Video Content: Why You Should Stop Being Boring

Hello, we are here at Madfest with Nick De La Force from Schuster. You just had a great keynote on stage. So maybe before diving into that, you could introduce yourself a little bit. Nick De La Force, Creative Services Manager, Schuster, Yes, I'm Schuster's Creative Services Manager. And that means something very different at Schuster. I don't make flyers for people. I sort of consult on creativity. I train people to shoot. I train people to write better scripts and basically help them make better video content and then strategize about the video content they're going to make as well. So as mentioned, you just had a great keynote. Good crowd. Can tell us a little bit about what was the keynote about? Nick De La Force, Creative Services Manager, Schuster, So look, our keynote was called Stop Being So Fucking Boring. Hopefully, you can bleep that out or it doesn't matter. or it doesn't matter. And what we're really talking about is how data shouldn't trump creativity. That data-driven trends too often without any other context drive people to do the same thing again and again and again and start to make content that disengages with people. So we are so behind using data to get the results you want. But I think what we really believe in at Shootster is you have to remember the human element. As Simon Sinek would put it, you have to remember the why behind why you're communicating with people. And I think that's such an important part of sort of any content creation. But using the two together, data and sort of a mix of creativity and sort of original ideas can be such a powerful thing. And not enough brands are doing that. They're getting lazy. So how do brands stop being, you know, stop becoming and being so boring? Look, it's a really good question. I think what they do is they look at who they're trying to communicate to. They look at what their needs are and address them. They try and personalize as much as they can. They try and tie and tap into people's interests what they're doing. We talked about a really great example in the presentation of both Monzo and Starlight. Calling banks, like connecting with people who are getting married, connecting people with having children, connecting people with trying to have savings goals, and then featuring customers on their social profiles too. And not just having actors in ads or people who look as though it's being staged. So really actually involving people in the conversation. One of the big things we called out is that the very definition of social marketing is that it's a conversation, that there's a back and forth, not that it's just one way. And I guess what we've seen and what we've found and what our customers always try and do is turn it more into a billboard. And we try and sort of convince them to not do that. And we've seen them have great results. Sounds like a pretty good idea, actually. So one of the things that you're talking about is actually leveraging real people rather than actors. Can you elaborate a little bit about why is that important? Why not just use a traditional actor in your movie, in your video? Well, I think, look, not to put actors down, I start as an actor myself, but I think people can tell the difference nowadays. People know the difference between a scripted piece that an actor's doing compared to a real testimonial. And a lot of the time, we're not talking about doing an ad with real people in it. We're talking about just featuring people on your channels, getting them to actually comment, involving customers in things so that other customers can in turn see people getting involved and feel like they're part of a community. And community is a huge buzzword. And people assume that just means starting a conversation online, which it does. But it can also mean reaching out in the physical world and getting people involved in, you know, content creation with you as well. So in your talk, you had a few very good examples of both companies being maybe a little bit boring, a little bit, you know, old school, and some newer examples as well. Could you share those examples with us? Yeah, absolutely, for sure. So look, one of the examples, a couple of the examples we showed of people doing really, really well are Monzo. Monzo do live streams in their office where they invite real customers in to ask real questions. Starling Bank's CEO does videos where she addresses customers and customer concerns. She's very upfront about it. She's very honest. She accepts where they failed and she addresses it head on. But as well, people like Innocent Drinks. Innocent Drinks did a brilliant thing where they made a drink that was meant to be blue. It turned out green. People criticized them online. They made fun of it. They turned it into a big joke. They went right along with it. They enlisted a guy from the boy band Blue to come along and really poke fun at it and take the piss. And it was a lot of fun. There's lots of really good examples of people sort of doing that sort of stuff. On a really basic level, people like Pratt are taking people's tweets and just retweeting them, but in the form of a video. They're not just hitting retweet and that's it. They create a video. They put a bit of love into it and they show their customers that they are valued and they want to take the time to celebrate them a little bit more. So let's talk a little bit about, you mentioned video, video marketing, et cetera. Let's talk a little bit about video marketing. What are the trends that you see out there today? What is happening in the landscape of marketing and video marketing? So look, I think, one of the big trends that's been happening over the last year, two years, is making content really short, really catchy to grab people's attention. And that really does work. Google came up with this thing, the 3-10-30 rule. Engage people within three seconds. Ten seconds, let them know what's going on. And 30 seconds, communicate most of your message. And that's great and it works really well. But I think at the same time, I would challenge brands not to be so scared of longer form content when it's the right thing to do. And people do actually connect with storytelling when it's done really well. So try out storytelling. And the best storytellers can often be your biggest fans. So involving them and seeing how you can work with them can be a really powerful tool. I think the other thing is then personalization. Really diving into personalization. And look, not doing an individual video for absolutely everybody because sometimes that's impossible. Although we do it, but on a much smaller scale. Like McDonald's couldn't do that. But you can still come up with personalization in other ways. There's platforms that will now personalize individual videos. You can even sort of create content that sort of name checks people and sort of gives them a bit of respect out there too. There's lots of different things you can do. Respect. What are we talking about? Anyway. You were talking about storytelling. A big theme. It has been around for a long time. But storytelling with video. More and more companies are doing video. So let's talk a little bit about storytelling and what are the important aspects within storytelling. So look, storytelling, it's really important to have a really good idea of your brand. And I guess know what you want to say to people and know what you want to communicate to people. The other big thing is storytelling doesn't have to be an insular thing. Which is confined to one piece of content. You should look at the entire brand across all the different platforms it's on, all the different places you're communicating and make that seamless. Make that integrated. Every part of, every interaction, every touch point that your customer has with you should be actually weaving that same story. And look, brands like my previous employers, Apple, actually do that really, really well. When they work on an individual campaign, the entire company is focused towards, say, that one product. Let's say, for example, they're releasing the new iPad. Every single business unit, be it education, business sales, consumer, everyone is talking about the same thing, the same product. Every bit of social media is focused on that. And people know what to expect. And that storytelling is just fluid between every touch point you have. Where it's done badly is where you jump for, Instagram's telling one story, Facebook's telling another. The brand will say, well, we only do quick shots of desert islands on our Instagram. On Facebook, we only do customer testimonials. And on YouTube, we have interviews with our employees. And it makes no sense. You kind of step back and go, whoa, what's going on? What am I watching on each of these different channels? Makes perfect sense. So, final question for you here. What pieces of advice do you have for companies, big and small, to actually start creating more enticing, more human content and stop being, again, so boring? Look, one of the biggest things I think I've learned from working with lots of brands and seeing the way they work internally is break down the barriers internally. Make sure everybody, everybody's talking to each other. If you've got five different marketing departments for five different parts of the business, work together. Don't work as individual silos because that tends to be what creates these barriers in people's content. Every individual part of the business is trying to pursue their own goals and they're not working as one seamless unit and the brand storytelling becomes fragmented. So, work together. Become one single flowing unit. I know it's not as easy as it sounds, but if you can break down barriers and at least talk to each other, it's a very powerful thing and it will show through in your content. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time.