How to Work with a Video Agency

And welcome back to Video Days 2024, the annual event for everyone doing video. I can't believe we're already halfway through day two. My name is Amelia. For people who are just tuning in, I work here at 23 as head of community marketing and part of the marketing team. But during yesterday and for today, I will be presenting as your host. And hopefully together we will be able to take our video game to the next level. So I'm very proud to say that this is the fifth year in a row we are bringing everyone together to share and learn. And we've got an amazing lineup for you of eight sessions with 17 speakers. So please stay on with me so you can enjoy it live. Otherwise, you can also catch the sessions on demand. Video Days is hosted and organized by 23. Our video tools are used by marketers. Anything from growth companies to some of the largest enterprise companies in the world to do video and webinars. 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So remember to stay tuned for that as well. But without any further ado, next up, we are going to talk about how to work with a video agency. So next up, we have video agency founders, John Moed. And Nick De La Force revealing the dynamics behind a great client-agency relationship. These innovative agencies are changing the game in creativity, efficiency, and client collaboration. So how should you or how should your company work with these video agencies to really make sure that you maximize your value? And first up, to give us their tips, we have... John Moed, who's tuning in from the UK. John is the founder of the video agency Hurricane, who have worked with AXA, Huawei, and the World Health Organization. And he even wrote the book on video marketing. So he's somewhat of an expert. And if you think I'm joking, he literally wrote the book on video marketing. I think it's now available in six languages. So remember to keep an eye out for this one. Hi, John. How are you doing? Hi, I'm good. Thank you for the introduction. That's very kind. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's good to see you waving the book around. You get extra points for that one. Did you actually know that I have a copy? Well, I knew there was a copy in the building, but I'm touched. That's great. Thank you. Definitely. We're so excited to hear from you and get some tips and tricks from the agency side of things on how companies work. I think there are a lot of things that are unspoken and that we haven't necessarily addressed. And all those things that you realize after you've gone through a project that would have been nice to know going into the project. But yeah, the screen is all yours. So I think if you're ready, then the screen is yours. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think what's going to happen here is, thank you very much for the introduction. I think Nick and I are going to sort of bounce. Between us and come up with some thoughts. But I think probably before we go too much further, it's like how to work with a video agency, right? What do we actually mean by video agency? Because let's get that definition right. Because there's lots of things you can do as a brand. You can work directly with freelancers who are going to be camera people, editor people. And you tell them what you want, and they will do it for you, right? And there's hundreds of those. And it's quite a cheap, cost-effective way. Then there's production. And again, you give them a brief and they will make great content. And that tends to be a bit more organized. But I think what we're talking about today is the new breed of agency, a video agency, which is what Hurricane is. It's what Nick's company is. And these agencies are interested in strategically how you implement video across the sales funnel. Where are you in the sales funnel? What kind of video are you going to need? Yes, we do make videos, but also we do the paid media around it. So it's like, it's starting to move video from a straight production house into a much wider, more holistic thing. And I think the, you know, I think one way I've heard this put is, you know, there used to be website agencies, and they became digital agencies. But very much video agencies are starting to stand up there as a standalone part of your marketing. So that's the first thing is understand who you're talking with. It's to understand what you need. If you need a quick video made, you're going to use a freelancer. If you need a bigger brand film made, you're going to need a production company. But if you're looking to integrate proper content across the sales funnel and really start to integrate everything, you're going to use a video agency. So I think that's probably where I would start. And then I think what we were going to do today is me and Nick, we're going to talk you guys through some of the financial aspects and practical aspects. You know, so that kind of review tools. Some very fundamental. Sort of fundamental things. But maybe I should let Nick introduce himself as well. And we can take the conversation from there, Nick. Sounds good. Hi, everybody. Sorry I was muted there. My name's Nick. I run a company called VidZero. John and I are flipping the script a little bit. I don't think Amelia was expecting us both to be on stage at once. So we're keeping 23 on their toes. But, yeah, like John says, it's a really brave new world out there. And I don't think people are used to working with video agencies. They're used to working with a traditional production company, a one-off videographer. And it's exciting space for people because I think a lot of organizations are tearing their hair out about how to keep up with video, how to use it in what they do. And I think video agencies like ours are in a really unique position not only to just produce stuff for people, which is what people are used to. I think it's where a lot of the frustration lies. They don't know how to describe what they want. We can kind of bridge that gap and help them. And without them having to work with multiple agencies to get one thing. So, yeah, really excited to have the conversation. And we are very excited to have you here. I'm sorry. I just have to make sure that Nick gets sent off or, you know, built up just as well as you did, John. So, Nick, you're also tuning in from the UK. Lovely to have you here. The two of you guys are friends of the house and have been for a while. Now, Nick, we know that you are a great brand storyteller. You're a video producer. You have worked with a multitude of brands. I cannot list them all because we will be here for days. When you worked with Shootsta. Previously, you've also done incredible work captivating video content and visual narratives for Microsoft and Apple. And, yes, now you have broken out and started your own journey with your own video agency, VidZero. And we are so excited to hear more about your journey and project. So, just to make sure that you are leveled up with John here, I just needed to come in and make sure that we could set