This year’s SXSWi was again amazing, despite the long lines and the lack of sleep that pervade everything. I was particularly inspired by a session I attended on Monday Morning called “Death by Demographics: Killing Off Your Ad Budgets” with Ann Zimmerman from WSJ, Joe Magnacca from Radio Shack, Todd Morris from Catalina, and Bonin Bough from Mondelez (Oreo). Bonin was the highlight of the session, making jokes that had the whole audience in stitches. But as someone immersed in the branded video realm, I couldn’t help but feel that there was a final conclusion about video that the panel didn’t get to.
The brilliant theory that was the focus of the session was the idea that demographics — the bedrock of advertisers for decades — don’t work that well anymore. A thirty-eight year old female might be a small business owner and a twenty-five year old male might be a stay-at-home dad depending on their background. Bonin called it “culture vs cluster”, explaining that the culture of the person you are marketing to is far more important than their age, gender, and other demographics.
Brand advertisers have much better data at their fingertips nowadays than they did in the heyday of demographics. Consumer chatter on social media, purchase history, and other trackable metrics can shed much better light on what individual consumers want. The job of the marketer is to use that information to create a relationship with the consumer, to create content that is relevant to the consumer.
The panel did talk about video media, and their take on it was that traditional television advertising was a necessary evil. TV ads aim at demographics, you can’t track them, you have no idea if people skipped or ignored your ad, but when you combine television advertising with more targeted marketing you can increase the overall ROI across those platforms.
The panel also talked about how well video fits the culture model. Video is inherently cultural — more cultural than any other form of marketing. And yet they are still relying on demographics in video. Why? Because that’s all they think they can get with broadcast television.
Online video provides brands the opportunity to specifically target the culture of the people who buy their product. And by the very nature of entertainment, those people are ten times more likely to share entertaining videos with other people in their culture than any other piece of marketing material. Clearly, the next step for brands that are marketing by culture instead of demographic is to use video the same way.
Some brands have already done an excellent job of creating video content that marries their brand with an emotional, cultural message that viewers flock to: BMW’s The Hire series, Degree’s The Rookie, Kmart’s First Day, Intel’s The Beauty Inside, and my favorite, Hell Pizza’s Deliver Me to Hell. I’m looking forward to the next great video stories coming, not from Hollywood, but from my soon-to-be-favorite brand.
Video marketing is a content marketing cornerstone, and an integral aspect of brand reach, influence, experience and inbound engagement. Regardless of what your brand identity is, if you aren’t prioritizing video marketing within your content marketing roadmap, then you’re missing one of the best opportunities to draw audiences and customers to an immersive message that is (1) highly sharable in digital and (2) when done correctly, creates high-valence emotional connections. Video marketing can put tiny companies like Dollar Shave Club firmly on the blog roll in a matter of weeks, catapult fledging startups like Ministry of Supply to Kickstarter campaign immortality and event help an established brand like Samsung reinvent itself as the hip, iconic upstart usurping Apple’s smart phone dominance.
Source: Edelman and Adobe.
Overall, there are many benefits to video marketing, including these seven benefits every digital marketer needs to know:
7. Less Investment Needed for Video Marketing Than You Might Think
Did your agency just quote you $200,000 for that social video campaign activation for two quarters from now? Then you’re talking to the wrong solution provider. The reality is technology, information access and competition among creatives has dramatically dropped the cost of procuring high quality, professional video. Moreover, branded video doesn’t need sparkling big-budget studio color-correction to succeed with online audiences. Rather, it needs to resonate with viewers by being hilarious, edgy, inspiring or shocking, and above all, authentic, with characters, visuals and experiences people relate to. As a result, companies like Ford, Ikea, Proctor & Gamble, KMart, Target, AT&T and Fidelity are finding that with just a fraction of their TV ad budget, some savvy storyboarding, social media integration and a thoughtful distribution strategy, digital video marketing significantly outperforms the ROI from traditional TV ad investment.
Which would you rather watch?
Traditional media (sorry eHarmony):
New media:
We thought so too.
