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Evolving from Production Company to Agency with Alan Nay
142 Plays2 years ago
This week we interview Alan Nay of the Seattle powerhouse World Famous. World Famous works as a full-service agency with Nike, Wendy's, T-Mobile, Microsoft - you name it. But! World Famous started out as a production company - just like you. Today, we talk to World Famous founder Alan Nay about the choice to go from production company to agency. What's worked, what's been tougher than expected, and how in the heck you deal with your current agency clients when you've decided to become an agency!
If you've ever thought you might like to take your production company to the next level, Alan has some great insight for you about this big move.
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Transcript
Introduction and Free Budgeting Software
00:00:05
Speaker
Okay, we are back with Crossing the Access, the biz side of video production. And it's an exciting day in many ways for us here at Crossing the Access. One of the ways first, just getting out some new news about Pipeline, we have just announced that our budgeting module is 100%
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Speaker
free. You can go to videopipeline.io and get your very fancy, very cool cloud-based budgeting software, 100% for free to get you started. Add it to your stack of other free apps that you use and use ours to manage your budgets. You won't regret it. You are welcome. We want to do this because we believe so much
00:00:50
Speaker
in the power of great budgeting to get you to the next step in the work that you're doing and make you profitable so that you can make that next step. Okay, enough from our sponsors.
Alan Nay's Career Journey
00:01:02
Speaker
Now we are heading to the meat of the show and this I'm sure is going to be one of the most anticipated shows that we've done because we are very, very lucky to have Mr. Alan Nay of
00:01:14
Speaker
World Famous with us here today. World Famous, of course, a Seattle staple in the video and video agency and now agency world in the Pacific Northwest. They have worked and do work for companies like Wendy's, T-Mobile, Microsoft, Nike, Google, Disney, Amazon, basically
00:01:38
Speaker
If it's a company that has any sort of taste whatsoever, you can find World Famous doing work with them. And so now I'm lucky enough to have Alan, who's the CEO of World Famous, who's been with it from the start, who is one of the founding partners of World Famous with us today. Alan, welcome to the show.
00:01:58
Speaker
Hey, great to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. And, you know, one of the things that's always so interesting to me is just to just get a little background on yourself and find out, you know, how you wound your way into video production, because it's sort of an interesting path.
00:02:19
Speaker
Well, when I was young, I started making mashup kind of things like homemade remix things at home in the 80s and I wanted to be a music
00:02:34
Speaker
engineer, remix artist or something like that. So I went to college and I studied audio engineering for a summer and then did an internship at a recording studio in Chicago the next summer and realized the music business wasn't the way to go. But I loved editing, so I focused on video editing and
00:02:55
Speaker
And I just, that's what I did in college. And then, you know, worked for free for, or for a little money to get some experience and then got going and then had a great commercial editing career until I started my own shop. Well, then I'd continue to have a great editing career. And then, yeah, eventually we kept, World Famous kept growing and I had to step out of the edit chair and into the,
00:03:24
Speaker
Who's gonna run this thing, Chair? Yeah, that's right. That's what happens. Now you were in college in Ohio, right? That's right, yes. And were you a Midwesterner to begin with? Yes, yeah. Yeah, no wonder you and I get along so well. I am too. I grew up in Indiana. What brought you out to the Pacific Northwest?
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, I knew I wasn't going to stay in Cleveland, Ohio. Tell me about it. And well, you didn't have any sports teams back then, but that'd be a little harder to leave now. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I came out to visit my sister lived out here for a little bit and I came out to visit her when I was in college and, you know, saw the mountains for the first time and just the dynamic natural beauty. And, you know, Seattle back then was like a really big
00:04:08
Speaker
liberal arts college campus or something. And yeah, just the music scene and everything was just, you know, hopping. So I came out here. Yeah. And I mean, it's interesting, too, that you came from sort of a music into editing. That actually is more common the more I meet with people than a lot would guess. Like, truly, making music videos is not much of a market for that, but certainly,
00:04:37
Speaker
the number of people that get started with music and then music into editing and then editing into full-blown, you know, product. No one understands, you know, everyone agrees. No one understands production better than the editor. The editor is such a great place to start, you know, for anyone out there getting started. Editing is just a fantastic place because you see all the problems and you get just an absolute unique viewpoint. It's a great way to go if you're,
00:05:05
Speaker
if you're even thinking long-term director, producer, that thing, no one understands the whole process better than the editor. And it's a great place to get in. So that's pretty cool.