you in the scene a little bit. But the two of you have a great time. Take it away. And I'll come back in the end for a little bit of Q&A from the audience because I'm sure the curiosity is going to be booming. Cool. Thank you very much. Great. Sorry, Nick. I stole your intro there. I do apologize. So, maybe we should start with commissioning, right, Nick? If you think that's a good place to start. Because I think for me there's when do you get people involved? And I think my first big tip is probably by the time you've got a written brief, it's maybe a little bit too late, right? Because for me, the sooner you can get to know an agency, the better, even if you don't have an active project on. Because I think what you're looking for, what I would be looking for is if I was a brand client, with someone that's going to help with the strategic side of things, understanding all your needs across the whole sales funnel. You know, awareness, advertising, media. You know, marketing, advertising, mid-funnel consideration and conversion. So, it's like it's much better to get an agency in earlier, even just an introduction. What do we do? How does it work? So, I think my number one thing is probably get them in sooner than you think because they can help you run a brainstorm. They can help you run messaging sessions. And to be honest, I don't know about you, Nick, but our agency doesn't really charge for that initial introductory work because it's like it's a relationship building. And you can get loads of cheap, if not free value from agencies like ours. Just to pick our brains. Does that sound about right? Absolutely. I'm in a very similar boat. I believe in starting the process as early as possible. And not just as someone who runs an agency, but from my previous life and client side. I know just the mad rush that a lot of companies who look incredibly organized from the outside can be going through every time they commission work. What you tend to find is when people want to go and commission a video, what they do is they commission it. Three weeks, four weeks before they actually need it. And then what that does is it decreases the agency's ability to be able to produce the best possible piece of content. So, I reckon just like John was saying, instead of waiting until you know you have something due in four weeks, is most organizations are forecasting what they're going to do for marketing to a degree. What they're going to do internally as they communicate throughout the year. They'll have a business plan. And if you can get an agency involved at the beginning of a financial year. Or however long it is you set out that business plan. It can be so beneficial. Even starting your discussions as John says with different agencies to see who fits that bill. And best understands that vision you have for your business. Bringing people in way, way earlier in the process before you need to hit go on one single piece of content that's going to get published to every bit of socials you have or your website. It can be so beneficial for your business. Yeah, I think the worst thing for us is someone coming in and saying, hey, I want this kind of film. And it's got to do this. And I've got X thousand pounds or thousand euros. And there's nowhere near enough money. So, what we've done is they've wasted all their time developing an idea and a brief which they can't afford. And then we have to have a horrible conversation where we have to redo everything. And everyone's unhappy because they feel like they're not getting what they've got the money for. Have the conversation earlier. Be open and transparent about what budgets you've got up front. And then it's just much easier. And I think my one, I don't know where you stand on this, Nick. I think marketing teams feel if they don't share the budget with an agency, they're going to get a better value. It just doesn't work. So, what happens is if you say I've got 20,000 euros for a film. So, if you say you don't have a budget, we as a company have to guess. So, we're going to come up with an idea for 10, 20, and 40,000 euros. So, two of those ideas are instantly gone because either you can't afford them or they're not good enough. So, you're wasting our brain power and you're wasting your time. So, if you just say to a company I've got 20,000 euros but I would like to see a cheaper option and maybe one that just tops it out, we can spend all our efforts giving you three ideas that you can afford to choose from. So, yeah, don't be afraid to tell people your budget. And, yes, we will spend it because it's your budget. But if you tell us it's a bit lower and keep 10% in reserve, that works as well. But, Nick, you've probably been frustrated in the same way by that, haven't you? Yeah, it happens a lot. Because I think people have very high expectations. And there's this perception that people have out there that you can achieve cinematic quality, let's say. And I know that's an amorphous term. But you can achieve cinematic quality for 500 quid and a guy with one camera or 500 euros and one camera. So, it's really good to get an understanding of what you have to spend so that we can best guide you through. That's not to say somebody can't achieve something for you with 500 pounds, 500 euros, $500. But it's going to be a very different process. And it's going to be a product and not necessarily look like a Christopher Nolan film with that amount of budget. So, it's really good to have an idea. And it's something I go through frequently. And sometimes when we're making that gauge, I think, it's very easy for me to look at your organization. For example, I've been talking to charities recently. And it's very easy for me to look at a small charity run by one or two people and think you don't have much money and maybe budgets for something that's on a YouTube budget. Only to find out then later on because you've kept it a secret that there are actually thousands more pounds or dollars or euros to spend that could have achieved a better result for you. Or a different result closer to perhaps what your original vision was aligned with. So, being open and honest with agencies isn't going to make people want to rip you off. But it's going to help agencies get you, I think, the best possible result if I'm honest. Yeah. Perfect. I completely agree. And also, I think the same goes with media. I think there used to be a time when you would tell a production company what you wanted. They'd make it. And then you'd either put it out on your organic channels or you would get a media buying agency to put it out on social paid. And what a video agency will do is we'll do the planning. We'll do the production. And most importantly, we'll do the media buying and the activation. And that's so much better because it means that we can immediately see what's working, what isn't. We can adapt the creative. We can update the copy. So, being upfront and going, right, I've got this. I've got X money for production. But then I've also got this media buying budget, media spend budget. These