6. Precision Targeting
With digital video marketing your brand can reach a targeted consumer audience with relative ease. And by properly taking advantage of social media, distribution channel and keyword targeting, your priority demographic audience can be engaged with near-surgical precision. By combining good content with sufficient seeding to drive an initial, critical mass of viewers to their content microsite, YouTube channel and/or social media hub, brands can hit an earned media home run from social sharing and viral referral. Advocates who like your video are more than empowered to tag, retweet, repost, pin or re-blog it if you make content that is highly sharable.
5. When People Care They Share and Participate
Watching video generates approximately 60% of internet traffic. Other data show that YouTube’s 1 million daily unique visitors watch nearly 3 billion videos per day, with 46% of those viewers taking some sort of action for every TrueView ad they see – typically by clicking the “skip” button. Today’s consumers are highly-connected, easily-distracted internet-informed socialites who recognize when a company is creating value for them rather than just trying to shove a product or message down their throats. This doesn’t mean Millenials can’t be advertised to; but it does mean the way advertising communicates and engages them has fundamentally changed. When 18 to 24 year olds were asked “How do you want to a brand to interact with you?” in a study performed by Global Web Index, over 65% of respondents replied “Entertain me,” a response which occurred higher than “Keep me informed,” “Connect me with people” or “Provide me with interesting experiences.” Moreover, because video is such “leveraged communication” (if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be 100,000+?), the stakes for both success and failure are bigger as well as faster. A truly viral video is elusive – as well as marketing nirvana – but it’s a lot easier to create audience engagement magic and widespread social chatter with a recurring, character-driven video story viewers tune into episode after episode.
Generally, a broad range of recent success stories in branded video entertainment points toward five key themes in winning the battle for video engagement: (1) be authentic, (2) tell a compelling, recurring story, (3) manage content duration and pacing for maximum entertainment payload, (4) give audiences a way to get involved and participate if they want and (5) experiment; try new things. Particularly relevant (and good news) for marketers is the fact that audience’s social sharing of content happens irrespective of the presence or absence of branding and branded messages within the content. Additionally, highly engaged audiences do convert better, in many cases showing 300% higher ad click-through rates on high-quality web TV series compared to average industry pre-roll rates.
4. Humanizing the Brand Experience and Increasing Accessibility
Being more than just a brand is essential to the dialogue you maintain with our customers and social followers. Audiences today want to see the heart, people and characters behind the logo, and video marketing is the one of the best ways to achieve that. When Hubspot rallies its inbound team to perform a cover-rendition of Psy’s viral YouTube opus “Gangnam Style” or Pixability puts its team front and center in entertaining, informational skits on its YouTube channel, it demystifies the brand in an accessible way that enables audiences to enjoy an insider’s perspective.
3. Video Marketing Simultaneously Solidifies Your Inbound and Outbound Marketing Presence
Having a strong, joint outbound and inbound marketing presence is not just smart; in today’s digital marketing landscape it might as well be a necessary. Strong, video marketing allows for this to be achieved with a great deal of ease by generating and proliferating content that simultaneously broadcasts the brand experience and also draws in audiences around conversion destinations.
2. Trial & Error
In the old days of video marketing, brands could simply advertise their product on someone else’s content (for example, TV), because the content brought people’s captive attention to their message. But with traditional TV viewer growth stagnant, time-shifted TV becoming the status quo and 33-50% of TV viewers also consuming additional content on a second-screen device, brands need to embrace new content marketing approaches to bridge the engagement gap. According to the Ruder Finn Intent Index, not surprisingly 82% of people want to be entertained, 96% of people want to be educated, and 92% of people want to be participating in something meaningful. Put that together and it’s not surprising in hindsight that “This is Not Yellow” was a smash success.
But who could have predicted that? The great thing about digital video is that its cost structure and its medium makes experimentation and controlled tests with different content types, experiences and ecosystems a lot easier than, say, experimenting with Super Bowl Commercials. At ZoomTilt, our business centers around testing, piloting, analyzing and distributing a broad range of branded entertainment concepts before we advise our clients to make their media buy and serialize content. That way, video marketers have a lot more certainty around the brand experience they’re creating, the app integration(s) they want to run, as well as the ROI, engagement, reach and earned media outlook for the campaign.