Balancing Commercial and Artistic Work
00:05:16
Speaker
And then you came in and World Famous kind of gets going. And what was the angle that World Famous initially was taking? What was this sort of, what was your raison de etre? Well, you know, I wanted to create a creative shop that,
00:05:33
Speaker
made money, you know, and then we took some of the money to make art and make music videos for our friends' bands. And we wanted to, you know, out of all the- Yeah, because those make no money, but yeah. Yeah, and commercials, you know, out of all the, you know, ways you could make money with video production, that's, you know, one of the better ways, like dollar per hour, dollar per frame, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, versus, you know, independent film or, you know. Yeah.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah. So, yeah, we, we, you know, I got started at a place called Digital Kitchen. And it was kind of a, it was at the very, very, very, very beginning of kind of the desktop video revolution where you could first start doing video editing and graphics animation on a Macintosh that was new, you know, in the 90s. So they were way in front of that. And I was lucky enough to. What kind of footage were you cutting generally? I mean, in terms of format,
00:06:32
Speaker
Oh, it's most of it was stuff that was shot in 16 millimeter film transfer. Yeah. And, but that was a great learning experience because there was designers, it started out of an advertising agency. So there was, you know, conceptual thinkers and writers and, but then we were doing production and I was the only editor. So that's really, I really got, I learned a lot. So I kind of wanted to recreate
00:06:57
Speaker
some of that vibe where it's like, it's not just editing, it's not post-production, it's not a production company, it's just a creative place that can do all that stuff. So we did mostly editing at the beginning because those, you know, those are my clients. I was a freelance editing and so when I started editing place finally, you know, of course we were doing lots of editing, but then slowly got opportunities to do more design and motion graphics and then production and then just kind of kept growing until we were like a soup to nuts production company.
00:07:26
Speaker
And you were on Avid initially, I imagine, right? Yes, everybody. And then you made a switch over to Final Cut, maybe? I never did. I stuck with Avid as long as I could, and then I got out of it. Yeah, man. I mean, I can edit in Premiere now. I do very little editing anymore these days. But you can do a lot. It's still not.
00:07:52
Speaker
I can tell it's not built by editors for editors the way Avid was, but now I'll just sound like an old guy talking about the old days. No, no. I mean, that's I think, you know, today, of course, it's the question of really Avid is no longer. I mean, I don't really hear anybody talking about that anymore, but you really hear it's it's premier Final Cut or Resolve.
00:08:12
Speaker
who's offering a pretty sweet, free package as well as an insane color setup. But yeah, I never edited on Avid. I came in just a little later into the Final Cut world and then switched over to Premiere when Final Cut made its big switch to the Final Cut X. Well, you were talking about like,
00:08:36
Speaker
people coming into editing for music. And with the Avid, I hardly ever touched the mouse. There was no dragging or dropping. I mean, a little bit, it was so tactile, you know, and I'm a drummer too. And so it was just really easy to kind of, yeah, just pound on the keyboard and get the good things. But it took big money to have an Avid. It took big money to have. I mean, what was your Avid setup? What do you think it, you know, what do you think it ran? Like, you know, 50 grand?
00:09:03
Speaker
Oh, no, the very first one, I remember, yeah, we and we had it came with we opted for the 36 gigabytes. It was four, nine gigabyte drives, you know, in my key chain now. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was like 120 grand with everything. Yeah. The moats were huge. Right. The I call them the moats, the thing that a production company had to protect itself from its competitors or from the guy that just woke up one morning and said, I think I'm going to go into video production.
00:09:33
Speaker
Yes, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, ironically, it was, you know, $120,000 for a nonlinear editing system that could compete with the big post-production companies that, you know, there, it's like minimum, you know, $500,000. Like, way back then, that was, it was, there was a huge barrier to entry there. But
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, so it's still a ton of money, but it was more accessible for more people. And then, of course, now you just buy a computer. Twenty-nine dollars. Twenty-nine dollars. Get your premiere monthly subscription or resolve just free.
00:10:09
Speaker
Who cares? Yeah, it's it's that's a that's a that's how the the industry is always changing. And so this is where we get you are changing. You have decided.
Agency Model and Creative Control
00:10:20
Speaker
And this is kind of where we're going with today's topic is, you know, world famous a while back said, hey, we actually want to become more of a full service agency. So can you tell us a little bit about about that? Because I think that that is something that I have heard
00:10:39
Speaker
Many, many production companies say I am either want or am going to do this. And I can tell you from running my company hand crank for 15 years, I think around your 10 or 11 we really said we were going to do it and we never pulled it off. We never were able.
