Jon Mowat: The Strategy Behind Video That Drives Decisions

You spent 15 years at the BBC, founded Hurricane, wrote two books on video marketing translated into seven languages, and this is your third consecutive keynote at TwentyThree Summit. At this point, you're basically part of the furniture. It feels like it, and it's part of the family. It feels really nice. Definitely. How does it feel to be back? It's good for the soul to be back. Like genuinely, the TwentyThree family are warm, welcoming, you know, it's just nice to see you all again. But also, it's a rewarding experience, not only for, because I've had to learn so much to present on stage, because you've got to keep pushing it forward. But you learn from other people, and it's just like like-minded people coming and talking about lenses and just casually talking about audio mixes and stuff. It's just like, it's good. It's good for the soul. Like literally right now, before we started recording. We just did exactly that. Yeah, exactly. I love it. It's a place to be nerdy about video. Yeah, it's good for the industry. It feels great to be part of that. And it's good for me, because it's just a real real feeling. It's reaffirming that this is a good thing to do. And you've now given three keynotes here, right? So in 2024, you explored how video works psychologically. Last year, 25, you warned about what short form and AI were doing to attention. And this year, you're talking about designing video that drives decisions. So looking at this three years as a sequence, what's the story they tell and where is video heading? The trilogy. The trilogy. The trilogy, yeah. What is the story from the trilogy? I mean, I told them slightly out of order, but I think the first one would obviously be attention. We've got to get people's attention. How do we leverage that? How do we do it in a positive way rather than just rinsing people's souls? And then it was like, okay, we've got their attention. How do we then emotionally connect with people? Because if we can connect with them emotionally, they're more likely to change their behavior. And then the third part is like, okay, we've got their attention. They're feeling stuff. We actually, we do need people to decide to do things in our favor. Whether it's to buy stuff, if you're just selling stuff, but also just to engage, find out more, learn more, to take part, to become part of something. So everything we do is about trying to get people to decide something and just acknowledging that. And then looking at how a decision is made and then understanding, okay, if a decision is made like that and the psychology of it, this is how we can affect that psychology so that then people will decide. So yeah, it's a really good, I say it's a good trilogy, but I think they work quite well together. They work well together. What is the difference of a video that engages and a video that actually changes behaviors or influences someone on what to do? Okay. That's a big question. That's a big question. I think the, as producers, we're really good at making engaging films. We can make people start at the beginning and we can have a narrative arc and there's acts and, you know, all this sort of thing. But if it's not actually driving somebody to find out more, to buy, to take action, and they're just like, oh, that's cool. Then we're not doing our job. And I think. The really interesting thing for me about this whole thing is filmmakers meeting marketing. And I think there's a lot of filmmakers here and it's that it's the, it's the tie over with marketing. That's really important. So when you've got a film, which is just engaging, is it really delivering? And I think what we can find is like, what we've done is we've had somebody watch for five whole minutes and they watched the whole thing, but we've overcomplicated it. We've blown their mind with cognitive dissonance. They don't know what's going on. So they don't take action. Whereas if you've got a three minute film, that's really simple, lays everything out. It's a simple proposition. Then they do something. That's the difference, right? It's just an effective film. Makes sense. I could talk about that for hours. Yeah, at least for 45 minutes. At least 45 minutes till they run out of slides and then I'm done. Yeah. What is the one thing that a B2B video maker is almost certainly not thinking about when they want their video to drive decisions, but they should be doing? Okay. There's two things that B2B marketers particularly not getting right. One is the difference between differentiation and distinctiveness. And the other one, is simplicity. So if we do the first one, as companies, we all talk about why we're different. Normally the difference is our people make us different, which is what everybody says. So it's not different, right? And we have webinars, people have seminars and they do workshops and they come up with all these ways they're different. But actually, when you honestly look at it, almost all companies are the same, right? They're like 98% the same and there's a little difference here. And then they've got a blue banner and a square white logo and they're called boom, boom, boom. And it's the same thing. So they're not distinct. And I think B2B brands need to understand the difference between distinctiveness. As in we stand out, we're instantly recognisable, like the golden arches or the Nike whole idea. So I think B2B marketers need