TwentyThree Summit 2025 Interview: Avery Bazan, Co-Founder Think Out Loud Studio

Avery, with over a decade of experience directing and producing creative content for a diverse range of global brands such as Airbnb, Tesla, Nvidia, could you share a bit about your journey from a commercial and film director. How has this shaped your approach to storytelling and to video production? Yeah, definitely. We've got a chance to work with a lot of great brands. I've had time both on the marketing side and also more on the video side. So I'm always thinking about what do we actually need people to walk away with this and is there something we want them to do at the end of this? Sometimes there's not, sometimes it's just awareness. But I think just moving faster with storytelling, really getting to kind of what's the real thing that people are interested in and getting through that pretty quickly. There's so many things in the beginning you think that you need and then you realize you don't need those things. You don't need all the intro pieces and a lot of the transition pieces. You can just, like the audience is smart and they will know if you go one to the next, right? So very similar to the same way that we watch movies. You know, movies today move way faster than they did back in the 1940s, right? So too with commercial work. It's a bit of that mindset of go get it attitude, right? So let's just start, let's get better. Pick up very fast. Yeah. And Think Out Loud studios works as an extension of your clients' teams in a way, right? Helping companies to scale their video content. What would you say that are the key elements that make video a powerful tool for building and evolving a brand's identity in today's digital landscape? Yeah, I mean, certainly video shows the most humanity in things. You can see people, you can see them, you can hear them. But it's also what we say passive. If you're reading something, you have to actually take energy to read each word, even if it's silent to yourself. Whereas the video, it's already moving and you would actually have to take energy to stop that movement, right? Or to scroll on from that. And so that sounds like a small difference, but it's actually really big, right? It's the reason why it's easier to listen to an audio book than to read a book. And so video is part of that. And here at TwentyThree, we believe that having a video strategy is essential for succeeding. From your experience with your clients, big or small, how often do they have a dedicated video strategy? And what do you think that are the challenges for these companies developing one? Yeah, you often don't see dedicated video strategies. There's a digital strategy or a marketing strategy, right? And then video will often be part of that. And I think because of that, sometimes video is less consistent than maybe it could be or should be for companies. I think there's more attention being paid and more integration of video assets within that kind of digital, you know, cycle of things that are going out. But I think it is something where there's an opportunity for companies and brands, both on the, you know, client side themselves and on the agency side to just get more consistency where it's rather than the digital bucket or timeline needing things, right? That the video timeline needs consistent things going out, right? And again, also just get people over that challenge of that video is hard, right? Video is getting easier and easier as time goes on. And it is the most effective way to communicate. That's why YouTube, TikTok, TwentyThree, all these things move so much to video because it's the most effective. What top advice would you give to companies looking to harness, looking forward to using video the best way to support their brands? Yeah, I mean, it goes back, first of all, to having a strategy, certainly. And really for the distribution of things. I think a lot of people focus, we want to make this thing, right? That this video, and then they kind of think that they'll figure out what to do with it after. And maybe that ends up just dropping on their Facebook or YouTube, whatever it is. But, you know, certainly if you have things on your site in ways that you can track, like, like playing free offers, right? That's a great way to not just get views because who knows what happens with those, but to see who is coming, who's viewing all of that. And then also, if you're going on to the other social platforms, again, probably having a paid, you know, media campaign ready to go. Knowing how much that's going to be. And also kind of having metrics that if this video starts to get, you know, this much activity per dollar, that we're going to further boost that. Or if this is not getting that much, we're just going to let that plateau there and let that one be. We just came up with a piece of content that was honestly just like above average in terms of quality, how much connected with the audience. And you're really seeing a lot of people interact with that right now. So there should be somebody that is there ready to know that like, hey, that's cross-border. That's across the threshold. We should really push this, right? Versus just treating all content the same. This year's theme of the TwentyThree Summit is the human side of digital. What does that mean to you? I mean, the internet started out as a lot of text and, you know, some bad 90s colors. So now we're at a place where you can see people again, talk and speak. And so, yeah, bringing back not the feeling, but the reality that you're seeing other people and you're hearing, you know, it's even the difference between, you know, TwentyThree is doing a lot of webinars, right? There's something more honest to that kind of long form, you know, where it's not cut, it's not perfected. You're hearing the ands and the ums, right? And that's what we all do when we talk, right? So I think that's why we've also seen podcasts in general, right? Makes such a surge in the last number of years because it's more of the authenticity. It's human. It's real, right? So, yeah, I mean, there's a huge place for that. Thank you, Avery. Thanks. Yeah, that's it. Thanks for having me on.