are the channels I need to hit. Like, that is the way to do it to start pulling it all together for sure. 100%. Yeah. I think this becomes very interesting as well. When you've got different people working on different aspects of a project, there's nothing inherently wrong with working with multiple agencies as a business. And sometimes, particularly for a larger organization, you have to. But this is something I ran into a lot. I ran into previously at my role in Microsoft was that there were so many different agencies working on some projects that it became really, really difficult. The way they set this up, unfortunately, is that everybody felt they were competing with each other to some degree and that they could actually be doing some of what the other agency was doing. And what it did is it actually ended up working detrimentally for Microsoft because the information didn't flow quick enough. With one person choosing something, another agency choosing something. Another agency editing something. And then another agency posting that online for them and then monitoring metrics. It becomes really difficult to track how things are performing. So setting agencies up if they're going to be working together in a way where there is a free flow of information but then also in a way where they don't step on each other's toes I think can be really beneficial as well because otherwise the process can be really convoluted. Yeah. That's a lovely segue, Nick. Straight into the next topic on the stage. How do you actually make the projects work right? So we've got our agency on board early. We found the right partner. Maybe we were done on RFP. We treated everybody well. We've committed it. But how do we get that project running smoothly? And I think maybe we should cover a few of those tips. I think for me the big one is it's all about that initial planning phase. And we can talk about that. And I think a red flag for any agency if you're working with an agency is if they're not focused on that plan, if they're jumping straight into the execution and they're talking about cameras and lenses, they should be talking about that. They should be talking about KPIs and goals and those kind of things. But then we've got that planning thing. But then maybe we could then chat more about, like, how do you actually run the project? Because there is all sorts of problems with multiple stakeholders and things. But should we do that first bit first? How do we start this project? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a huge it sounds really obvious, but there's something to be said for just creating clarity for absolutely everybody involved. And just sitting down and having a chat almost like this, maybe not with quite as large an audience, but having a chat in this sort of format or in person and just laying out exactly what needs to be exactly what needs to be achieved and figuring out how people are going to work together straight up at the beginning. A lot of people dive straight into execution without perhaps outlining who is going to be responsible for what when you've got this multi-agency situation. And I think you can. You can name it. You can mitigate so much of that by giving full thought to the planning process and having a really sort of robust planning structure there right at the beginning of any either long term working relationship or individual projects. Yeah. And the same goes for internal, doesn't it? I think one of the biggest problems we find is we come up with an idea for, say, with the marketing director, and then the CMO will cast his eyes over it or her eyes over it, and it will get signed off. Then we go further down production. And then it goes to. Maybe only to find out that that person has got different plans. And that then becomes expensive. It turns it means everything's delayed. So right at the beginning, making sure we know who the stakeholders are. You know who the stakeholders are. Who's got final sign off in pre-COVID. We actually used to have a document where the person with the ultimate sign off had to have their name at the bottom of the document so that if anyone senior came along afterwards, we could say, Yeah, where do you come from? You know. Knowing who is actually really holding the reins on it is very important. So before you even start, who's going to be signing off of this kind of thing? Because it will make it so much easier. And then you move into production. Right. And I think once you've got it all signed off, I think there's lots of ways that you can make things easier when working with an agency. The big one is amends and reviews. You know, a good agency will do your storyboard. They'll shoot the storyboard. They'll give you round one. We tend to upload our footage onto Frame.io, which means that the client can see it. They can all comment on it. Everyone can put their you can type in what's wrong with it, what you want to change. And that really simplifies the process. But Nick, you probably come across the same thing like five spreadsheets, 10 emails coming in with amends from different people. It quickly turns into a mess. So how do you strike? How do you streamline that? One of the biggest things I actually look at the very beginning before I even look at the physical amends themselves is actually what tech platforms are being used. What I've found with a few projects recently is the difference between, say, people who work on a Google structure, a team structure or two separate teams from the same company. One's using Google, one's using teams. So just actually aligning on what tech platform you're going to use to share all this stuff. Once it starts getting to videos and as you say, the footage, you can review that on Frame.io. We use that, too. It's wonderful. The personal video feature on 23. I don't mean to plug out hosts. I see. Really useful. It's a really useful tool as well. And I've used that to sort of send messaging and you can comment on videos on that, too. But yeah, I have frequently run into run into situations where just there's tech clashes and difficulties with people getting getting reviews of things back and forth. Cool. So I'm just thinking through why they've commissioned it. You know, we planned it. Yeah. We've talked about filming and things. I suppose there's always a concern. I think what happens if it goes wrong? Right. And I mean, a well run plan, an agency shouldn't go wrong, but there might be something goes wrong on the day. And I think for me, it's like you should have a phone number of someone senior at the agency that you're working with that you could have a back channel conversation with. I think that's a really useful thing. You know, you should have you should have a single point of contact that should be your producer. But that person will either have an exec or an MD like myself. And, you know, I think having a good relationship with all the levels of people in that company in the agency are a good thing. I, you know, I'm probably not likely to not talk to many clients on a day