Marketing in 5 Steps.

Seth Godin

For the past six (or it’s been seven? eight?) weeks, I’ve investing my time reading a lot, writing a bit, but mostly thinking. I picked some marketing books that would inspire me to think more creatively, to look for new ideas, to imagine bigger dreams and set new goals. Then I’ve been trying to bring those ideas down to earth, connect the dots, and make something happen.

Today I’d like to recommend three excellent marketing classics, all by Al Ries: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, and Focus.

There’s another book that I enjoyed very much a few years ago, but this time has felt a bit “slow” or perhaps dated: The Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim.

But there’s a fifth book, SO good, SO timely, SO jam-packed with useful and actionable ideas that it deserved writing a blog post, the one you are reading. That awesome book is “This is Marketing” by Seth Godin.

Almost every day I’be been going out for very long walks. The first chapter alone is so good that I also bought the audiobook version, and this is the only book I’ve been listening to.

Let me share some Seth Godin’s gems:

“The marketing that has suffused our entire lives is not the marketing that you want to do. The shortcuts using money to buy attention to sell average stuff to average people are an artifact of another time not the one we live in now. “

“Good marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem. They use marketing to solve other people’s problems.”

“People like us do things like this” is how each of us understands culture.

“Begin by organizing a tightly knit group, by getting people in sync. Culture beats strategy so much that culture IS strategy. “

“Who’s it for and what’s it for are the two questions that guide all of our decisions.”


Priceless. Straight to the point. And very true. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

The 5 marketing steps suggested by Seth Godin.

  1. Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about.
  2. Design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from, and care about.
  3. Tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market.
  4. Spread the word.
  5. Show up. Regularly, consistently and generously. Organize, lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make. Earn permission to follow up, and to earn enrollment, to teach.

Why is this book so impactful to me? Because Seth’s advice is precisely what I’m hoping to do with THIS website. I’d like to connect with other creative people who emphasize story over gear. To find interesting people who do amazing things and help them reach wider audiences. To build a small tribe where we can safely share our experiences, good and bad, cool techniques and time-saving tricks, so we can grow together and spend more time doing creative things and less fighting with cables and firmware updates.

It might take a long time, and I might not be able to achieve it, but I can promise I’ll give you my best. One more, for the road:

“We don’t need to rely on the shiniest, latest digital media shortcut. We have even more powerful, nuanced, and timeless tools at our disposal: we tell stories, stories that resonate and hold up over time, stories that are true because we made them true, with our actions, and our products, and our services.”

Creativity in Constraint: YouTube’s Six-Second Videos.

When it comes to video length, a challenge is the tendency to equate “shorter with worse” simply because viewers aren’t used to ultra-short content (like 6-second videos) just yet. But that’s about to change, as lot of big brands with deep pockets have been exploring “six-second ads” including YouTube’s own marketing team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfcwOpxoTjs&list=PLpmwWuIh57wbXB5tO7UV3NkPmnPV838ha&index=16

According to YouTube’s marketing team “the key to success is to view the six-second time frame as a blank canvas rather than a limitation.” I like the sound of that.

Lots of Examples

All of the examples shown below have been produced for large corporations, with large budgets and most likely big crews. But the reason I believe this is relevant to small-crew and 1 -Person crew productions is because the applications are the same. Short-form videos may be a condensed version of longer stories, or they might be customized to reach specific audiences, for example YouTube vs. Instagram vs, LinkedIn.

Cool? Let’s move on. Other great examples are the Duracell bumper ad, the sequential story for Xbox, or the product lineup for La Mer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeT9nw9dfi8

Two different approaches

I believe the most interesting examples happen when brands approach the six-second ads as part of a larger campaign—when storytelling expands beyond the boundaries of  one ad unit and spans multiple ads served to the same viewer over time. For instance, KFC used a six-second add to tease an UPCOMING 30-second commercial.

Conversely, Danone used the six-second video as a way to echo something a viewer had already seen in a PREVIOUS video.

More Examples

Similar campaigns by Estée Lauder, and SurveyMonkey are also meaty and memorable. According to SurveyMonkey “the 6-second time constraint was a great driver for creating a sense of energy while communicating the power of the tool simply. This was accomplished by effectively messaging the main components of our platform: creating surveys, collecting answers, and analyzing results.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlMhUb7h-A8

As I mentioned earlier, short-form ads an d videos may be a condensed version of a longer story, or they might customized to reach specific audiences through contextual targeting. Campbell’s Soup Company took the latter approach for its “SoupTube” campaign in Australia.

