TwentyThree Summit Interviews - George Mole, Bird & Bird

You have over 10 years of experience in video production in different settings, different formats. Could you share a bit of your journey? How have you started and how are you working with video today? Well, I can give you the very easy headline sentence. If it weren't for my mum bringing a camera back from a skiing holiday and myself asking in a very high-pitched voice, can I borrow that camera to make Doctor Who videos on the trampoline? I genuinely wouldn't be sat in front of you right now today. Like the domino effect is Doctor Who videos on the trampoline at the age of like nine. Now I'm almost 30 working for a law firm making videos. I've filmed music videos for like Friends and now they've become real like artists and I'm like, where's my royalty money? I've filmed in a helicopter with a crazy CEO. Okay. I felt like I was trapped in a very hot box above London with him, which was very, very fun. Is your current CEO or previous? No, I'll tell you, I should clarify, very, very previous. Okay. They might see this, so we'll leave it there. I filmed in the London Stock Exchange for another job as well. I've done agencies, I've done corporate, I've done, you know, my mum was doing a charity live stream during the pandemic. So I filmed her dancing in the garden. We've done it all. We've done it all. How has your role evolved in Bird and Bird, which is where you are right now? So maybe you explain a little bit of what you're doing now. And how important is the video content today in the company? Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, when I started, it was really almost like a stop gap. So apologies to if any of my colleagues are watching this now, but it was the pandemic. I sort of needed a role. I didn't really think me in a law firm, you know, I'm trying to be this cool, edgy sort of creative. I didn't know if it was necessarily the right fit. I was just in the AV team at the time. So at first I thought I was going to have to go turn on all the screens every morning in every meeting room. But they said, no, no, no, you're the video editor. But then they said they were hiring full time in the marketing department. And I said, okay, yeah, I'll give it a go. And they were like, right, well, do you want some budget to build a studio? And I went, yeah, okay, so I'm staying. I'll start now immediately. I'm already working here. So instead of training someone new, I'm happy to work. And yeah, we built this studio. We've got it on floor one, like literally ground floor with like the reception. So like clients come in, they see it as well. And it's like this exciting thing. Video was used mostly during the pandemic, you know, webinars, the odd like deep dive. They were doing podcasts as well. But now that I've started and really hit the ground running in April 2021 to now, I mean, we're doing podcasts every single day. We're doing videos every day. We're currently on the discussion as everyone is about AI and how we're using it. But I mean, I signed the wall last year. I've signed it again this year. Okay, yes. Keeping it real. AI manifesto. The AI manifesto. Yes. Good to give context. We are keeping it real and we are humans and we react to humans. There's a reason why the videos on LinkedIn and YouTube that have someone's face on it with a giant red circle get the most clicks and the most play. But we still use these tools to help us with where we're going as well. Bird and Bird has become a great example of having this video integrated in your marketing overall. So could you tell a little bit more of how the video content and particularly with the help of 23, how has that contributed to lead generation, customer engagement and overall business growth in Bird and Bird? Yeah, we've been using TwentyThree for both the internal and all our external videos. Effectively, if you get sent a video in our company, it's going to be on TwentyThree. It's going to be on a link. We've got our twobirds.tv, which isn't necessarily my favorite name. It reminds me more of like the 2010 corporate where every website was like, yeah, we've got, you know, TwentyThree TV. TwentyThree TV actually sounds like a good name to be fair. Cool. That's cool. With TwentyThree as well. I mean, subtitling, I think I need to get this stat right, but it's 33 offices in 23 countries. So as a global, well, you know, as an international law firm, we have a lot of languages and we have a lot of people. And if I'm filming the CEO on Monday for an update going out on Tuesday, we need hard coded subtitles. So upload it to 23. Yeah. Use the subtitling software, get the transcript, change it, adapt it and push it out to all our internal markets as well as our external markets. So it's actually my next question. Oh, right. I've jumped ahead. What are the features? I use the most. So for sure, like the live translation and all of that really helps with the work of the production afterwards and editing and all of that. Yeah, it's definitely that. I mean, Premiere's got its own inbuilt transcription tool, but I'll be honest, I'm sorry, Adobe. I upload it to TwentyThree first. I download it and then I put it in and I tinker with it. But yeah, that's probably the subtitling and transcription. Nice. And being an experienced video producer, what advice would you give to upcoming video producers now? To maximize the impact that video has in the company's overall marketing strategies? You know, the fact that I used a camera that still took digital like tapes in 2005 and I just experimented, I made Doctor Who videos in the garden. My older brother and I, we put a little TARDIS toy down on the screen. We filmed it. We moved it. We carried on filming. We went on Windows Movie Maker and put a little crossfade transition. And it disappeared from the shot. And I went, I love this. I've experimented with this. Absolute Cinema This is it. Absolute cinema. I love the memes. Love the memes. So at that point I was like, right, I'm going to keep doing this. Like any time there was a presentation at school, I was like, I'm making a video. It has to be a video. Video for us. Shocker for my talk later. It's a presentation. I've made a video. My advice is to just keep doing it. Just keep recording. If you're uncomfortable with recording yourself, like I know we have the millennial pause, people of my generation, we start recording and we wait for the audio to kick in and then we start talking. What we're seeing with Gen Z on TikTok is they go. Right. So the start of the shot is them putting their phone down on the floor, which is fine. You know, the, you know, we adapt to the sort of like tools that we're using and the platforms, but just keep experimenting. Just keep doing stuff because you are going to be invited in. Like, I think the reason why my job and why I work so well in a corporate law firm as the creative sort of, you know, fun guy is because I am outside the box in that regard. Like, how do you make law sound interesting to the layman and to everyone else? I say to people in the room, if I don't understand it, then no one else is. Absolutely. So I'm the last line of the line. So keep experimenting and back yourself. It's the normal, the same advice everyone gives really. But I think, I think that's important. We touched upon being human, right? Yes. This year's theme of the 23 Summit is the human side of digital. What does that mean to you? What is the importance of that? I mean, yeah, basically what I said earlier, the human side of digital is still keeping the human element involved. Like we've agreed that AI is a tool and we're going to use it. It's just another thing in the toolbox. It's not a complete replacement. Humans like humans. We still want to talk to each other. But I think. It's not just about, you know, the person behind the screen doing the numbers like we've argued. We've had people talking for the last two days about, you know, trying to shop online. You've got a problem and you're talking to a robot, but you actually just want to speak to a human. Yeah, there are still humans involved even in the process of setting that up. And the machines have learned from human beings. That's how we've gotten to that point. But I think, you know, it's just it's just on the level of literally keep it real. I'm going to keep saying that quote. And I do because it sounds like cool 90s slang. I'm happy to keep saying keep it real. But I will go back. To my marketing department in my corporate law firm next week. And I'll be like, guys, we're keeping it real. You've got to do it. That's the argument for anything. Just three easy words to. Should we have an AI version of our lawyer talking to clients? Nope, nope. We're keeping it real. We're keeping it real. I love it. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you.