Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How to Think Like an Agency with Alex Cohn
89 Plays11 days ago
This episode is for production company owners who want to elevate their value when working directly with brand clients, stepping into roles traditionally held by ad agencies. As more brands bring strategy and creative in-house, production companies have an opportunity to partner more closely, helping these teams meet their goals through strategic insights and expertise. In this agency crash course, Alex Cohn, who leads production at Zambezi and digital content at their subsidiary FIN Studios, shares how production companies can move beyond execution to become true strategic partners. From verifying audience data and understanding the marketing funnel to considering media placement, Alex provides actionable tactics for adopting an “agency mindset” and delivering high-impact campaigns. If you’re looking to deepen your brand relationships and stand out as a partner, this episode is your roadmap to thinking—and acting—like an agency.
Recommended
![[Client Side Conversation] Selling Direct to Brands with Thig Gishuru image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/64345e68e579463eb2b613e2/a30f0079-8950-44e9-bedb-f457bafb309c.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction to Crossing the Axis
00:00:06
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production, with your host, James Kevlis.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome listeners and thank you for tuning in into the show.
Can production companies become creative partners with brands?
00:00:28
Speaker
Today's episode is for production company owners who want to elevate their value when working directly with brand clients by stepping into the roles traditionally held by ad agencies. As more brands bring strategy and creative work in house and bypass traditional agencies, this shift creates an opportunity for production companies to become deeper creative partners. But let's not underestimate the challenges.
00:00:50
Speaker
The work of ad agencies is far more complex than it seems. Beyond selling ideas through to decision makers and managing accounts, you have to think strategically and take on a higher level of the campaign success or failure on your shoulders. Creating effective ads isn't it just about storytelling or landing a great joke. It requires an understanding of the mechanics of a successful campaign, like marketing funnels, audience data, and the strategic thinking that drives media placement, all within the context of video.
00:01:19
Speaker
To be an effective creative partner, you're not just delivering great content, you're providing solutions that inspire specific actions. To help us navigate this shift, I'm thrilled to welcome Alex Cohn to the show. Alex is a partner and head of content at the legendary agencies Ambizi, as well as their production entity, Finn Studios.
00:01:36
Speaker
He has deep experience in both agency and production roles. And if I do my job correctly, I'll pry out some actionable strategies for production companies to better adopt that agency mindset. So let's dive
Insights from Alex Cohn on agency mindset
00:01:48
Speaker
in. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you, James. I'm really excited to be here. right Fan and listener. of there's lots There's so much good stuff on your podcast. I really dig it.
00:01:58
Speaker
Oh, thank you for saying that. Well, I am a fan of you. I'm a fan of Zambezi. I use the word legendary to describe that because I actually have known about Zambezi since probably around 2014 or 2015. I don't know how. I think it was at a South by Southwest conference. some Somehow I ended up on your newsletter and I don't know how that happened. But I ended up on your newsletter and I remember getting it at the first time and I thought, oh my God, this is so good. and It's been one of those newsletters for years that i when it landed in my inbox, I couldn't delete it. I had to read it because it offered such smart information. and You've continued on this legacy so well.
Zambezi's industry impact and evolution
00:02:37
Speaker
when i um i know I have a lot of clients that I help try to you know grow their business and you know biz dev and all that kind of stuff. and When I talk about newsletters and the value of newsletters,
00:02:46
Speaker
I say, if you want to do a good newsletter, which you should, Zambezi is the model. Like I could do this whole podcast and just a newsletter. It's so good. I'll happy to introduce you to the strategy team that has kept the flame alive for many years of our bites newsletter. It's great. It's really a good read. We really try to make it just, it's not like to say, it's not about us. It's literally just about culture and sort of what is going on in the world. It's, it's really fun. It's a good read.
00:03:12
Speaker
That's why it's so good because it is about the world, the zeitgeist, the marketplace, whatever of where people are operating in in the advertising world and what they need to know. It's thematic at times and it just does a deep dive and it makes everybody smarter. And I think you even do it in a way that shows off your competition even. I mean, I think that you you know you kind of put it out there in all of its glory, whether you did it or you're involved with it or you thought of it or not.