00:10:55
Speaker
to make the switch. We made some inroads, we managed some online presences, but full service agency, no, we never quite made it. So I'm really curious to hear and talk to you about this topic because of course people want to grow, they want to expand, they want to take over more of their creative and this feels like a natural way, but it's not an easy way.
00:11:20
Speaker
It's yes. Yeah, I didn't I didn't know quite what I was biting off. I mean, we had talked about it. I talked about it for a while. And part of that was, you know, most of our clients were agencies for a long time, we did probably, you know, 75% of our workers were advertising agencies, 25% was for clients directly. And then over time, that started to kind of shift, you know, client brands got more comfortable just going straight to vendors. Yep.
00:11:47
Speaker
You know, agencies are slowly starting to build up their own in-house production capabilities. But there is a lot to learn. It's still a creative organization, you know, and it seems like it's not that big of a shift, but there is a fundamental shift in the thinking.
00:12:05
Speaker
But the reason was, you know, we'd worked with agencies a lot and I just saw great ideas not get executed well or, you know, just, you know, agencies like not knowing how to talk to their client about why, why the edit is like this or why and being able to really walk them through the process and and, you know, just kind of not manage their clients really well. So just kind of
00:12:32
Speaker
being ignorant enough, I was like, God, if these guys can be an agency, we can be an agency, you know, right. And and we want, I mean, our whole thing is, is we want to make great work, you know, it's one of the best gifts in the universe to be able to be paid to be creative, you know, you can pay your rent, and you get to use that part of your brain. It's a gift. So being able to
00:12:54
Speaker
do some strategic thinking and some concepting and creative development, it just gives us a better chance of being able to do work that's great, culturally relevant and that people remember. You just want to do work you're proud of ideally at the end of the day.
00:13:17
Speaker
skills down, or better yet, once you wind up working with some people that are so talented at the craft, right, the craft, whether it's the craft of, you know, being the DP, whatever anyone's the makeup artist, heck, you know, whoever the great people are that we get to work with. Once you're got that team together, you do want to
00:13:36
Speaker
push where you're taking them. And did you feel at all hamstrung by, did you feel like one of the things you were looking for, and I'm sorry for putting words in your mouth, but was one of the things you're looking for a little more creative control over the process? Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that it just allows more, you know, there's less fingers in the pot and there's more ability to get the purity of the creative from the beginning that you're looking for all the way through to the end. Go ahead.
00:14:12
Speaker
Oh, and then, you know, that's a can't, you know, understate the importance of that, like, you can have amazing execution, and, you know, great production, but if it's a crap idea, then you just have a really good looking crap idea, you know, the core of the idea being smart and relatable, or, you know, just kind of being able to hit those emotional
00:14:36
Speaker
or, you know, tell the human truth that's going to connect people. That's got to be spot on. And then, you know, you get to put that story together, you know, and what's best for the project.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, and of course, I mean, and agencies are different, right? There are some agencies are really no production really well, and that working with them is a dream and it only lifts and lifts and lifts. And that does happen 10% of the time. But then a lot of the other time you get the brief and you get the budget and you say these two things are not these are mutually exclusive. It's just
00:15:09
Speaker
you know, I see where you're going with that, guys. But for, you know, for this money that I don't see how we can achieve that. Whereas if if that agency is not in the middle or you are the agency, so to speak, then it's you don't you don't kind of have that initial disconnect and you're not constantly taking things away. Yeah, I guess, you know,
00:15:33
Speaker
you there are a lot of great agencies i don't know i don't want to put the entire not at all there's a lot of great ones and then you know there's a lot of mediocre ones just by definite i worked in l.a. as an editor for a while and i was amazed at how many.
00:15:47
Speaker
great projects that were floating around, you know, compared to Seattle, which is a B market. And Seattle used to have a much more vibrant creative agency scene. And it's, it's, you know, it's kind of flat, it's been kind of flat for a while now. And that was another reason that we
00:16:04
Speaker
really, you know, wanted to make the shift. It was like, there's a need here. Like, there's a real opportunity because there's not no offense to my agency friends in the area, but like, there's not a lot of amazing... Well, doesn't it... I mean, you look at like, you know, when Wexley split, you know, they're basically final words. Well, look, everyone's gone project-based. You know, we want to be bigger than that. We want to be bigger than on-demand project-based. And how do you feel like what you're doing fits in and fills some of that void? Because here you had a really one of the great
00:16:33
Speaker
you know, creative agencies just having some pretty solid reasons for saying that we're out. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and what's the. Yeah, a few agencies have gone away, small independent agencies and stated this more project based environment as one of the reasons like graph.
