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“47% of businesses created 51 or more videos just last year. So there’s all this video being made, and yet, almost none of it gets used more than once. You post it to your website, you post it to social media, and you start working on the next video.” Andrew Levy told me during an interview for the Growth Stage Podcast.
Andrew is the founder and CEO of AdPipe, a SaaS platform that repurposes and repackages your existing videos into custom bite-sized content for any channel.
I spoke to Andrew about what he calls the “great underutilization of content.”
To stay relevant, content marketers need to keep publishing content. The work is never finished, and it never seems to be enough. “We’re seeing these marketing teams, especially the content division, just completely overwhelmed, exhausted, unable to keep up with the demands of every channel, especially because they think they have to create something new every single time,” he explained.
Many marketers are missing out on a huge opportunity to reuse existing content in fresh ways.
Listen or watch our full interview for Andrew’s advice on portraying a company’s value and culture through video, reusing pre-existing content, and what trends he’s seeing in the world of video marketing.
Full Interview: Audio-Only
Full Interview: Video
Transcript
Andrew Levy 00:04
47% of businesses created 51 or more videos in just last year. And so there’s all this video being made. It’s very powerful. And yet, almost none of it gets used more than once right you post it to your website you posted to social media, you start working on the next video.
EJ Brown 00:21
That was Andrew Levy, co founder and CEO of AdPipe, a SaaS platform that repurposes and repackages your existing videos into custom bite sized content for any channel. Keep listening for Andrew’s advice on how B2B and B2C companies can better utilize their video content. I’m EJ Brown, Senior Content Strategist at FastSpring. We help SaaS and software companies scale around the world. And you’re listening to the growth stage podcast where we share stories from global SaaS leaders that you can use to inspire new growth strategies in your own business. Andrew, take us back a little over a decade. You were working at Live Nation. What was it? Like what happened?
Andrew Levy 01:07
So that was where I started my career, I was in charge of integrating brands and and concerts and helping them bring out the value of the concert goer to engage with their product or their brand. And at that time, you know, we started getting requests to bring the activation to life outside of the concert through video. And video is really early, you know, utilizing through social or digital channels was just starting. And Live Nation didn’t really have a service to do that. We heard that so many times. And I had a group of friends who were making videos as a hobby. And I share this news with them. And basically from there without much plan in place, we decided to start a video company. And so we went out into the market started talking to different brands about how we could make video for them. And it was an early opportunity that really defined what we would become. We were sent to share a mini documentary for a company on the border of Texas and Mexico to help showcase their community involvement. And it was a great project with that business, but it was much more impactful for us. We spent about three weeks betting with this family the color on Rojas family, on the tip, the very tip of Texas in town outside of McAllen, Texas, and it was just as maybe one of the most important moments in my life. We this family had nothing they were in a trailer with no utilities, no running water. The mother was raising her children taking five financial classes per week, an English-speaking class the father was commuting all the way to Tennessee, that was the closest stable job we could find about 40 hour commute a week. We’re just blown away by this family’s pursuit of the American dream and success. And on the last night they invited us over for dinner. And we’re like absolutely not, you know, we’re getting we have a budget for food from the client. And they’re like we’re family. Now you’re going to eat at our table tonight. And it was an emotional moment that boiled up to Why are you doing this? Why are you working so hard? And the mother in Spanish said this word chispa which in English translates to spark and she said there’s a spark inside of you to build a better life for me and my family. And so that immediately resonated with our entire crew. And we became we started going down a path to look for chispa in every person or business that we came across with our camera. And that’s how we built the video company was finding chispa. Ultimately, after about a decade of doing that we grew to many Fortune 500 customers, many mid market customers helping them really define their purpose, helping them integrate with corporate social responsibility, helping them engage different stakeholders with this spark, this chispa. But as we got to bigger and bigger level, we realized that we wanted to help more people than we were able to. And when you’re hand crafting video, it’s hard to scale. And so that’s when we started to integrate technology into our business. And we said, how are we going to bring this idea of sharing your spark to the entire world? When we started looking at ways that we could do that, that’s when we, when we kind of had the insight of what we called the “great underutilization of content,” which is that there are 720,000 hours of video uploaded every day to YouTube. There’s 25 billion social views every day. A stat came out last month that tick tock out 137 million hours of video watched you know, the last just last month, which is like a mind blowing stat. I don’t really understand that. But basically, there’s so much video being created around the world, especially within the business sector last year 47% of businesses created 51 or more videos Just last year, and so there’s all this video being made. It’s very powerful. And yet, almost none of it gets used more than once, right? You post it to your website, you posted to social media, you start working on the next video. And so we thought, how can we help businesses share this chispa, their spark, and in more scaled way was to help them reutilize that mountain of content and new ways. So we built AdPipe, which automatically does that for them. Hopefully, there was something valuable in there. That was a bit of a ramble. But I think you see where I’m coming from.