00:03:40
Speaker
Oh, 100%. It's just curated culture. There's so much out there, and you never know what to read. and And really, it's just for interested people who are interested in the world that we live in, here are some things that are going on that you might find interesting. And it's really not like tooting our horn. I mean, i too I'll toot the horn of the people here who make it because it's really readable and really cool. But it's it's about the bigger world and and what's going on. And we just make it for people to go, oh, that's interesting. and Oh, like that's cool.
00:04:09
Speaker
There's a great sales book called the challenger sale and it's I think it was from the 2010 or 2011 or somewhere around there. And it's got this philosophy in it around, you know, kind of a teach Taylor and take control and how that works. You all do it perfectly. You do do the playbook so well. It's one of the best sales books I've ever read and you just, you just do it perfectly. So anyway, that's why I call you legendary.
00:04:31
Speaker
You have all of the hardware to prove it to. You have Clio Awards. You just want a bunch of Clio Awards. You guys have been around for a long time, which is a testament to itself in this industry. It's just ah it's cool to be having this conversation, so I'm excited about it. And speaking of awards, again, not to tutor on home board, ah we can we can talk about it in the awards. this is the first time I think we've won sort of on both sides. Some were just us doing production only and some were for agency and, you know, agency and production. So we can, I'm happy to, I'm excited to talk about both of those things because it's a, it's a brave new world out there. Yeah. And and that's why I wanted you on the show because you have such deep experience in both of those worlds. And I want to get into this crash course of that kind of agency mindset and thinking like an agency, paint a picture of Zambezi and what Zambezi is, what
00:05:17
Speaker
Finn is and what um you have school and you have scale.
The evolving need for diverse content
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. So all of this in the thematic Zambezi shark kind of idea. Give it the complete picture. How does it work? Yeah, of course. So Chris and Jean who were.
00:05:32
Speaker
you know the principal owners and Jean is the CEO, again, come from that real legacy traditional but like really fantastic creative world of Wyden and Fallon and and places like that. right So some of the best creative minds, some of the best biggest brands and campaigns you've ever seen and put it in a boutique format. that could move a little quicker and and be a little more agile, right? And that's sort of the ethos. Zambezi, the name actually is ah comes from, this was something Kobe and and Chris and the guys came up before I came along, but the name Zambezi refers to a shark, what they call a bull shark in Africa. It's it's the Zambezi River.
00:06:13
Speaker
or what we call bull shark here. It's the zenbezi shark in Africa, and it's the only shark that swims in fresh water and salt water. So it is very nimble. It's a little bit aggressive. It's got that sort of like those Kobe vibes as he was sort of you know the godfather of some of this stuff, but really being tuned into culture, being adaptable, and being and fast. and And for the first part of the journey, really working in it as a traditional agency. Coca-Cola, like I said, was sort of one of our first partners. So we did vitamin water, which is part of the Coca-Cola and the Coca-Cola marketing team. Again, we I mean, world-class, right? You built this global company and the marketing is no small part of what they do. I would say it's a huge part of what they do and they take it really seriously, right? Lots of layers, lots of smart people, lots of process of how they come to
00:07:05
Speaker
They don't just like sit around for a week and come up with a campaign. you know It's like a lot of work. And so really learning the tradition of how that works is sort of a little bit where we came from. And we sort of spread our tentacles out from there. And to this day, some of our key clients came from some of those people that we met in those businesses who have moved on to other roles at other companies and things like that. So as we are looking at the landscape of our partners and what they needed, I would say you know in the past 10 years, the explosion of content right and the needs beyond, you know before probably a little bit before my time, right all you needed was a 30-second TV ad and a and a print ad and maybe ah out of home board and
00:07:50
Speaker
ah radio spot or whatever, but the explosion of content and digital media and social media and all these things have created this need for more and more things. So I think what we saw or what we started to do in terms of moving away, not away from, but augmenting the traditional we're an agency we hire production companies and they go out and make the work and we oversee it and then we put it it just there wasn't in some cases we couldn't move fast enough or can make as much content or we couldn't do.