00:16:58
Speaker
You know, they folded and that was one of the reasons that they said. But yet, you know, luckily we've always been project-based, you know? I'm really familiar with the dance of not, you know, getting too big and keeping your overhead low, but, you know, and being able to be scalable and how important the talent is and relationships with talent and being able to put great teams together, but not, you know,
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know how it is. You either have too many people or not enough. Any day of the year. Yeah. You mean too many staff or too many clients? Too many staff. Well, you guys keep it low, though. I mean, at least according to your masthead, you know, it's really just four of you and then you sub out the rest. Yeah.
00:17:44
Speaker
Oh, is that what it looks like? I mean, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's a good thing for pointing that out. Yeah, there's four of us. That's the leadership team. There's 15 employees at World Famous. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. All right. That's yeah. Sorry. Yeah. That's good to know. I mean, I've seen the website nine million times. And so the website's a beautiful thing. People, if you haven't seen the website, go to it. It is gorgeous. And Alan, is it just worldfamous.com? I can't remember the exact URL. World Famous Inc.
00:18:12
Speaker
12famousinc.com. There we go. And it's a gorgeous thing. So I always just a quick reminder to everyone, your website is just a little bit important in this business. So spend the money on it, make it look beautiful. And here's a great one for you to take a look at and see how it can be done very well. And using a lot of the latest overlays and technology and stuff like that, they do a very, very beautiful job. But back to what
00:18:36
Speaker
Thanks for saying that and just real quick shout out to gigantic who is the company that the agency that helped us with the website. They're amazing Tim and the crew over there. Awesome. So thank you to them.
00:18:49
Speaker
So back to the team. Okay, so you got 15. Okay. And their salary, their W2. Yes. Yep. Yep. Wow. That's big these days. That's a big group to carry. And there are people now working from home or working. Are they back in the shop now? I've kind of let people do what's going to
00:19:13
Speaker
create the best work, you know? So whatever works for you. So I mean, I recently hired a, you know, creative director, design director in Denver. I hired an art director in Portland and they're not moving to Seattle. I've got a writer in Minneapolis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But so the office is open, you know, I'm in here most of the time and then some people come in one or two days a week. And so there's, it's, you know, when we're making stuff, right? Like trying to edit over zoom is stupid. So when we're, we're in, when we're deep collaboration or making stuff, we,
00:19:43
Speaker
tend to get together or together physically it's so much i'd say it's so much more fun that way i like the edit with a beer and work through it together it's an emotional thing you argue i mean it's why i got into the business i got into it to be around other people and and um
00:19:59
Speaker
That's cool. I mean, that's really cool that you have a big team. There are so many benefits. We did a whole show on it with one of my favorite companies out on the East Coast and talking about all the benefits of having an in-house Tiger team as opposed to, you know, there's benefits and pros and cons to both, but that's pretty cool. Now, on your team now, though, what percentage are video production folks versus agency folks?
00:20:23
Speaker
Let's see. It's probably 25% production, 75% agency. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's mostly agency people. I still have some post-production folks. And what are those agency, what are their roles? Executive creative director, creative director, writers, art director, designer, producer, project manager. Yeah.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, I always noticed that the agencies we worked with had like a lot of producers like there were just a lot of there's a lot more hand holding, right? I mean, there's just no way around that. I mean, obviously, I imagine one of the major things that world famous is able to do is probably trim a little bit of the
00:21:07
Speaker
When you're able to consolidate, hopefully you're able to trim and be a little more efficient, I imagine. But nevertheless, there is just this client handholding and client management that a production company can kind of get out of.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's been a huge learning. Okay. Because yeah, I thought the same thing being the edit room worker with AT's is like, Oh, they get the client talks to the, you know, the account director and the counter. So you got to get a coffee once and again for the guy. What the hell?