EJ Brown 05:33
No, that’s great. One thing led to another write. And your story follows the arc of video becoming more important. And then then the necessity of organizing video or thinking about videos is more than just this momentary thing? I’m curious, like, are companies that you work with? Or that you’re, that you’re prospecting? Are they recognizing this? Or is this something that you have to sell to them? What’s their mindset around all of the content they’re creating?
Andrew Levy 06:06
Exhaustion. You know, most businesses that we talked to are juggling somewhere between eight and 15 different business messages, different business units, business effective, whatever it might be. And then there’s another 10 to 15 different channels that they have to share those messages on. And then typically, the content teams are small, you know, one to three, maybe five people at best. And so you got all these messages, you got all these channels, every message has to be on every channel in a different shape and size. And you’ve got a small team that has to keep up with this demand. And, of course, you know, the goal is conversions and success and impressions, engagement, etc. But, you know, you can’t just have one viral hit and call it a day, you know, the algorithm demands new content all the time. It is hungry. If you stop, it will destroy you. And so we’re seeing these marketing teams, especially the content division, just completely overwhelmed, exhausted, unable to keep up with the demands of every channel, especially because they think they have to create something new every single time. And so that is not something we have to tell them. That is something that is very clear, we had a customer the other day, say, you know, they spend their entire paycheck on concealer, because they’re so tired, they have to cover it up. And so, you know, I think that’s a known fact, you know, content marketers, social media strategist, this word, whatever you want to call it has become video producer, video editor, graphic designer, animator, poster analytics person, etc, etc, etc. There’s so many tasks for this one person, some of the time that it’s overwhelming, it’s exhausting, there is a better way to do that, that’s what we call the modern advertising pipeline is you have your bucket of content, you cut it into small pieces, you shape it correctly, you add graphics to make it refresh, and you get it out the door. And that’s really what our mission and passion is about is to help these marketers be more productive, and rest and relax and be well along the way. Because art should be fun, it should be creative, it should be exciting to do this job, not like a never-ending struggle to keep up with the algorithm.
EJ Brown 08:28
Okay, I have an idea. So we’re improvising this interview. And I sort of see three different directions that we can go in and thinking about this as like section one, two, and three. But like to what I’d like your advice about is a how to help companies find that spark or it through and capture it through video, that bigger business vision or message, tips on how to utilize video and better ways. And then what you see as the future of how people will consume video content, where it’s moving.
Andrew Levy 09:05
Sounds great. Okay, so how to find your spark? You know, it’s there, you know, depending on how new or old your company is, and what cycle you’re going through might be a dull or a vibrant spark. You know, of course, like, startups are young and hungry and full of passion, and they have their reason for being and it’s vibrant. It’s awesome. The spark is easy to find, I think what’s important to recognize in that moment, is that even inside your business, everyone might interpret it differently. And to be open to that and be okay with that. Because that’s when it really burns the brightest. You know, you might have a reason for being and your neighbor might have reason being any together. That’s your culture and together that your spark, but it’s not just one way or the highway. We’ve learned that lesson over time interviewing a bunch of businesses and human ourselves that you need to have what a mission is and then let people interpret it to their own life the way that they will, but the way that we really find that is pretty old fashioned, we sit down with a camera pointed at you. And we do what we call an interview booth. And we just run the entire organization or as many people from that department through as we can we ask similar questions and we see how they answer it, we look at it. And we kind of create a collective message of the organization and say, Hey, this is how you talk about your passion or reason for being the camera’s a lie detector, you can pretend that you have passion, but the camera will know. And it picks up on what that spark is. And when you whittle away kind of the fluff, you’re left with something that’s really powerful. And that’s how we get that, when you do that, you also have just created a ton of really impactful content, and amazing sound bites,
EJ Brown 10:47
Is there any moment you can think back where you thought, Oh, we just captured it.