to get better at being distinct, leaning into their distinct brand assets, logos, colours, that kind of stuff. So there's that one. And then the other thing they're not doing is simplicity. They are hoping that if they just tell people enough, that person will go over the line and they're telling them too much. Yeah. And if you tell people too much, what they do is they pull them. They pull back, their brain goes, this is too much. They start reading and that's when they start looking at competitors and they start directly comparing you with other websites. And actually, if you hadn't bothered overcomplicating in the first place, they'd probably just buy you much sooner. So people need to chill out, just say less, say it more simplistically and they'll get better results. And that is completely counterintuitive for a B2B marketer who is like, let's say more things and then we'll get what we need. I'd love to hear more about your experience with some of your clients because Hurricane has worked with NATO. We've worked with NATO, BMW, AXA and the World Health Organization. And they are very different clients. Yeah. Now, the range that we've done. So at the moment we're doing some e -commerce with some dancewear brands. I'm doing a big train company and obviously we're doing NATO. But the fundamentals are, it's the people. Right. We're all sitting at home on our sofa and we've got the same device and it's got LinkedIn and TikTok and WhatsApp and all those same things in it. And we're going in a cycle. Right. So. You're still switching to maybe TikTok and if it's an environmental organization, but the basic things are we need to get people's attention. We need to engage them emotionally and then we need them driving to action. So like, yeah, we do all sorts of different stuff, but that fundamental core strategic thing is the same. And then it's just going, okay, what's the marketing? What's this market segmentation? What are the emotional drivers that do them? Where do they live their digital lives? All that kind of stuff. So yeah, the tactics change. But that strategic idea of what is going to happen? What is going to push people to do something? Same every time. Last year at your talk, you finished on a note that was very aligned with the theme of TwentyThree Summit last year, which was the human side of digital. But this year the summit motto is video people unite. Yep. And now for you, what does it mean to be in the room like that with all sorts of video people coming together and pushing video forward? Avengers assemble. It's like, it's that kind of coming together. I think it's super important. Whether you are. You know. Content creator or B2B in house or you're a video marketer. We've all got the same challenges. We're all facing the same, you know, socio economic pressures, should we say? And just coming into a room where you've got a sympathetic audience is really important. I think sharing best practice is really important, but also for an industry like video, which we are trying to steal our entire market from lead agencies and digital agencies and all those things. So to have a consistent language around what maybe a video marketing agency is or a video agency. And giving people the confidence to step into other people's territories and basically, you know, pull back some of the control. It's really good. It's really good for the whole industry and people need the confidence to do it. So there's production companies here who only make stuff, but they want to, you know, they want to upskill. We've just given them the confidence to do that so that they can go and be more strategic or they can do paid media or they can do social. That's how the video industry, our slot basically, will start nicking territory from other areas. We just don't know how to do. Motion as well as we do. Yeah. So it's like, come on, let's do it together. And let's not, you know, because there's so much market out there that video agencies, video marketing agencies, there's loads they can do before we need to start worrying about competing with each other. Right. 100%. Yeah. Because the market just gets bigger, right? The demand just gets bigger. It's never ending, especially if you start including social media channels and all those kind of things. So yeah. 100%. Well, if you could say one thing to someone who attended TwentyThree Summit and wants to push video forward in their organization. What would you say? So hang on, let me just clarify. This is what I would say to someone who's got a brand and they want to push video forward generally. I've got so many things to say. I think the key thing, if you want to get into video, is it because it can be difficult. It can be expensive. It can be very cumbersome. It can be quite scary. Speed and iteration, right? Just have an idea, make something quickly, test it, do something else. Because it's like, what's the worst that's going to happen? You know, just don't spend that time like we're going to do a 100k euro brand film as our own brand. Do a unique piece of work, right? Do some webinars, do some socials. Spread it out. Spread it out. Spread the risk. Get started. And then you can learn and you can go to the board and you can say, look, we spent 50,000 euros doing this thing and look what it's done. And then forward from there. Amazing. Thank you so much. I'm glad that we finally had this opportunity to have a conversation. That was fun. Thank you so much.