00:21:37
Speaker
Well, just the telephone game, you know what I mean? It was like, it'd go through six people before the people in the edit room, the writer and art director I'm working with, get to, you know, do something about the client's feedback who's been, you know, passed down through five other people or something. Like, yeah, there's got to be a more efficient, better way to do that. And we are way more collaborative and oftentimes
00:22:00
Speaker
kind of like an in-house team for a client because that's another thing is most brands have some degree of in-house capabilities for agency type functions. So we work really closely with them, but I have learned a lot. I mean, there are times with the project-based work, a lot of times a producer and project manager can kind of
00:22:24
Speaker
handle that kind of client handholding account executive role. But for longer term projects or agency of record, we have agency record for one client, you know, where you're planning the year out, there's a lot more interacting with the media and strategy. And there is like, you need one person that kind of accountable for all that stuff and to lead into, you know, that the client can call. So right.
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah, I thought, I thought, yeah, I mean, honestly, at the beginning, it's like no account for people. We're not going to have a company. You don't need them. And then now, I think you do need them sometimes and all the time. And you certainly don't need armies of them and layers of them. And that's what I've seen sometimes. And it just terrifies me. But now, when you on on the website, you know, one of the ways that you present your your your case is is that you are
00:23:16
Speaker
Basically, I've got the words here, you've got this flex model that there's not a one size fits all that you're incredibly flexible.
Client Management and Flexibility
00:23:25
Speaker
Would you say that that is, is that another way of saying, hey, we're not afraid of the project based universe that we know we increasingly live in?
00:23:34
Speaker
Yes, and again, most brands have some in-house capabilities and so sometimes they've done all the homework, all the research and strategy and then they need help from that point on or sometimes they've even done more than that. They've got some half baked scripts that they know aren't right but they don't know how to make, it's got to be a 30-second film and
00:23:57
Speaker
This isn't right. And we've gone in and taken their work. It's well underway and figured out how to make it a new 30-second commercial. It's going to work. And then sometimes they just like, we need help with everything. And then we're able to scale up for that or bring in other partners. We don't do, we're not a media agency at all. So we have partners. You don't buy.
00:24:19
Speaker
No, there's a place in New York that we use that are great and they do data analytics and all that stuff. And then locally we work with a partner.
00:24:29
Speaker
being able to, the flexing is like being able to put the right team together. That's going to, you know, produce the best results. That's a, that's a good idea. I feel like from my experience to say out of the media buying, it's just very, that's where we got lost. I feel like when we were trying it was, it was just, it was beyond us. I don't think we were getting good prices because we weren't buying in big enough volume often for our customers. Well, and that's kind of like, we're really, really, really good at,
00:24:57
Speaker
building brands with storytelling and, you know, and just brand storytelling. We're not really good at data and I don't really want to be, you know, but there's places that are or media or customer journey. So we've been forging relationships with places like that. So like you're the, you know, best in class at that. We're going to do that. And then we could partner versus, you know, we say, yeah, we got the capability. We can do all that stuff. Like let's just put together the people that are the best at that and put something together.
00:25:27
Speaker
And would you say that your projects now you say you've been kind of doing this for now going on four years. Would you say that they still generally when you go to the team are you guys kind of starting with video in mind or is it. No we're just looking at all the different avenues you know digital.
00:25:47
Speaker
social, everything and video may or may not play a part in that or is it, is it kind of like, you know, video is cool videos amazing because video lends itself well to being broken down into the other media categories very nicely you can do print from it you can do, you know, all these different things but is that where you start or do you start at a different level.
00:26:09
Speaker
We haven't really been an agency for four years. I feel like now we're an agency. Okay. Okay. Just now getting started. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Like I didn't know what I didn't know four years ago. And so, but most of the people know us as a, as a, um, as a great, you know, video production, uh, places where since 2005. So the, in the beginning, most of the projects of course were heavy video.
00:26:34
Speaker
So that didn't make sense. And that was our sweet spot. But now as we've kind of turned the corner more and we're just, it's just whatever is best for the strategy and who are we talking to and what's gonna move them to take action and end. And that's the media part and figuring out who you're talking to and where, where's the best place. And that's, I could see one day having some media
00:27:02
Speaker
Just because of that, the collaboration of figuring out, you know, because to do stuff that's not just cookie cutter, you know, we want to do stuff that's, you know. So has it made, is it starting to make good business sense? I mean, I always remember looking at the agencies and saying, geez, their margins are way better than mine. I mean, I remember at one point I was going to be acquired by an agency and when they saw my margins, they weren't interested anymore.
00:27:31
Speaker
And so has it started to, have you been able to, and obviously the creative flex that if suddenly you, I think it's more easy for everyone to understand paying well for agency creative than production creative. It just sadly that is the truth of the matter, it seems to be. So has it started to pay off in that regard?