Andrew Levy 10:51
I mean, so many, so number of stories. So we were working on a recruitment piece recently for a fortune 500 Equipment Company. So they picked a technician to spotlight. And when we went out to spotlight that technician 50 family members showed up. That’s awesome. And so what you might think is a marketing video, was one of the most important days of this young man’s life. So much so that his entire family showed up to be a part of a marketing video to him, it was Hollywood, the lights are on, he was so proud, it was amazing. And not only was that, you know, the spark of this individual, really fulfilling his dream of really being chosen to represent this idea within this major business. But it was a great testament to that brand, that there’s so much pride just at the individual level for working for this company, that when they were selected to represent the business that the entire extended family showed up to participate. And, and that’s an example of the spark, I have another individual, we have jokes sometimes about, you know, really tough leaders, when they get emotional or even tear up in an interview is really fulfilling to us not in a way of like wanting people to be sad or emotional, but it’s just fulfilling when you reflect and think about that spark. And it kind of reignites for somebody right there in front of us because they’re able, you know, not many times people really take time to remember big things or their past. And so we had a an individual who is a leader of a major business, get emotional on camera, and I pulled this person aside and I said, Why are you so emotional, and they realized that they had accomplished their childhood dreams. And they really hadn’t really thought about that before. And that where they were today was exactly where they wanted to be in the day to accomplish that dream. But it also scared them because they had reached the final level of their dream. And so like, where would they go next? Right? What were they supposed to do after becoming president of this company, because that’s what they had wanted. And so sparks come in many different forms, right? The business, you know, affects you have many different ways it helps you compel yourself to a dream, but it also gives you opportunities to go beyond what you ever thought was possible. And that’s really what we see a great organization being is somewhere that, you know, allows you to accomplish your goals and also really go above and beyond what you thought was possible. And we find that all the time. We did a documentary four years ago, three years ago with Aflac about their corporate social responsibility program and we followed a family or eight families going through pediatric cancer is one of the most emotional experiences of my life, though what you saw was the impact of the business and not the insurance that Aflac provides to customers. That’s obviously their true business. But this philanthropy that they had created as part of their corporate social responsibility program was allowing children to have a better experience with a very difficult journey in their life, which is pediatric cancer because what they had done is they invented a stuffed animal called my special Aflac Duck, which is an animatronic robot that accompanies a child through the cancer process. And basically, when you’re four or five years old, there’s no place to create community in the hospital, you’re pretty much by yourself. And so this stuffed animal became their best friend and it was animatronic and robotic and so it would get chemo when they got chemo it would take a bath when they took a bath to eat when they would eat and so none of the scary things also that it either on their own, and that was mind blowing to see what a passionate what business what a purpose of business could be created as in the most creative way. And so these are just examples of what sparks look like around you know, the business world but it’s been really fulfilling to see that.
EJ Brown 14:59
I mean FastSpring, of course, we work with SaaS and software businesses. And I mean, even thinking about our own video content that we create and what our customers would be creating. It’s so easy to imagine a company like Aflac, that deals with individuals in a really meaningful parts of their life. It’s easy to imagine like that you can you can capture these these pivotal moments. And what’s your advice for companies that are thinking but we just sell? Blah, you know, and we’re digital? And we don’t we only talk to our customers now via zoom. Like, how do we tie into that the vision or the mission of the company, when, when it’s so digital, and so sometimes separated from the rest of our lives?