Integrating production capabilities and creating new content forms
00:08:23
Speaker
Untraditional things as quickly as we needed to we couldn't work in real time or at real speed of what our clients are asking so i think in the beginning the way fin sort of and if and i'm making air quotes you can't see me since started was and i think most agencies started to do this a long time ago ah you know have a couple editors around in case we need to cut something down or make a social thing or whatever.
00:08:48
Speaker
Have somebody who kind knows how to pick up a camera. have you know And you just have a like a little bit and you're still working with the larger production companies for things. But we started seeing, I think, the first real thing that's been in its early iterations came about, we were working with champ sports, which is part of Foot Locker. So we had champ sports and we had East Bay as part of those two brands. And we would, champ sports would have deals with athletes, right? So they have Nike and Adidas and they would have production days with some of those athletes. So we'd get like LeBron for a day to do something or we'd get Kevin Durant or Matt Stafford, whatever.
00:09:25
Speaker
And in the traditional model, you're making a commercial and they're on set and then they, you know, you break and you turn around and they go to their trailer for an hour and then they come back when you're ready. And we were like, God, we got, we have these guys for all this time. And we're half the time they're sitting around doing nothing. What else? So we started thinking about what could we do with them?
00:09:44
Speaker
So we came up, so the creatives actually came up with this idea of a mix between a catalog and um and this was in the days of apps. So a catalog magazine format that was called swag magazine and it was an app for free and it had like the gear that you could buy like laid out really cool and like in a cool catalog way and then we had editorial content. We would talk to Kevin Durant about what his favorite hip-hop songs were. We had Matt Stafford see how far he could throw a dinner roll, and we would just make these little side pieces of content. And then and then what we started to do was not just on the production day, we would go and get you know the beginnings of what you'd call influencers or people creatives.
00:10:30
Speaker
and we would go do little docs or we would go do funny skits or we would just make content in this editorial magazine and we're like, oh, we can do this part at least ourselves. We don't you dont don't need to hide you know go out. There's a lot of talented shooters and and and direct you know we can we can figure this out.
00:10:50
Speaker
So that was really the beginning of sort of our our foray
Adapting to social media and expanding media capabilities
00:10:54
Speaker
into production. And then you know as social media became more of a thing, we realized, again, that's like a specialized language. right it takes You really need to understand what and and the platforms change and they have different ways of talking and even like a TikTok and and its you know it's it's different. right So we wanted to have people who specialize in that And then as the networks are looking, you know the big networks are sort of adding all these pieces, we wanted to add more pieces. So scale, which is our media thing, was a huge thing. And Grace Tang you know built this division of media so that we could bring all these pieces together. So now we had the strategy, we had the creative We have the account, we have the production, and we have the media, which is so important in the placement of where things go. and and And media has become so much more creative than it was before, like the amount of different options you have of where to put things and how to engage people.
00:11:48
Speaker
And it's all you know the more that those things all work together and that network effect that we were looking for, you know building that on a small sort of nimble scale is sort of what we do. That is a well-developed picture for this conversation. Do you agree that there is more opportunity for production companies to take on more of the partner creative developments strategy role with brands?
How can production companies adopt an agency mindset?
00:12:14
Speaker
I think you see it going every, every which way. I mean, I was just reading something about just, and I've been saying the same thing. Everybody's eating everybody's lunch, right? There are production companies are absolutely bringing in creatives and strategists and doing work directly with brands. I, you know, I see actually more of that than I see an agencies are absolutely developing in-house production. I mean,
00:12:40
Speaker
you look at a place like ah Deutsch and steel you know Steelhead, they built a multi-million dollar you know studio operation post you know this whole thing. 72 and Sunny did it for for years. i mean I think there is a lot of cross-pollinization with all these things and the differentiation honestly comes down to the work you do and the people you have and the expertise that you that you bring.