to day basis, but I am there if they ever want a phone. And it's very rare for me to get a phone call. But it tends to be an internal politics thing at the client end or, you know, there's got some crisis there they need to manage. But things can go wrong. And it's how quickly a good agency will adapt. And you also, I think clients have to be aware of, you know, an agency's needs. You know, an agency's busy. We've got other clients. So it's like, what is the problem exactly? And how can we work together to fix it? Yeah, absolutely. Look, it's oftentimes it's oftentimes very simple stuff, which is just gaps in communication or people not understanding bits of communication. I think more often than not, I think we're on a smaller scale than than Hurricane. We're at a much earlier point in our business. So it's just myself and a couple of other people because we're at that much smaller scale. Everything tends to be with me anyway. But from, I guess, working in sort of larger organizations where sort of with larger agencies, so like the Ogilvys of this world, when this stuff's happened, having one decision maker, one key sort of endpoint who can give the final kind of decision on both sides can be really critical. Both agency side and client side. So if you're sort of, you know, a chief marketing officer or a marketing manager watching this kind of thing and being able to send a project off and say this person has ultimate sign off for me. Who will have ultimate sign off? And making that really clear for everybody involved at the very beginning. So everybody knows who to look to, who's going to give the final OKs and yeses and noes can be so beneficial because otherwise things can become cloudy. And even internally for you within your organization, if you haven't set that out, you might assume because you initiated a project that everyone's going to assume you have final sign off. But it can get to a stage really late in the game where your agencies are sitting there going, tapping their fingers on the table, tapping their toes while you're trying to figure out internally. Who needs to sign off on what and who is responsible, say, for brand approvals? What's allowed to go on socials and what's not? And it sounds really obvious, but I've seen this frequently happen where suddenly all of a sudden multiple stakeholders pop up internally because it wasn't aligned at the beginning of the project. Cool. While you were talking there, I thought about ways that people would actually get extra value out of agencies, which maybe as an agency, which shouldn't be offering to give away. You know, if you are looking. I think the two things that an agency that you have, things that we do. Firstly, we do lunch and learns with marketing teams where probably me or one member of the team will go in and do a free training session over a lunchtime about why video works, how the sales funnel works, you know, whatever the new thing, new tech platforms, maybe a deep dive into what 23 can do. It's like asking your agencies to come and give you free kind of oversight. So I think it's a really good way of not only you learning. But also. Understanding their capabilities. And then the other thing I would suggest if you have a good agency is ask them just to do a review of everything you've got going on, how you're hosting, you know, obviously, again, we're mentioning our host today, the 23 platform. Would that be do well for you? How are you doing webinars? How is your social? Is it on form? It's like, don't be afraid just to come and go that you're working on this project. Come and just give me a free like insights on this, because again, you'll get. You'll get lots of value out of that, I think. So where to take it next, Nick? 100%. I just want to make a point on that, though. You're 100% right. And it's not about agencies competing with each other and seeing if they can sell you a platform and stuff. But sometimes an external point of view can really help in aligning what it is you're doing and what you're communicating. I think moving on, though, as you mentioned, John, because we've got sort of limited time. We've spoken about obviously the production process. We've spoken about sort of decision making and setting up a robust sort of planning chain at the beginning. And then talking through post production as well and who's responsible for giving what feedback. I think the other big part of things for me, which we focus on a lot, is looking at how projects perform and being able to help our clients analyze how things work and how they don't. We find that a lot of people, when they commission video particularly, when they jump into video projects, they often look at sort of the vanity metrics that you hear about on social media a lot and not at, and you sort of alluded to this earlier, John, not at the tangible business goals they're trying to achieve. So instead of marketing managers looking at direct conversion into sales, they're often metricing themselves on how well a piece of content they've had produced has done on a platform. How many views it's had on a website, something like that. If they're publishing it on social media, if we're talking about social content, because there's so many different types of content that we can discuss. But if it's going on to socials, then how many likes it has, how many comments and how many interactions it has. But you can have a huge blast on social media, publish something on Instagram and have a viral video that doesn't convert into sales for your business or doesn't actually drive the business forward. And so it's really good to think about how you're going to how you're going to analyze the performance of your product. What how you do it so that the advertising salience, metrics, our views and all the rest of it. But often when you talk to people, they start with the brand building exercise, but actually it's a response ad, right? In which case the metrics are sales. So right at the beginning, are we doing brand building? Are we doing a response ad? Are we doing a brand response campaign? Are we doing something that is just sitting on site to drive SEO and drive conversions? And Nick, in our chat beforehand, you mentioned, I think, a way you do all this, but my thing I always talk about is a spork, right? A spork is a spoon and a fork, and it's rubbish spoon and a rubbish fork. And there is a temptation for a video to be an awareness getting sales tool, a mid funnel conversion, some kind of bottom of funnel converter tool. It's like, it's too much. It's like, yes, a campaign can do that, but actually your video, individual video, is gonna be top of funnel, mid of funnel, bottom of funnel. It's gonna be a social volume thing. And it's like, I think really understanding what you're trying to get out of it and not doing too much with the video makes it a much better video. It's a much more successful tool. I couldn't agree more. I think just clarity of purpose is so, so key. And it's that, it reminds me of that phrase, Jack of all trades, master of none. And