Andrew Levy 15:48
I think that’s a great question. Honestly, it’s not the most difficult answer, you know, I know it probably seems really difficult it it’s to turn the camera around and look in is who are the people building this business? That’s what people are looking for. That’s what customers recruits. Anybody trying to engage with the business wants to know is, is there a human on the other side of that business? Who are these people and what makes them tick? I don’t care if it’s insurance, or plumbing, or whatever, the coolest businesses, Nike or whatever, like, who is behind this business? And why are they doing it? Right? The why you probably heard start with why or whatever. Is there a real good reason that drives the group that’s doing this business? If that’s you’ll never run out of stories if you try to answer that question, right. And I think people overlook that far too often by trying to have some sort of, I don’t know, they, I guess they forget about the people. I mean, think about Red Bull, they’re one of the best storytellers in the world, gives rebel gives you wings, you almost never see their product in the stories. And that’s totally okay. Because it’s the metaphor of breathing energy into people and allowing them to accomplish their goals. Right, and that’s the brand voice. And it becomes very clear over time, when you see a motorbike or do a backflip or someone jump out of a plane or whatever, you feel the energy, you never have to see the product, you just feel it. And so what is the feeling of your business and Red Bulls obviously are mature, they’ve been doing this for a long time. So you might say, well, you know, we’re a software company, and we do pricing, and we don’t know what our feelings should be. So how do we know what content to make? You ask the employees that is, what do you feel when you work here? What do you feel when you talk to a customer? What do you feel when you do anything that I say at this business core? From there? You talk to the customers? What do you feel you interact with our business? What do you feel when you engage with our employees? If you do that, you will find out what your voice is, you will find out what stories to share. And this is kind of a segue into the tips is that is the content, record those conversations and cut pieces out and put them out. And that’s add pipe right there. So we talked about the documentary for athletic, which is a 40 minute documentary. Yeah, we played that one time in Washington, DC in New York, and Chicago, okay, three times, we need to get more use out of that you’ve cut up those moments into short bite sized pieces, and you share them regularly with your audience. And this is the same thing with finding your spark or talking with your employees or talking to your customers. That is the content, right? That’s the foundational content is just philosophy is just thinking it’s just talking. From there, you can start to add imagery. From there, you can start to add metaphorical imagery like Redbull does with giving you wings energy. But before you do any of that, you just need to ask the question of why do we exist? And you ask that to your employees and customers, and they’ll show you the way.
EJ Brown 18:54
So there’s this exhaustion of videos. And there’s also all this underutilized possibility for splices of videos and and reuses of the videos. How do you see companies missing opportunities, maybe beyond just like, slice this up? But like, where are they missing opportunities to utilize video in their overall brand message?
Andrew Levy 19:21
Everywhere. Every time you have a communication, if you can add motion to that communication, you’re going to be about 80% more successful. If you’re sending an email, or if you’re doing a presentation. If you’re having a one on one sales conversation. If you are recruiting someone, if you are doing any of those things and motion. Video is not involved, you are missing an opportunity. That’s really That’s it. I mean, that’s kind of the end of this the story there. I mean, and that’s what we’ve seen. And the reason that’s hard is because it would be very hard to create all that content. because where’s it gonna come from who’s gonna make it, etc. But the reality is, you’ve already made it, take a clip from your library, put a piece of text over it, which is maybe a smiling face and recruiting video from 2018. Oh, Mary doesn’t work at the business anymore. She’s still smiling on behalf of FastSpring. At that moment, that is okay. And you put a logo over it with a call to action, it says work aspirin. So now you have a smiling happy face, or a couple of faces from your business with a call to action and your logo versus a static email that says, Are you looking for a job right now? Which one are they going to engage with, and they open it and spend two seconds considering your message, motion is going to win every single time. And so what we’d like to do is take a step back and think about the business units. So what are they so we probably have sales, and that’s broken up into a couple different things and recruiting and that’s broken up into a couple of different things, success. And that’s broken up into a couple of things and leadership, and then maybe ESG, environment, social governance, and maybe corporate social responsibility, maybe investor relations, you have all these buckets, and you think about the different messages that go through these buckets. And then what we want to do is create cadences or templates for those messages. So a style for every one of those messages. And so the style can remain constant. So when you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to think of what this is going to look like for that specific segment. So like recruiting for fast ring is going to look like this every time, the words will change, because the role will change. And the imagery might change, because you might represent something new. And that’s how it becomes refreshed, right. So you have a templated style that sits on fresh imagery. And that’s how it becomes new all the time, but still is consistent enough where your audience starts to realize, oh, this is a post by posturing for recruiting. This is a post by factoring for promotional purposes. You know, there’s this identity that’s associated with these different pieces of content. It’s kind of like when NBC is like doing like the audio, the Sonic, Brandon, you know, that’s NBC, you don’t have to look at anything, you can just hear me I go and we see, because they burned that into you. But you can do the same thing with your visual content and say, Hey, this is our look for this idea. And this is our look for that idea. And we’re going to do it all the time. Not only is that good for the audience, but for your content creators. They don’t have to wake up and figure out what that looks going to be every day. There’s consistency, and they know what to do.