The Campbell’s Soup Approach

Here’s what Campbell’s did: To amplify a 15-second ad they created hundreds of variations of 6-second ads and ran them as additional media. Using some fancy audience targeting, Campbell’s delivered the contextually relevant 6-second ads to users by matching its product message with trending YouTube videos.

For example, users who searched for Pokémon Go were shown one ad/video where they were asked, “Legs hurt from walking around?”, while users searching the outcome of a specific soccer match saw a different version of the ad asking “Had your money on England?”

By building multiple 6-second stories that offered different facets of its message, Campbell’s proved that short-form ads can provide powerful touches to boost a longer story.

The Theory vs. Reality

Campbell’s original hypothesis was that the six-second version would “help drive upper funnel metrics like ad recall” and the thirty-second version would “build on that initial impact by telling a longer story to shift perception.” That’s pretty technical, but I get the concept.

What happened with that hypothesis? Glad you asked. The 6-second clips alone were LESS effective than the 30-sec videos to shift brand perception. But, and this is important, when the 6-second clip and 30-sec clip were paired through remarketing (essentially exposing people who had seen the long-form ad to a bumper as a follow-up) the 6-second clips were a great way to reinforce the 30-sec clips.

30-30-6

According to YouTube “the optimal media journey for a viewer is a 30-sec spot followed by another 30-sec spot, followed by a 6-second ad.”

Let’s say you just finished a travel video you would like to promote. It doesn’t hurt (and it doesn’t take that MUCH extra work either) to cut different 30-sec teasers and a few 6-second clips, and try to target specific audiences based on each platform. You could target groups that talk about that specific destination on Facebook, and travel companies on LinkedIn and travel enthusiasts on Instagram. Same travel video, slightly different marketing approaches targeting different people.

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

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The fourth production stage.

National Geographic Brain Games TV show print ad campaign

A common misconception is that there are three stages on any video production: pre-production, production, and post.

Marketing

I’d argue that there’s a fourth element, perhaps as important or even more so than the other three. I’m talking about marketing.

Marketing is something we should start thinking about as soon as we start working on a project. Who is going to be interested in this message? Why? On which platform are these people spending most of their time? How do we reach them? Which other projects are similar to ours? How are we going to differentiate ourselves?

Here’s a brilliant example:

In today’s tutorial I use a National Geographic TV show called “Brain Games” as an example of a marketing campaign that is very unique and effective. The premise of the “Brain Games” show is how easy it’s to fool our brains. To prove a point they fool the viewer THREE times within 30 seconds.

Most noteworthy is that National Geographic not only fooled us 3 times with the 30-second commercial. They do it again 37 more times with their print campaign!

National Geographic Brain Games TV show print ad campaign
National Geographic Brain Games TV show print ad campaign
Brilliant marketing campaign for a National Geographic show.
Brilliant marketing campaign for a National Geographic show.

Yes, Jason Silva, the show’s host is a master storyteller. And yes, National Geographic is a powerful global brand with over 10 million followers on YouTube alone. But even they are thinking different and trying new things to promote a show. So, why shouldn’t WE do our best to find different approaches to market our projects? Perhaps starting with a killer 30-second trailer is a good start.

Do you have other marketing campaigns new or old that you admire? If so, please share a link or two below.

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Why you should cut a trailer RIGHT AWAY.


I’m a big fan of Vashi Nedomansky, a brilliant video editor who has worked on 11 feature films and trailers, and over 50 national commercials for major brands like Nike, Volkswagen, Ford, NHL, EA Sports, Adobe, and the US Army. I recently read an interview where he says:

“The trailer game is an ever-changing pursuit that tries to stay ahead of the intelligent public but must also find new ways to tease, cajole and intrigue. Show scenes that aren’t in the film. Manipulate dialog and visuals to make a scene more interesting. Shift the order of shots to make it more interesting or compelling. Add music not in the film to hit an emotional beat. Use every trick in the book to make an effective trailer.”

I don’t agree 100% with that approach, but the article reminded me one of the (many) valuable lesson I’ve learned about marketing. The lesson is: cut a 30-second trailer as soon as you’re done shooting. Here’s why:

I’m not sure how, but Vashi was able to select 46 individual shots that were shared in the promotional material for “Rogue One” but never made the final cut of the film.

Actually, “Rogue One” serves to prove my point about the paramount importance of teasers and trailers as marketing tool; the 2-minute trailer has attracted over almost 38 MILLION views on YouTube alone!

What about you? Do you always use teasers and/or trailers on your projects? Why or why not? Leave your comments below.

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