it can apply to pieces of content as well. A piece of content can have so much messaging stuffed into it that it actually doesn't satisfy any of the needs of any of the different parts of your business because nobody knows which thread to follow within the content. becomes quite confusing for viewers. And one of the dangers I think that you see in a lot of the planning phases, and it's something I'll often put my hand up about and sort of say, look guys, we're getting too close to this, is that things are so driven by committees, particularly with larger organizations. Decisions are so driven by committees of people from different departments that everybody wants their messaging to be the overall, the higher purpose of a piece of content, the chance to sort of surface through in the storytelling and the content, because they want everything stuffed into it. And when everybody walks into a room and they're all set on that, and they all have this expectation, then it can be very difficult to change their minds. And it's something that we frequently have to deal with, or stand in front of a room full of people. You've got HR over here, you've got the marketing team here. You might have the CEO or CTO and to say to them, look guys, we've got to strip this back. Just have a very clear, concise message. And it scares them because they feel like, why are we paying all this money if you can't have every single person in this room's message stuffed into this video? And sort of explaining to people, no, my job is to actually filter a lot of that out and to give you the best possible product, which is going to be clear for your customers. That can be tough for a lot of them to hear when they fought to be in the room in the first place. Exactly, and I think that's why our approach to how we get around that is we kind of have So in a messaging session where everyone's piling in with that, we will have a so what written on the board. And it's like, we've got one film which is like, it's got a very, very pure purpose. It's just to do this. But then underneath that film, we will do longer edits. We'll do a version for HR film. We'll do a version for them using very similar content but slightly different messaging so that everybody, as you said, all the different departments get the tools they need, but it's not all smushed into one 120 second film that no one's ever going to watch or have control of. There's a 30 second brand film, then each department will get its own tool as well. So I'm glad we're not the only one who comes across that. But yeah, clarity, I think you said clarity of purpose is exactly right, exactly the way to do it. How long do we have, Nick, by the way? I lost the time. How much longer we got? It's 2.36. I think we've got about 10 more minutes before we wrap up. Oh, yeah, yeah, great. So I suppose the question is, where do we go now in terms of helping people that are watching with getting the best out of agencies? I think it's definitely about the plan. It's about getting on with people. It's about open communication. But I suppose if you've got any case studies, Nick, of when it's gone well or not well, I suppose that's always useful. I think for me, the biggest example was one I alluded to before during a campaign at Microsoft. It was called Xbox Fan Fest. I don't know if I should be. naming it, but I will. It was one of the biggest activations in the Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia market for the year. I think it was about 2016 I worked on this. And it was an epic activation over the course of a week with huge amounts of content, live streams, a physical festival that took over the busiest shopping street in Sydney. So it was a big, big thing. And it did require a lot of agencies to be present and a lot of agencies to be doing different things. But when they made the mistake, where they got it wrong is during the decision-making process, there wasn't a clear vision for it. And there wasn't that clarity of purpose for what they were trying to achieve. And so different parts of the business were all chasing different things. The retail business who hosted it, who put it on in the Microsoft store, were all about trying to drive Xbox packages and sales of Xboxes with limited edition controllers. Xbox, the actual brand itself who do the devices, were thinking about how do we plug them in? So happens to be it. Rest careful. And so, the idea of getting your device were like that. the lack of clarity in the process internally. And I think one of the most impactful sort of decisions I've ever seen made is even though this was a hugely successful campaign that won awards and drew people in from all over the region, they cancelled it and they didn't do it again because of the amount of money they had to throw at it to get it right. And because it was just such a headache to run internally and cause so much of a clash. And I think it can, don't underestimate the experience is essentially what I'm trying, creating something. We're here as agencies, I think, to help people to be focused and to have a clear process and to have that clarity of purpose. But if you've got five different agencies all competing and trying to get you to have clarity focused in different directions, because they're perhaps tied by different departments within your organisation, it can be very difficult to sort of have that clear vision. And then even if you have a successful campaign or a successful series of videos or single piece of content, whatever that might be, it can be very difficult to want to do that again after sort of a negative experience with this sort of stuff. So that would be my little cautionary, my two minute cautionary tale based on previous experience and seeing how things could go wrong. I wasn't in charge of that project. I was but a mere stakeholder within it. I should hasten to add actually, because it makes a big difference. Cool. And then finally, I think it's rare for us to sit on a call with so many brands and also some other agencies. I think it might be worth covering how, like, you would expect an agency to treat you very well, right? We make sure we try and meet our clients really well. But it's like, I think it's good for clients to understand how to treat that brand agency well, as well, because then you get a long running, because you don't want to find the right agency and actually just annoy them or do not credit quite right. And there's a bit of friction and it drifts apart. I think there's a few sort of bits of best practice of how you can treat your agency, right? And I think keeping up regular communication, if it's going well, or if it's not going well, is really important and being honest, you know, this kind of radical candour kind of approach, like, I really like that. Don't be afraid to get them on the phone. So I really like that. I really didn't like that. I think that's important. But just going back to the beginning, I think we're finding at the moment that tenders are typically for us in the UK. I worked in the rest of Europe, it's