EJ Brown 22:26
Totally. So I mean, I, I started I am I am a writer, I got into this because I love writing. I have an MFA in creative nonfiction. I started out in journalism, I write a lot of literary essays and sort of fell into content marketing, because I found that businesses needed people who could write well. And now there’s a sort of there’s a change in what it means to do content marketing, because there’s a change in what it means to do content, right that what needs to be written, what needs to be listened to what needs to be seen, and how does all of it fit together. It’s funny, when I taught during grad school, I taught undergrads around composition and rhetoric classes. And we talked a lot about this word was a word that we were supposed to use called affordances. That different types of media gives you different strengths and weaknesses, or it gives you different opportunities. You decide when you need words versus when you need the visuals to accomplish your goals. And I think now that every business is also trying to figure out what part of their brand, or I guess, not just their brand, but when is it the most effective thing to write this long form blog posts versus videos? Or how to do both? And how to budget for them to since everything takes time and money? So what are your thoughts on that? There’s a lot.
Andrew Levy 23:56
Yeah, totally. But I have two children. So I sometimes like to think in the form of nursery rhymes and in short books, because that’s what is dominating my life at night. And so like, let’s talk about Hansel and Gretel, and how they left crumbs to find their way home. Short Form motion are your crumbs on the internet. That is how people follow back to your home base, which maybe is your website or your social profile. In those homes. The longer form content is very important because that’s where people are getting to know you. It’s almost like a virtual handshake. They’re coming into your corner store and you’re greeting them virtually with your personality and, and what you’re all about. So longer form video or longer form written word is very important for those home bases. But out in the wild, we only have time for crumbs, and we need to them to be compelling and authentic. And the best way to do that is actually to break them off with the longer form authenticity. And because already created in that way. And so that’s the way that we think about it is build something big, right? And anthem is what we call it anthemic video and anthemic blob, something that represents a big pillar of communication for yourself a mission and idea, something that you’re launching, and then break it into hundreds of pieces, not like two pieces, like hundreds of pieces. I mean, think of the best communicators, you know, they likely are saying the same thing over and over and over and over again, you know, and that’s okay, people think you got to come up with something original every day. No, what do you believe in and say it all the time? You know, we believe in maximizing the value video, you’ll hear me say that over and over and over again. And it’s okay for you to be repetitive as well. You can find fun ways to be creative. And that’s what great communicators do is they give new spins on the same ideas. But that’s what we’re looking for is anthemic continent, your home base and breaking off crumbs in the internet so that people could follow them back to those bigger pieces.
EJ Brown 26:05
Yeah, it makes sense. If you’re a business, creating content for consumers, versus other businesses versus you have a more inclusive, ideal customer base, that includes everybody, it doesn’t matter who your customer is, overall, you’re still wanting to create, you’re getting your brand message out there regardless. But depending on who your customer base is, they’re probably coming back to your site for different reasons. If you’re a B2B company, then businesses are coming back to your site probably to learn more about your business like they’re not just coming back to buy. Versus if it’s a if it’s a consumer purchase, then it’s it’s likely that they’re looking for product information. They’re coming back to buy something, how does this change? video strategy? How have you seen it change video strategy about like, what what the smaller slices look like, you know, what the mission is? Etc?
Andrew Levy 27:05
Yeah, I mean, I think it is all about knowing your audience, right. And depending on the size of your business, you know, really determined how many audiences that you’ll even have, right? If you’re a small business, you should have one audience. And it should be really specific, right? You could argue that even at like a young startup shouldn’t even be thinking about more than 100 types of businesses or 100. Businesses one type. So Right. And so you’re learning that language of that group who you serve, with passion, and you should know that group. And you should speak in their language and their acronyms. And so, you know, I don’t know that it necessarily changes the slices of the videos, but it changes how you’ll create those anthems which ultimately affect what cuts off those anthems into this group. And then, of course, it gets more complicated. As you become a bigger, more mature business, and you’re looking at different verticals and different customer groups. But I think at the end of the day, what’s important is, knowing who you’re serving, and what you want to say to that group. And then, at the end of the day, being as authentic as possible when you do those things, like, hopefully that answers your question, but what we found is a great business is true to their identity, true to their mission really represents why they exist really well. And then does that in a way that their audience speaks, you know, in the language of their audience. And, and that’s where it really can shine is if you’re authentic in the language of the group that you’re speaking to.
EJ Brown 28:45
Sure. So something we haven’t talked about, like, do you predominantly work with us based businesses? Or do you have more of a global spread?