00:27:56
Speaker
Yes, I mean, it's funny because I feel like the agency world, I mean, everybody's complaining about budgets are lower and the agency world is kind of where the production company world was, you know, however many years ago where the budgets just kept coming down, expectations did not change and everybody, there's no shortage of people that will work
00:28:17
Speaker
They'll do the project at a loss even because they want it for the portfolio. And now with the, especially in the independent creative agency land, it's the same thing. People want stuff for their portfolio. So maybe they're not going to make any money with that brand or that project, but they'll do it.
00:28:33
Speaker
And so there's a lot, there is a lot of pressure there, but once, you know, like, you know, great work gets you more great work and great clients recommend you to other great clients. And so it just takes a while. It took us a while world famous, you know, once, and then, you know, to build up those relationships and that trust. And then when it was really going, it was going, it's word of mouth. And we just kept showing up doing as good of a job as we can. And people would recommend us.
00:28:59
Speaker
Now we're in this agency category. We haven't been doing it that long, so it's going to take a little bit of time, but it's starting to happen. We can already see just more incoming calls like that. One of the things we talked about in our pre-call, Alan, was how frustrating it would be as a production company to
00:29:19
Speaker
pretty much
Media Strategy Challenges
00:29:20
Speaker
give away the creative on a project and then create something gorgeous, deliver it to the client's front door, only to see it wither and die with a horrible media buy or just bad sort of surrounding collateral material. And it never got liftoff. And we talked about that and you agreed that that's a bummer when that happens. It happened all too often. Are you starting to get the benefit of that not happening? Because I imagine your media team and everybody's doing a great job of getting this stuff out.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, there's seems like there's never enough money. I mean, it is like, yeah, you know, sometimes the clients, yeah, they do these giant media buys, but then they only want to spend this much. And it's like, why would you put out something? You know what I mean? You're going to put it in front of everybody. Why not have it be? But then, yeah, same deal. You could make a gorgeous piece. And then they got a rinky dink media buy. And it's like, oh, cool. Nobody's there. Is there a percentage that you like? I mean, I used to I used to have one. But do you have one that you like? Say, hey, man, if you're going to spend, you know, a million on the on the
00:30:19
Speaker
media buy, then you have to spend at least a hundred grand on your ad. I, um, I don't, I don't have, I mean, the rule of thumb, I think it's like five to one, but I don't know. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. So if the media budget was a million bucks, ideally they'd be spending 200 on the production and then, but, um, yeah, no, it's, it really is case by case. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
Well, but you are starting to feel more that ownership. I mean, it's got to feel good, right? I mean, when the thing has been taken off and people are recognizing it, the clients getting more business or whatever the case is that you presented to the world is getting listened to and people are moving to action based on your work, that has to feel pretty good.
00:31:07
Speaker
It does. No, it's great. It's super cool. When all that happens where you're able to pay your rent, you're proud of the work you've made, it's helping your client's business and people are motivated to take action or be moved. That is super fulfilling. Absolutely.
00:31:28
Speaker
And I, you know, being able to sustain a creative organization and pay people, you know, find talent and pay them to be creative and use the creative part of the brain. And, you know, I love that too, you know, because it's been so important to me and life changing. And how do you keep that fresh around the office? How do you keep the creative juices flowing and keeping it from being? Yeah, here we're doing a project type seven again.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah. Luckily, I mean, it's still kind of the Wild West for us. We're still, you know, just, yeah, it's still really fun and everything is new. And we've got, you know, now we've got a lot of agency people here that have great agency experience, but they want to do something different. They didn't want to work at yet another agency with all the woes and everything that don't work there. And a lot of that, yeah, it was just
00:32:25
Speaker
you know, the process and, you know, it's just it's still like there's not one way to do, you know, every client's different, every project's different. There's not one formula that's going to work for everything. So and and you were famous for a while was pretty big, correct me if I'm wrong, but pretty big with the motion graphic stuff. But that has sort of eased back a little bit. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, then is that because live action is getting more popular again or?
00:32:56
Speaker
Um, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, just stylistically when, when, you know, the motion graphics thing was newer, it was, it was growing really quickly and everybody wanted it. And so there was more and more of it and people were studying it. And, uh, I mean, in the early days, in the nineties, you could, it was very hard to find somebody that knew after effects. And then now there's a ton of people that are super talented. Uh, but then there's not quite as much of a, of a demand and, um, yeah.
