because that's the best way to communicate his idea so it all depends on what you're doing and why and what the messages but I feel like you want to you want to attack people from multiple forms of media so it's you've got a video that showing what your app does, you've got pr impressed that's telling people what it does and then you've got a free demo that allows people that feel in an experiment and it's not there's no one magic bullet it's it's ah, whole experience, yeah, right, and one of the things that I'll tell everybody that you need to call the action you need that needed a point like the next steps. So, you know, we have available june nineteenth go by the book, and it depends on where you know where we put it, what the that called action is but you need and you need to consider even flexible calls the actions because one of the things that are clients get is they'll have one ending that will say direct, you know, come to our website and another ending for the website that says, you know, download the apolo or whatever, so you just have to be smart about what you want people to do after they watched the video and be real specific about that, you know, say it in words because the nice thing is, if you do it, if you do it right, the video last forever so my book, my book spent out for, you know, nine months it's still doing views every week, it's still being spread around and that's the point is, you know, someone, you read my book and you want to tell a friend about it, why would you bother to try to describe it? You could just send them this link if you feel like it captures the book. So it's still it's still driving sales just like that, you know plan of the apes is out, but that video is still one of the most viewed videos of all time, and it's probably done if from when it came out toe win the movie when the when the video was released when the movie was released, it's probably done a mohr views post release than pre release cuba is right? I think so. I think it's like gone up yet so these things last forever and, well, what I like to think about sustainable marketing efforts, so look, seventy five hundred dollars from one campaign might be a lot, but you're not doing that. This is for the this isn't an investment in the project forever, as long as you're not making videos that are dated and won't stand the test of time. Well, don't do video on a daily basis, I think there's one thing that people are really afraid of is a public speaking it's not an easy thing to do but also pushing record on the camera, recording yourself for or your message, so I mean, when they can't initially may hire professional like yourself to do something like this, do you really encourage, say that that novice person who may not have the the strong skills said to get out, maybe push record into a video on their computer? Is it better to have it out there or potentially, could it do more, huh, good, a low inversion? The reason that I recommend doing it yourself is because people be forgiving for for, you know, owner created video, they're not going to be very forgiving if wait, we're held under higher microscope than anybody else, so if we give you a video and it's crap it's anti marketing, you know you're not gonna want it, if you our standard what you expect when you pay for somebody to do it is much higher when it's obvious that somebody just doing skype or talking head or whatever and there the owner there going to be forgiven, they're going to be connecting with their audience and it's it's going to be better than that hiring somebody and not getting it right and bad commercial that they're gonna make fun of a bad commercial but they're not gonna make fun of a well intended person that's that's here to help you understand what they're doing right? And look, you have a limited amount of tries in the privacy of your home, you get a video that you think is at least possible it's not like right? You should just throw in some some piece of crap out there you are you're refining it internally until you feel like this is the best that I could do and now I'm using that to grow my business and I'm doing it I'm going to refine it and get better as I go I think one thing to point out is like there's always gonna be critics and like if you look at youtube comments, they're the worst you can wait right? So like you can't let that get to you like just brush this actually don't even look at him through the worst, so don't worry about that just do like what? You get your message out there and you know there's a lot of talk about authenticity but I think it is important and when people are really passionate about their business it comes through and people also in video get invested in these personalities and they feel like they know you and that's really affected and some of these huge very professional you two accounts started with that webcam videos and they now that they slowly over time could invest in the equipment in the professional editing and they they learned on the job so to speak and there's no reason that brands can't do that as well well fantastic we're now it's about time that to transition to the next segment so I want to say thank you so much chris and brendan for joining us guys thank you thank god you're on twitter what's your twitter handle bringing again b r e n d a and g et so falling I always like news he knows what he's doing he's like a total thought leader in the space you can check out simply film dot com right and that's that's where they get a quote from you or you have another product where people can buy like the pieces I'm doing it if they want to try to do with themselves yes we have flotilla tea which is f l o w t l y dot com and you get a lot of motion graphics assets it's built for screen flow and final cut both final cut x and final cut seven so you khun you know download that it's forty seven bucks right now and so you could buy the raw sort of pieces of a video and try to put it together yourself if you are that type right cool, beautiful very much guys