best practice to ask three agencies to tender for your project, right? Maybe four if one of them is an incumbent. So you've got an idea, you've had the budget allocated, and then you're going to ask two or three, maximum three agencies. We have been involved in some recently and found out that we're one of 12 or 13 agencies to be done. Really what that's doing there is each agency is probably putting 10 hours of work into that pitch, maybe 20 hours. So hundreds of hours are going being spent in the marketplace, supporting us and opening up other organisations for us which we can be monitored, better support us day to day. And so, it's really looking for something as Squadfilter Buttercup Chris to each other and just understanding that agencies are working very hard to give the best for you but you know try not to speak to too many at the same time because it would just be a better relationship overall i think absolutely i would add to that that the tender process can be really interesting because as john mentions um there's a lot of work that goes into actually creating a proposal perhaps um some tenders that we've been through um the clients have wanted quite detailed plans of what will be created they want storyboards they want sample scripts that sort of stuff um so there's a lot of work that goes in it almost sort of forms part of the pre-production um for then these projects and i think for a lot of some smaller agency owners particularly um who i've spoken to and liaised with one of the sort of the bug bears for them is they start to um they start to sort of perceive that they're seeing their ideas surfacing in sort of other people's work perhaps um that's to say that the brands might be taking the storyboards that somebody else has submitted and they think um that perhaps sort of there is a finite pool and there's a lot of trust that goes into this process and i think that treating people as you want to be treated um and as you would expect them to treat you is a very very big thing i think for a lot of people they start to agencies start to be dehumanized after a while because they go through so many tenders so many pictures so many calls with the founder going hey i'm nick delaforce i guess i'm john moore and this is my agency this is our prior work and they start to dehumanize the people on the other end of that a bit without realizing that perhaps in a year and a half they could be working with that agency or one agency will speak to another because everybody knows each other and you'll start to get a bad reputation and people will be more cautious working with you um so there's a lot to be said for remembering those sorts of courtesies professional courtesies um maybe not reusing other people's work um or coming to some arrangement if you do um and i mentioned happily it hasn't happened to me but i'm hasn't happened to me, but I've seen this happen to a few people I know in the last six months, which is why it's sort of quite fresh in front of mind. So thinking about those things can be very key. Hey, Amelia. Hey, guys. How's it going? Yeah, we're chatting away. We're just having a lovely chat. It's great. Love to see you there. Yeah, I've been listening along. It's been absolutely great. I'm just tuning in here not to kill the conversation. I just want to make sure that our audience gets a chance to get some other questions answered because I know that there's a little bit of buzz happening in the chat. You guys have both touched on very important topics. And like I mentioned in the intro, also topics that maybe aren't talked about a lot and that people aren't necessarily aware of for getting into the process. But you guys have talked a lot about how to work with a video agency, some do's and don'ts. I'm curious, how does a company know when to approach a video agency? Because in my experience, a lot of companies that are quite mature with video, they also have an in-house studio. So do you guys have any tips to the people in the audience? How do you know when a project is outside the scope of your in-house team? Or how do you know? Is it either you do it in-house or you do it externally? Or can you mix and match? How does it work? How does that aspect of collaborating work? I think personally, for me and what I've seen, it can bounce quite a lot depending on the capacity of the in-house studio. But more importantly, internally within your organization, what is it that studio is for? What is that team being hired to do? They might be fantastic at shooting great videos, but they may not be experts at messaging. And it's not to disparage them, but it's because that's not what they've been hired for necessarily. And it's not their background. Sometimes, it just depends a lot. I know, for example, massive agency McCann has an in-house agency, an in-house video agency of their own. And they've got expert storytellers in there, for example. Whereas other organizations, even though they're communications organizations, might not. So I would look at what it is that studio is there for and what the strengths of those people are, and then decide based off that. Yeah. I mean, I think the same thing for me, it's like the reason that most people get a studio in-house is for in the nicest possible way churn volume you know fast turnaround webinars those kind of things where something happens you report it something happens you report it but as soon as something is more strategic it's it's a slightly different direction we need to influence a new market that's where you're going to get a video agency in and actually we we we would do consultancy with brands you've got in-house teams and we did help guide the direction and then if they don't have the capacity then we can we can add weight to that so it's like you can easily tell from capacity if you haven't got enough but nick was absolutely right are they storytellers are they brand messages do they understand paid media so once you start stepping out of your own organic channels on regular content maybe that's the time to to be looking exactly and i think also to your credit that's what sets the video agencies aside is that you also have the skills and knowledge to know what to do after you've actually created the video content and that you have to think of the content and the content itself and how do you capture the value from all this effort and all this budget that you've put into such a big project i know that there is another question i would like to bring up on screen we have a question from athena so it's a great question it's a great it's a great question uh yeah john you can start by uh because i just saw it before nick had a chance to read it i think um i mean yeah how would you balance getting a brief and being told what to do so you know how we go into a brand and they call us in and they say hey we want to do this this is a brilliant idea the ceo's wife saw this the other day and she thinks this you know those kind of you can get all of these kind of things um fundamentally for me is is it got sound strategic