00:33:25
Speaker
And people, you know, are farming out to, you know, Vietnam or Chile and are able to, you know, make the explainer videos for pennies, you know, different market. So who are, what are some of the, when you look, you know,
00:33:44
Speaker
What do you like out there that you're like geez I'd love to, I'd love for us to produce stuff like that I would love. Are there any or agencies of your agencies of today that you look at and and say man that those guys, I just, I don't know I always think it's good for folks to have their eye on on somebody else where are you looking.
00:34:05
Speaker
I'm inspired by there's a shop in England called Lucky Generals. And man, they just consistently do great work. It's so smart and so good. And I yeah, I'm impressed by those guys and admire them. There's a place Mojo supermarket in New York,
00:34:27
Speaker
They've got a super cool website. They just consistently do great work and it's just smart. You know, there's something intelligent about all the work and a lot in or, or fun or entertaining, but it's all very good. And, um, yeah, I like those and mischief, of course, but they're, they're like agency of the year now and they, everybody likes mischief, but they, they're fun to watch.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty scary how fast it happens, right? We were talking about mechanism on our call and, you know, mechanism started as a production company and then turned into an agency. And now, I mean, they're like an Uber agency, right? Like they're like five different cities with huge staffs. And it's really all about an agency all of a sudden.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yeah, they used to be on my list and then, yeah, they matured. I mean, they're great, but it was fun to watch them because they were doing what I wanted to do where they went from production companies and they did it really well and they've done a lot of great work and yeah, they've done it successfully.
00:35:25
Speaker
I remember asking them to get together at NAB or something like that. Why did you guys make the switch to the agency? And they said, we didn't really have a choice. You know, the agencies just weren't going where we wanted to go. And I wondered, one question I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a production company and I was telling him I was meeting with you and he was really excited to listen in on this podcast because of course it is sort of
00:35:50
Speaker
A bit of a dream for a lot of folks to make this jump, but he said, you know, already right now we work for a lot of agencies. How would I manage that and how did world famous or how does world famous? How do you manage that transition? Hey, guess what? We're we're competing for the same thing that you're bidding on right now. Yeah, it was a.
00:36:08
Speaker
It was pretty organic. I mean, like I said, in the early days, we worked mostly with agencies, a little bit with brands, and then just over time, it shifted. We're doing more and more work with brands. They were seeing the benefit. And then asking, they were just, they were asking more of us. They were asking for more
00:36:24
Speaker
concept and creative development and so we weren't really getting paid for it like we were kind of doing it to get the production and then so we were already doing it and then we just you know so we just made the decision to change the model we're gonna you know is it the thing of value is the idea you know and then so and then we yeah we just had to bite the bullet and yeah the agency's quick calling of course at the same time you know every single agency in town at least has
00:36:53
Speaker
a video guy. They have some amount. Yeah, right. But you did. I mean, you're not working with those agencies anymore, right? I mean, yeah, exactly. So that is a reality. Like if you think you're going to be partnering and stuff that might not happen that way, it might happen for a little bit. But
00:37:14
Speaker
how would you define the state of our industry right now? And from your perspective, I'm not asking for the crystal ball, but just from your perspective, obviously, we're coming out of COVID, I think. And I think that's going to be great. They say that there's a lot of money in the wings with folks from stock market and property gains and stuff that are just dying to get out there and spend money on things, which means videos and campaigns have to be
Post-COVID Industry Growth and Final Insights
00:37:39
Speaker
made. How do you feel?