Andrew Levy 28:55
Right? We’ve done everything but right now, Ter majority is a good amount of global businesses, but they’re headquartered in the US.
EJ Brown 29:05
Gotcha. Okay. But if they’re global businesses headquartered in the US, and they’re, they’re targeting global audiences, then are they creating different content, depending on who they’re targeting? Or where they’re targeting? Or do you see it as the same brand message that goes out everywhere? Like we think about this a lot, obviously, like, fast growing has a global customer base. And so like, one thing we have to always be considerate about is, are we using language that’s that somebody that’s not from the US is going to understand and making sure that we always stay as simple as possible and not use idioms, etc. I think we’re still trying to figure out to like, does this message hit home in the same way for our customers or our prospects in Eastern Europe as it does to companies that we talk to in the US and that’s just part of our Our search, you know, is making sure that our global message still has some local flavor to it. So I’m curious if you’ve, if you’ve run into this and what it looks like for you,
Andrew Levy 30:10
for sure, what we recognize is that themes are global. Sparks or missions are, why you exist. Those are all global ideas, but you cannot just hit Google Translate and expect that to work. Like nuance is very different around the world like, so I don’t have like a cheat code here. Like, we’re talking to someone local and helping us figure out what the nuances and how to represent this theme in the way of that local community. Because like I said, you know, the theme resonates my special AFLAC duck or family or relationships or those ideas, that is universal, but the way that you represent that idea, definitely changes for community. And I think it’s just important to talk to someone locally and get to know that community as best as possible.
EJ Brown 31:05
So do you help with local video campaigns or regional video campaigns?
Andrew Levy 31:11
So in AD pipe, what we do is help maximize the value of video, and so the video exists and we help bring it to life. You know, what we will do is translate those videos. So like, that’s where we are most hands on is like, here’s one piece of content, we want to translate this and use in many different communities. So that’s, that’s how we can be impactful in that way.
EJ Brown 31:36
Makes sense?
Andrew Levy 31:37
Yeah. You asked a question earlier, I can’t remember exactly the way that you phrase it. But you talked about I think your your three parts question was like tips, how you COVID stories? And I think the third part was like, Was it like challenges ahead? Or …
EJ Brown 31:50
Yeah, forecasting the future of how people will consume videos, right. So a little bit of context of this, you know, as somebody that once again, expanding what it means to be a content marketer or a content strategist, there’s been this warning that what was the I don’t remember what the statistic was that 80% of the content that people consume online will be video by a certain date or something?
Andrew Levy 32:21
I think it’s already 82% right now.
EJ Brown 32:23
Yeah, there you go. So we, you know, we’ve had this warning that we need to start investing more and more in videos. And I don’t think anybody really predicted what that would look like, we didn’t predict Tik Tok, or, you know, like the 1015 second clips, and what that means to try to condense down a message to something that short for instance, what are you seeing about the way that the direction that video is being consumed or utilized that is still ahead of us?
Andrew Levy 32:58
Well, storytelling is not going anywhere, take a step back and rest easy there, the importance of beginning, middle and end will continue. Sure. Short Form is definitely critical. Like I said, in the crumb, top of funnel in the newsfeed era, although you know, tick tock is just expanded their time to 10 minutes. So like, there are definitely exceptions to that rule. And we’re seeing that across the board. That said, longer form is still extremely critical. And I don’t see that going anywhere, you know, you need short form to get people hooked in and long form for them to get to know you. And it’s really like a relationship, even if you’re a business, you know, you should be informative. And you should also be funny, and you should also be there as a caring resource in tough times. Like, that’s what a friend does. And that’s what a business can do for you as well. I think the most interesting thing about future trends that no one’s talking about, at least directly, is that, you know, I mentioned the status, 720,000 hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every day. And you can imagine the mountain of content that’s sitting, it’s like a trillion videos on YouTube or something like that. Almost all of it is horizontal, yet almost the feet, all the future of distribution is vertical. So that is an interesting challenge for us as people looking to maximize the value of video because basically, the wealth of videos horizontal in the future of distribution is vertical. And so it is a different shape. And we’re going to have to reengineer our existing video to fit the new platform. And for me, that’s, I think, a big opportunity. I think it’s a big challenge for businesses who need to convert their entire library. And I’m excited about it. Honestly, I think it’s interesting to me and I it’s something that I want to tackle over the next couple of years.