1. Striking Gold: Content that Goes Viral
The holy grail of video marketing is seeing content catch on like wildfire and end up instantly spread all over the web within days. When this happens, a little-known content creator or brand can find themselves transformed into a cultural icon overnight. While it’s impossible to target “virality as a strategy,” gradually building a vested audience with steady, high-quality video content marketing certainly increases the chances that a specific video will catch and ignite. But rather than chasing a single, viral “home run,” steadily hitting singles and doubles – videos that collect tens of thousands of views, consistently broaden awareness of your brand’s message and increase your social reach – can not only supercharge the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts, it can set the stage for when that perfect storm of a video happens to come along:
Starting at 10pm ET / 7pm PT, many YouTube features will be unavailable as the world’s largest video hosting platform undergoes scheduled maintenance.
According to YouTube, multiple site features will be unavailable during maintenance, including:
Commenting and liking
Subscribing
Creating new playlists
Starting a new livestream or Hangout on Air
CMS
Partners with Dropbox access will be able to drop videos in, but they won’t be processed until after maintenance is complete.
As a result, we encourage all creators in the YouTube ecosystem to delay uploading videos this afternoon and evening until the maintenance process is complete and full site functionality and audience engagement features are restored.
Web series aren’t just a guy/gal with a camera, a couch and a vlog talk show anymore, and audiences and advertisers are taking notice. With brands like Ford, Ikea, Target, Yahoo and Intel spending millions annually creating original web entertainment on top of YouTube’s own premium content buys from Hollywood and networks like Machinima, demand for compelling, original entertainment is rising rapidly, and content creators are rising to the occasion.
This week, ZoomTilt debuts three new made-for-web TV comedy pilots: “The Pickup Chicks”, “Spycology”, and “Cool Justice”. Although the three comedies are starkly different shows – with backdrops ranging from Brooklyn bars to a top-secret Spy Academy to a 1970′s L.A. drug bust – they all have several qualities in common: memorable, unique characters, top-quality professional cinematography and studio-caliber story arc development. Following on the tradition established by recent web series standouts like “The Beauty Inside,” Warner Premiere’s “H+: The Digital Series” and “Dating Rules for My Future Self,” ZoomTilt’s first three shows coming out of the TV Reset Project webseries competition demonstrate that creative, compelling storytelling and community-building trumps big budgets in generating earned media and audience engagement.
The first new ZoomTilt pilot is romantic comedy “The Pickup Chicks” by Stacie Capone, which follows a trio of Brooklyn roomates-turned-entrepreneurs dealing with the unexpected success of their dating service for hopeless single guys:
The second show is “Cool Justice” by Todd Rulapaugh and Brian Groh, who play two larger-than-life 1970′s cops transported to modern day Los Angeles to help a beautiful heiress recover her missing inheritance:
The third show is “Spycology” by Tenth Gate Productions, where slacker spy Jack gets jolted by the threat of expulsion from Spy College and the arrival of an enigmatic new female transfer student. Can Jack harness his inner Bond before time runs out on his diploma hopes or his best buddy Tim’s hostage situation?
As both production equipment and video hosting costs continue to drop, knowledge transfer of production and editing expertise is accelerated through lightning fast internet data transfer and digital video demand continues to grow rapidly, traditional TV and “digital TV” will continue to converge and overlap, creating exciting new opportunities and avenues for content creators, advertisers, audiences and digital networks alike.
With the Thanksgiving holiday almost upon us, the filmmaker finalists in ZoomTilt’s first TV Reset Project web series competition are racing to complete final edits on their pilots. With some submissions already in and some completing the final phases of post-production, ZoomTilt is looking forward to an exciting and diverse set of new web TV releases.