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm super optimistic. After a dire time, there's usually a boom. We've kind of seen the beginnings of that until recently, until this year, but I still think there's a lot of money that's going to be floating around for the next few years and people
00:37:58
Speaker
building their brands and the video consumption just keeps going up and up and up and up. So there's no shortage of a need for video for sure. And as things change, a lot of it is that we need 600 pieces of social content for, and people that can do that really well, they can pave their way. It is how do you do that at the,
00:38:27
Speaker
budget that you know is being offered and have it be good and because the thing you know a lot of time it's volume is more important than the the craft or the you know the frequency and people that can figure that out and make great work at scale like that and have whatever templatized stuff or just is you know and that's it's just a different is a different form of a puzzle creative you know
00:38:51
Speaker
But it's a form of puzzle that fits what you're doing quite well and probably inform that decision quite a bit. In other words, you mentioned a moment ago that it's the idea that's king. And that has only been elevated so much more as the dissemination of that idea goes through so many different formats, so many different places that, you know, it's like they used to say when I was, you know, I at one point wanted to make feature films, made one and it went
00:39:16
Speaker
absolutely nowhere. But I remember it was always like, what's going to be on the poster, kid? What's going to be on the poster? You know, and and you had to get it down to that elevator pitch. And and more than ever, your idea, even if you make a five minute movie from it for the client, because that's what we all love to do is a really big dream, of course, all the time. But when you have to turn it into a five second social stinger, it has to carry the same
00:39:42
Speaker
energy, and that's an agency thing to do. That's what you really have to do now.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yes, yes. And ideally, you're thinking about all that stuff at the same time, you know, five minute film is a different venue than the five second stinger and then all the social channels have their own, you know, if you're making a YouTube video, that's different than, you know, their own sizes, I mean, their own widths and heights and yeah, yeah. And the intent and the reason people go to YouTube is different than TikTok, you know, and so yeah.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot, but it seems like the agency seems like being in an agency position fits that a little better than being in a prodco is all I was trying to say, like, yes, it's that dissemination widely. Um, well, that's, those are that, that pretty, we're getting to our time here. I try to keep these, I could, I could do this all day, but I, I know you got, you got like a company around with, with a lot of employees that I didn't even realize I thought it was just like three of you guys sitting around. So I figured you had all day, but, um, but thank you so much. Um, uh,
00:40:46
Speaker
Honestly, any last thoughts or anything for folks? Hey kids, keep your eyes on this. Anything like that? Oh, yeah. I got into this deal because I love edit making and I love, especially kind of the
00:41:07
Speaker
the found object art, like editing. And so I was passionate about it, obsessive even, and then was able to make a living doing that because of that fire. And I think I've hired a lot of people and it's like, and the people with that fire, those are the ones that go on to be really successful. There's a lot of people that say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I want to be a creative director and I want to
00:41:32
Speaker
But they've never had their own journal. They've never made their own, you know what I mean? Written their creator. So it's like, yeah, that sounds great. But it's not if you don't love it, it's not really worth all the. And you're not going to be great at it, you know, and the people that are great at it can make a decent living, ideally, you know, so. Yeah, go ahead.
00:41:51
Speaker
Any regrets for making this jump? Because I'll tell you, when we kind of dabbled in it, I said, I kind of liked it when we were just the guys that walked in with the big camera and sat down and walked back out and said, good luck with that, folks. Certainly, yeah, I know. It seems like it was simpler.
00:42:13
Speaker
Being a small business owner is tough no matter what, but I love it and I enjoy it and the people and all the different puzzles to figure out. I love the whole thing, but no real regrets. I guess it was simpler. There was so much price pressure with the production thing.
00:42:36
Speaker
either you can compete on the price, you know what I mean? And everybody's like, Oh, they could do it, you know, for lower than the other guy. And it's like, and I didn't want to do that. Or you got to be the absolute best at whatever 3d or yeah. And yeah. And I liked the whole storytelling part and the whole, like, what's the big idea? And so we, we were able to, and again, like I said earlier, it's like, where's the value? What's the value that we can bring? And it's the thinking. And so,
00:43:03
Speaker
And so that was a big motivation. And yeah, and I love it. I love the whole thing. So trying to wind it up here with some nugget of wisdom. And here it is. This is it. He's reading this off the wall in his bathroom right now. That's right. Yeah. Stall number two. The left lane is for passing only. There you go.
00:43:29
Speaker
I love it. All right, Alan. Well, thank you very, very much for joining our show. We really appreciate it. And we hope you have a great rest of the week and a great 2022. The masks are off. We're all free and dancing around and look forward to seeing some great, great creative from you and your team. So thank you very much.
00:43:50
Speaker
Thanks for inviting me and thanks for making the show. When you would reach down, I was like, oh, let me check out the show and dove in and listen to some stuff. And it's really cool. It's really great. There's not a lot of books or information out there where small business owners in this category can learn some stuff, but this show is one of them. So thanks for making it.
00:44:12
Speaker
I can tell you that this one will be highly listened to because people are just looking for places to go with their, you know, with their production business. And this is obviously something a lot of people think about, but it's a tough, tough gig. So, all right. Well, thanks very much. Uh, people, uh, remember to try out our new, uh, free budget, uh, budget module at video pipeline.io. And until then, we will see you next week. Thanks very much. And bye-bye.