reasoning behind it the first thing i'll do is say it doesn't matter how weird that idea is what are you trying to plan what is the reason for this because suddenly that might make sense so before i go and correct anybody or start guiding them i need to understand why they're doing it um if it's a really good idea then we all just roll with it but actually it might be that it's slightly in the wrong strategic direction it's slightly not the right idea and we do that a lot and to be honest most good teams if you understand if you explain to them why it's not a good idea and normally comes down to budget if you do it like that it's going to cost 100 grand if you do it like this it's going to cost 10. i think it's the reason you get a good agency the people the reason people use us is because we give honest feedback we'll do what you want but we're not going to do it equally we did write a book on it so maybe you know maybe it's just like you ever listen to that so that that's very much what the way i would handle it yeah definitely nick do you have any inputs couldn't agree more ask why ask what they're trying to achieve um and just make sure that everything aligns with that and then give them the honest feedback about whether things we think things will work and then um if they say just do what you told we do as well because sometimes we just have to um but yeah couldn't agree one final thought it's like we as an agency would also go out to a dipping agency if necessary so we've got you know market research agencies that can test with 150 or a thousand people it's like if the idea doesn't sound like it's going to work but it could for you know 5 000 euros you can get it tested with an audience before you spend the 100 000 on the campaign so it's like if there's a really gray area you could start adding some actual qualitative or sorry quantitative data to that before you go ahead exactly and i think that's where you guys play a big role as experts because you're willing to ask those challenging and difficult questions that maybe hasn't come from the team internally and i think it's important for companies out there to realize that it's mutually beneficial for the success of the video project for both parties you guys also get a lot out of being able to refer back to a successful product project where the companies and the clients were happy with how everything evolved so it is a tough balance to you know encourage the projects and be positive but also you know be that kind of harsh voice to say hey we don't know if this is going to work we have to test it in order to deliver the best results for you um we have actually fired a client because they wouldn't listen i mean we just you know we're trying our best we're taking their money and we want it to work and they wanted to spend it in a way that was not going to work and we were like okay we can't take your money so they spent it with someone else and it was disaster so it's like you can't win everything right exactly but so important for uh clients to know that they can also be turned away because they might think that you know the customer is always right so i can come in here and do exactly as i please uh there is another question that is directed towards uh towards nick from uh diva dust yes there we go um nick uh i saw you partnering with h m big brand congratulations uh how do you go about uh contracting and closing such a big client um i've got to come clean on this one the h m thing on my website is a little bit of a poke at h m um because they actually used some of my work unlicensed on a product in stores um and so a photograph of mine got sold on t-shirts all around the world um and we didn't get paid for it so um i put that on there and i made a video about it as well i just thought it was a fun thing to have on there to say well look i've worked for h m even even if i didn't know about it so there was a whole back story to that um but more broadly how do you work with bigger clients and how do you um go about contacting them um there's lots of different avenues that you can go to to to to work with different like large companies and brands um what i'll often do is talk to people who i've met at events like the um 23 summit for example um and i've had some great introductions from events and in-person conversations um a lot of the time it is just reaching out to the right people within an organization and having an open and honest chat with them and saying here's what i think i could do for you here is perhaps where i see holes in your messaging um there are multiple avenues though and in your opinion who is the right person to reach out to because you guys talked earlier about stakeholders and that there are numbers uh of them and some way more than others but who's a good uh internal stakeholder to kind of be that first point of contact if you're coming from an agency perspective i mean i think it's the one that will talk to you and i know that sounds ridiculous but it's like the right person is the cmo but you're not going to get into the cmo so it might be a product director but it's it's it's whoever you meet first because if you are great and good at your job they will introduce you right so i think also remember that if you've got marketing director or sales director in your title you are drowning in cold emails and cold linkedin messages and like they're bombarded so it's like they're already drowning so it's the other routes in is actually more effective for you know one small idea to that the right person is the person who sees the need to change the messaging that's a much better way of putting it nick the person who's within the organization who needs something or wants something and oftentimes they'll you'll see the way they have just followed 16 video agencies on linkedin or something like that so you can kind of pick yeah they have some tellers yeah yeah that's great but thank you so much guys i think we have to start wrapping it up uh from this point on uh thank you nick for sharing your h m story i think it was a good example of that agency client relationship that uh you know we're striving to improve and make sure that it's better for both parties um thank you so much to uh the participants for engaging with some exciting questions uh thank you both nick and john for joining us uh i'm sure the participants will be able to find you on linkedin if they have any other questions or interested in any video uh agency work so see you guys very soon thank you so much thank you everybody so before we round off uh this session we have um another input for you because 23 is always here to challenge the status quo and together with some of the world's the world's leading video agencies we have developed the video agency model see the best video agencies out there understand that their clients live in a video first world and they are adapting to it to give you the introduction to the video agency model we have thomas mattson migdell ceo and co-founder of 23. please welcome him to the screen hi thomas thank