Series creators Brian Groh and Todd Rulapaugh play two larger-than-life 1970′s cops transported to modern-day Los Angeles in new comedy “Cool Justice”
ZoomTilt’s Amy DePaola recently sat down with one of the TV Reset Project’s finalist production teams – James Poirier and Travis Tyler of Boston’s Tenth Gate productions – about the inspiration and excitement around their show, action-comedy “Spycology,” a story about a group of students attending a top secret Spy Academy:
When one of Stacie Capone’s friends told her about an odd job she once worked trying to set up hapless single guys for success on the bar scene, it was a set of facts that, to Capone, seemed well worth exploring further in fiction. The result is “The Pick Up Chicks,” a romantic comedy web series that follows three female friends as they juggle some less-than-typical small business obstacles: falling in love with clients, being hired by ex-boyfriends and getting accused of running a brothel out of their Brooklyn apartment. For Capone, an actress and producer whose work spans everything from feature-length films and web series to theatre appearances and interative soap operas, there are few more unique settings than New York City nightlife venues, where eccentric, quirky and larger-than-life characters abound.
Brought to the screen collaboratively with co-creator, business partner and award-winning writer Jason Nunes of storytelling studio Small Media Extra Large, Capone’s “The Pick Up Chicks” follows roomies Darcy, Emma, and Jane as they embark on a light-hearted journey through launching their unconventional startup, coping with its comedic up and downs and navigating the unexpected consequences of startup success. Capone thinks “The Pick Up Chicks” is a story that both audiences and advertisers can fall in love with. For viewers, the series’ savvy writing, memorable personalities, evolving character relationships and easily-relatable singles-scene settings are sure to deliver a highly enjoyable viewing experience in the spirit of popular digital series “Dating Rules From My Future Self.” At the same time, Capone sees the show as a great match for brands and advertisers, more accessible and less off-beat than HBO’s Girls with plenty of opportunities to feature clothing, accessories and consumer products for the coveted young female and male urban lifestyle demographics.
Eager audiences should get started by liking “The Pick Up Chicks’” soon-to-be Facebook home (bear with us for a few days if it’s a little minimalist, Stacy and Co. just made it through Hurricane Sandy and have a fair bit on their proverbial plate). Fan faithful can also learn more about Stacie and her work at StacieCapone.com and on twitter by following @stacie_capone. You can also keep up with her production team at Small Media Extra Large, a transmedia studio that has produced content for film, television, the web, and mobile for clients like Viacom, Reuters, and Allstate. You can follow SMXL on twitter at @SMiXeL
Christophor Rick is a well-accomplished individual. He holds a B.S. degree in molecular science, he served in the U.S. Navy, he’s taught in Europe and he’s interned with NASA (whoa), but what he is most known for is his career as a freelance writer. With his third book launching this December, Christophor Rick has made a career out of analyzing and reporting on online video content. It’s no surprise to us that he is the brains behind one of our finalist pilots for the TV Reset Project with his original concept and story: “Not So Super.”
In development since 2007, “Not So Super” is the story of Vince, a superhero currently undergoing a mid-life crisis who must set aside his insecurities and fight off the new super villain, Scandal, who threatens his home, Prime City.
“I have been a fan of comics for a long time and the thing that often struck me was that they were all overblown, artificial, larger-than-life personas and personalities, hard to relate to at times,’ says Rick. ‘Many common human issues were not addressed a lot of the time, so I wanted to make a more human hero who has real world problems that makes him easy to relate to and somewhat of an underdog at this point in his career.”
Since he is no stranger to the online video community we also asked Rick what he’s paying attention to out there in the webisode world and his picks are “Leap Year” from Geek & Sundry and Hulu’s “Battleground”, which takes place in Rick’s home state of Wisconsin.
Although this will be Rick’s first major video production he’s assembled a team of skilled, veteran entertainment professionals that will help guide the production while Rick concentrates on directing and seeing his story vision through.
“Having been around online video for the last five years, I know what I like and what I want, [less exactly] how to get there,” Rick admits.
We over here at ZoomTilt think that Christophor Rick has quite a future ahead of him as a creator and director. He is already well on his way and has an arsenal of other projects outside of “Not So Super” on the horizons.