EJ Brown 34:55
Yeah, so quasi-religious. Well, no related to that, but If I were to FastSpring, I was I was working as a health writer for a small digital magazine. And we were too small to get to the point where our stories could have links in them and Instagram. And they just opened it up now where everybody can have links in their stories. And it was just this huge opportunity. Now, to get all of a sudden Instagram went from being this platform, there was only brand awareness to something that could get people to our site. I know LinkedIn is also doing the same thing now where it’s on the horizon that you can link directly from videos and images to your site. But I guess I’m thinking about two things at once. One is this like new possibilities for video content to be clickable and what that means, as opposed to somebody just watching it that interactive component, but also what you’re saying is like, for any given video, you might have something that appears on the feed and something that appears in the story and something that appears in an ad? And how do you create something for all these different types of visual placements?
Andrew Levy 36:09
Yeah, I mean, one interesting way to look at it is one, creating that consistency across the channels that you’re gonna own. Right, here are the channels that we’re going to work on, we’re going to leverage a tool or a team to create consistent communication for objectives across these channels. So we’re doing that let’s say you’re posting one or two, or three, or four or five times a week across these channels. And then, which may seem obvious, but I know a lot of brands are struggling to keep up to go back and do this, actually go back and see what performed the best until you post. And let’s rank our posts and say, here are the top five, take those top five posts, add a call to action and turn them into ADS. Because the algorithm is telling you of the things that you talk about. This is what we liked the best. And now you’ve already basically tested your paid ads, and said, I know that organically these work, I’m gonna maybe shorten it or I’m gonna put a call to action on in our player logo on it, you can just manipulate it just a little bit to make it repackaged into an ad and then put it right back into market. And you can do that every month. Right? And you can give for free a reading on what is going to work and it does work. And it worked really well.
EJ Brown 37:37
Nice. Yeah, that’s great. I think it also just not just with those individual clips, but I think there’s this overall, like, are you thinking about what the trends and the themes are that are resonating? That’s part of I think your message that instead of just seeing this as something that you use once and forget about, not only can you slice it up and use this content multiple times, but the content represents themes and stories that we can be thinking about is part of the larger brand message, and how learning more about our customers or prospects through what they’re engaging with thinking about it in a strategic way.
Andrew Levy 38:14
And I think authenticity is like the most important thing they’re like, like if you feel and I mean this extremely literally, if you feel authentic, doing a dance with captions coming up to represent an idea of your brand, like it will work. But I promise you, this audience will see if it is not them, they will not interact, right. So just because something’s trending on tick tock doesn’t mean that it’s authentic for you. But it might be right, you might be inspired to do something unique and off the cuff. Because, oh, I think that will be fun, I would really enjoy doing that. And that feels like something that is something I can do and authentic. Great, go for it do the trending thing on TikTok. But every single day within reels or TikTok, or any of these platforms, what always works is authenticity. Right? What always shines through is like someone being really themselves and showing some honesty and talking about their brand and a unique way. Like that always work. So what I would say is like, don’t just copy what’s trending and unless it feels authentic, but if it does lean in and go for it over and over and over again.
EJ Brown 39:22
No, that’s great. I think that’s a great place to end on. Also, I think you might not think something is as meaningful until people start to engage with it more. Maybe it was something that felt so normal to you when you’re creating it, but it hits home in a different way for the people watching it.
Andrew Levy 39:42
Exactly. And you gotta be you need to analyze what works and what doesn’t, but not with vanity and not with insecurity. Like if a post flops, it doesn’t matter. Keep going right? The thing that I think is so interesting is when a post flop It’s so painful but the reality is no one saw it. Right? Because it didn’t get any legs. So like, you’re the only one who knows that one flop. Just keep going.
EJ Brown 40:09
Sure, yeah, as a content creator that definitely resonates just that. That fear of failure, just put it out there and learn from it and nobody’s going to judge you for one specific piece. No matter what,
Andrew Levy 40:23
they’re not going to judge you at all. Really? They’re just looking for value from
EJ Brown 40:26
you. Sure. Awesome. Well, thanks for the insights. Any last thoughts you want to leave people with?
Andrew Levy 40:35
Um, I enjoyed this a lot. I think this is fun. You know, just use video. Like if there’s a communication that you have, make it deal with motion.