you for being with us thank you so uh for the next few minutes i'll quickly introduce you to our recently launched video agency model we've worked with some of the world's best video agencies to develop it and it's fairly simple it's a name it's a competence model and it's a business model so let's get started the first thing is about the positioning and the naming of the category if you look to the left of your screen you have a lot of different names that people have been calling their agencies so you can imagine how confused the client would get about what they were going to purchase from if everyone are trying to define their very own little category of one agency agency categories move and converge when they agree on a common identity and a common understanding obviously with a little bit of a variety and a little bit of diversity in each agency's offering that keeps pushing the overall category and and the model forward so point number one is that we're seeing a big convergence around the term video agency so i encourage all of you to be demanding to buy something from a video agency and if you're an agency to use the term video agency instead of confusing your clients with with 20 different positioning statements that will only confuse them about what the difference is between a video marketing agency and a full service video agency and a video production agency or a video studio or a production company right you can you can imagine the confusion on the other side naming aspect if we look at competences and skills and and the service offering of the agency we see a lot of things the company needs to succeed with video and the actual video production the content just being one one out of eight they need support for their live events their webinar strategies etc they need help on gear for different types of environments they need studios built sometimes they need promotion of the content they already uh did they need to enable their team train people to be on camera train people to do things train on production etcetera they need a video team a team that can actually do it the video agents can also help advice on and strategize on and help higher and they need obviously the tooling and the software that we at 23 provide so if we look at it there's been this sort of gap that agencies have that agencies have mainly been producing videos, hence the term video production that was the old industry term, right? As non-strategic agency that would produce what the client needed. Obviously a challenge, obviously be a trusted advisor of the best agencies, but overall a positioning that only made the video agency or the video production company provide a very little tiny bit of what it actually means to succeed with video. So also creating a gap where companies say they want to buy it, all these different services, but the video production companies, because they're not positioned correctly, says the companies don't want to buy their services, but also formalizing all the services they actually are sort of ad hoc providing. So when the digital agencies in the 90s and the early 2000s came about, they came about because they had this free circle model of the free skill sets, the free competence models. It would even be the people they would hire that would come together in this convergence about technology being able to build things, design, being able to design things, and business being able to, well, advise on business and run a business and be client managers and actually work in a professional environment, right? So you can imagine an agency that would be able to cater to all these items suddenly became very symbiotic because they could move a lot of things that before were not integrated together. With the video agency, we've been developing this competence, this model of the creative production, both the production that you know, but also the elements of video so that the agents, that the company will use themselves, the formats, the templates, et cetera. So that's the overall creative production. We have the strategy, so the video strategy, the video plan, the webinar strategy, video enablement, overall kind of company vision about how you're going to move all your touch points and your customer journey to be video-based. And then lastly, the whole enablement side of all the things that needs, to be in place in an organization to work with video. And it's this convergence of these three different skill sets that we see as being the one that's going to drive the category going forward and the one that's going to move our maturity, both on the client side and the agency side, a lot ahead. Lastly, it's a business model because most agencies today, video production agencies sell projects. And that's obviously good, but it means they go for winning the big projects, now and then that's going to run the business for the next few months. It also means they have very little transparency on their revenue the next few months, so they can't really scale their business because they don't really have work much more than two or three months ahead of time. Also, it's not really the best model to be a client because you're just buying a thing. You're buying an output. You're buying some videos on one project. You're not buying a journey, a strategy, a collaboration. So we're seeing the shift to a retainer-based model where a company hires. an agency for a year or two on a fixed price commitment per month, for example, that will give you, you know, we don't necessarily even know what how you're going to use the hours six, nine months down the road, because perhaps you're doing a lot of production that month or you're doing a lot of enablement. You're doing a lot of strategy in different teams and different departments and different national, you know, regional settings in a big global organization. But you're buying a commitment, which also fosters an agency to be actually able to build their business, but also to think long term and being. A partner on the journey to build together with the agency. We build this model together with the agencies because at 23, we deeply believe in agencies. And the only way forward is to us to step up as agencies and see that whole partner channel develop, but also on the customer side to demand more and play people to their strengths because agencies are amazing catalysts of change because they see patterns and best practice across hundreds of customers that one single. Company can never see. We've open source all of it. And on 20 of the 23 website, if you either just Google for video agency model or the URL I have on screen for you here, you can find our video agency database. You can find all the slides. You can download our package with all the materials you can. You can put the video agency model into your own slides in your agency, and it's all open source for free to you to use. And we inspire everyone to keep developing and working on it. So. That's the video agency model. Good luck on your journey to become a video agency or hire a video agency.