Thriller web series The Others is the brainchild of Douglas Stark. That his writing made it to ZoomTilt’s finals is no surprise given his background — Doug has written for Law & Order, Falcone (CBS), NBC/Universal and Bruckheimer, as well as written screenplays for hire. He’s been writing for about 25 years now, sometimes for Hollywood and sometimes for independent projects.
But writing is not his only work in the film world — he also worked as a producer for shows like E! and True Hollywood, as well as a director for his own shorts. He wrote and directed the short “Do Not Disturb” (a psychological thriller), which was named 2005′s best short by Fade In magazine.
“I feel like I’m working full-time as a writer and part-time as everything else,” Doug says. “I have the ability to create my own schedule, so my day is a revolving schedule of textbook business, writing work, and family (I have two kids). If you want to know ‘when do you find time to write’, the real answer is I don’t sleep (certainly not enough).”
Doug recommends that other writers “write what you must”, but also focus on finding ways to get those scripts produced. “Even if it’s DIY. At the end of the day, you’ll learn a lot more about what works and what doesn’t and you’ll have something to show.”
Editor’s note: The Others is a thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Each episode is a page turner. I’ve read the whole first season and am dying to know what happens after that! We can’t wait to see the pilot.
Dear Katie Rae, Mike Troiano, Pete Backlow, Fred Destin and Dharmesh Shah and One Anonymous VIP Shark/Investor,
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Amy. I am just shy of turning twenty-eight; I was raised in North Jersey and educated in New York City, where I began my career. Currently I am a full-time MFA graduate student at Emerson College, a freelance filmmaker, and “Maker of Happened Things” at ZoomTilt (because, well, I make lots of things happen), one of the 70 odd-something companies listed for the Shark Tank at FutureM.
I write to you today not to tell you to pick ZoomTilt; but rather, to tell you why I choose ZoomTilt and trust by the end of this letter that you will understand why we deserve to be on the stage with Shark Tank.
You saw the generic run-down of my credentials above, but that is just skimming the surface of my resume. I’ve been involved in public relations since PR was considered the “new advertising.” I’ve worked for large agencies representing Fortune 500 clients, I’ve been in-house with an internationally recognized diamond retailer and I launched smaller brand campaigns as an employee of a boutique PR agency. When I transitioned my career into film production I backtracked a bit, working first as an assistant, climbing the ranks to senior assistant and then finally, producer. I moved to Boston two years ago to pursue independent filmmaking and since then I’ve created an array of digital content and received thousands of views under my own LLC, Greenview Entertainment. I’ve studied with theater institutions around the globe, and my work has been nominated and recognized at film festivals throughout the country. I am also a YPC Member for the Cancer Research Institute and I am a published writer.
So, you are probably asking yourself with all this success and accomplishment and amount of work on my plate, why did I seek out ZoomTilt at the end of August 2012 and demand that I join the team, working, as most start-ups and entrepreneurs do, for absolutely no pay?
At a basic level, my interests are strongly aligned with the work that ZoomTilt is doing, so it’s a no brainer that I wanted to work for Anna Callahan and Chris Bolman. But for me it goes beyond my passion for filmmaking and why, even though I am a full-time graduate student with my own production banner I have officially taken on the role of the “Maker of Happened Things” over here at ZoomTilt.
ZoomTilt is a digital entertainment studio that provides filmmakers with the opportunity to get their work seen and paid for. Anna Callahan, the company’s founder, is an experienced filmmaker, who knows as well as I do, that the current model and economics of “Hollywood” and “Big Studio” do not work anymore. Today, it’s brands and advertisers that bring both funds and recognition to filmmakers and video creatives on content platforms like YouTube. Content-hungry brands are the new funding engines that creative professionals use to present great, original, episodic content to audiences. To feed this hunger and reinvent the economics and experience of both filmmaking and video advertising, ZoomTilt is spearheading a digital empire to fund independent, digital TV and video that also provides brands a more compelling, more engaging and lower cost way to tell their story to consumers.
The reason why I love ZoomTilt is because it aligns everything I’ve worked for over the years. A good publicist, like a good filmmaker, is a storyteller.
Individuals such as myself, Anna Callahan and Chris Bolman are the media makers of the future. And in the highly fragmented and noisy digital space, standout media content, my honorable judges, is king. What ZoomTilt is building allows me, my colleagues and an entire industry of creative professionals to succeed – because media is how messages and experiences are spread. Media is what sustains and enlivens culture, even more so now in this fast-paced, information driven, digital age than ever before.
At ZoomTilt, we have a unique way of connecting brands and filmmakers to create and distribute that media; marketing media that entertains, promotes ideas and drives revenue and ROI for brands with deep, deep pockets and big, big budgets.
Marketing media is the reason why FutureM exists. So, I’ll leave you with one last question to consider:
Don’t you want one of the six companies standing on the stage at FutureM’s Shark Tank to be the company that is fundamentally redefining media marketing?
Exactly.
Happeningly yours,
Amy DePaola
Maker of Happened Things
ZoomTilt
amy@zoomtilt.com
@theeamydee
@zoomtilt
Year after year, independent film is spurred forward by the vision, hope and hard work of thousands of creative artists. And, unlike the music and publishing industries, where indie content creators have embraced digital distribution avenues like iTunes, Amazon, BandCamp and SoundCloud, non-digital discovery still reigns supreme in the festival-centric world of independent film. Or does it?
A revolution (or, dare we say, web-olution) is steadily building momentum, one with the potential to spread financial sustainability to a much larger population of indie video and TV creators. The internet, long the domain of social networking, file-sharing and cute animal videos, is increasingly providing structured opportunities for filmmakers, screenwriters, actors/actresses and other content producers to capture legitimate money and exposure for their talents, particularly with shorts and made-for-web series.
One reason more aspiring filmmakers are focusing their energies on the web are the current economics of indie filmmaking. Although the motion picture industry is a $10 billion annual market, nine out of every ten of those dollars goes to Hollywood, leaving about $1 billion for the indies. Although this seems pretty positive on the surface, the reality is that typically 20-25% of that $1 billion yearly opportunity goes to projects like “Black Swan” and “Little Miss Sunshine” – perfectly legitimate indie films, but ones backed by big-name stars and multi-million dollar marketing budgets. Take what’s left over and if you divide that $800,000 by the number of submissions received by only Sundance, Tribeca and the Nashville, New York and Seattle film festivals, it amounts to less than $25,000 per film. In fact, statistically, the odds of an indie filmmaker breaking even on a feature investment through conventional distribution channels is roughly 0.1%. Despite the prestige a film festival short-listing can bring, it’s hard to like those odds no matter how visionary your work is.
Plus, if you compare 1.3 billion annual box office movie ticket sales against 10 billion yearly, unique YouTube views and 30 million Netflix subscribers, the web starts looking like an appealing Plan B – particularly when distribution barriers to entry are so much lower. Not only that, but while traditional TV viewing has flat-lined, watching digital entertainment through smart TV’s, video game consoles, computers, tablets and mobile phones is currently seeing circa-50% year-over-year growth rates.
So why hasn’t the vaunted Web-olution come even further? In part, it’s because old habits die hard. A second factor is the fact that the financial landscape for indie entertainment creators is still highly immature. If you’ve got a viral hit show or short on your hands, you might be able to cover your production budget solely on ad placements over your work. However, for most film professionals looking to transition into web shorts, it takes time and effort to build the fan-base and brand-relationships that enable filmmakers to earn a consistent living, a roadmap our company, ZoomTilt, has been working hard to lay groundwork for. There are already some great partnership networks out there for established YouTube video blog superstars with big followings, like Maker Studios and Fullscreen, but there are a lot less options for original web TV shows and aspiring indie entertainment creators. Third, the web is a different entertainment medium, one where audiences are fragmented, attention spans are typically shorter, it takes more differentiation to stand-out and the format biases certain genres and viewer demographics.
But that doesn’t mean the change isn’t coming. Mark Suster, a prominent California-based VC at GRP Partners, has famously proclaimed “the future of the internet is television.” Although ZoomTilt is only in its first year, based on the traction, momentum, feedback and market-research we’ve already been a part of, we couldn’t agree more, and are excited to be helping to lead the charge.