00:13:06
Speaker
and the partnership, you know the connection with your clients that you make and what you're doing for their business. But I do think it is a it is a change. in you know I've spent years coming from production to agency, from a very production land. My CCO is still like, that's not conceptual. You're thinking like a producer, not You know, not like a creative or a straight, you know, it's just a mindset that you have to, you know, get used to or you have to recruit and bring in or or you just have to, you know, open up sort of how you're thinking about things. Well, and so that's it right there. What are some of those ways to open up your mind? So let's say you're an owner of a production company or leader on a production team and you see this opportunity and you want to take get advantage of it. Maybe you think you have some of the strategic creative skills to pull that off. Maybe you're not just hiring directors, but creative directors, things like that, right? What are some of the cheat codes that you would recommend for someone that is considering this? What are some of the top things? Where do you start from the top? From a production company standpoint, it's it's sort of simple, right? I get the boards, I interpret the boards creatively. I'm like, oh, this cool shot would make a great thing and we could do this. and like
00:14:23
Speaker
you know We're infusing what they're telling us strategically about the brand, but I'm still thinking more about my film. right I'm thinking more about my filmmaking and how I'm going to make this cool. And that's okay. there is you know There's a reason there's a separation there was that separation of church and state before, but I think if you want to turn that corner, you you really need to start thinking about what am I doing for the business of the client. not like my you know and Oscars and Emmys. and or you know That stuff is great. But what am I doing to drive the business results? what is the What is the singular communication that we're trying to say? And where does that come from? What was the strategy behind it? And how is that sort of filling that thing? So if you go, you know it's really
00:15:10
Speaker
It's really getting from a, what are we going to make to a more insight driven? What was the insight? What are we trying to say? And how is that affecting the business? So like, if you look at examples, like the Old Spice, right? The man your man could smell like, right?
00:15:27
Speaker
right was driven by a strategic insight that deodorant for men was mostly purchased by women. right so so so tom co like like if you're If you're Tom Coons, if you're the director at MJZ and you're like, you get this script, you're like, oh, how do I make this cool? And I got this guy and he's turning diamonds and he's a horse. and like I'm making that cool. right But if you go back to the agency part of it, they're thinking like, okay, this is a story for women, but we're going to make it Cool for guys who like kitschy fun, you know craft of storytelling But it's like hot actor guy who's gonna be appealing to women and tell this story but it it starts with this insight and a big,
The power of a central creative idea
00:16:11
Speaker
you know conceit of
00:16:13
Speaker
How are we going to appeal to women for this legacy deodorant? right So there's a bigger strategic thought and a bigger creative idea before you get to the, oh, there's a guy and he's riding a horse and he's riding a horse and he's making diamonds out of his hands. you know it's It's starting back a lot further.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, so you have to be real keen on knowing exactly who you're talking to, why you're talking to them, and who you're not talking to. And you have to make those bets informed, as Deadpool would say, educated wishes. Yes. Yeah. And and you got to get past a lot of things and and sell that. you know half the Half of getting a good idea made is selling that idea too. Because there's a lot of hurdles that the you know we spend at the on the agency side. there's six eight There might be six, eight months a year of work going on before even talking before we even mentioning it to a production company or a director. There's so much that happens before you know Again, like that's Old Spice and that's wine and that's the big leagues. There's the Hollywood version of that and there's the indie version of that. right Somebody calls you up and they're like, we need a spot done and we have three weeks to make. you know and It's like you got to sort of do the same thing but on ah on a faster timeline. But it still is about starting from a bigger, that was the big turning point for me anyway, from sort of filmmaking whatever, you come up with an idea for a script and it's cool and it's fun and like this but again starting with that sort of consumer insight first and so thinking about like you said the audience you're talking to the media where is the media gonna get all these things starting back further than that and really thinking through those are are super important if you wanna go from production only to acting like an agency.
00:18:00
Speaker
Are there any methodologies books tools obviously it's people right we know so having good people and people with experience or people with that maybe um client driven kind of mindset ah so ah assuming that you have some something like that or the people that are wanting to be like that.
00:18:18
Speaker
What beyond that in terms of actual tools or methods or understandings have you come to learn or see really effective from a production point of view into more of an agency and what agencies use effectively?
00:18:32
Speaker
sort of in the same way that i was fortunate enough to sort of work on some Hollywood type movies. I think our experience or my learning working with the Coca-Cola brand was really inspiring and helpful to really understand, you know, how it's supposed to work, looking how the big leaguers do it. And the Coca-Cola brand had something called a CCI. It's the core creative idea. If I would have heard that early in my career, I mean, you know, like the tagline.
00:19:02
Speaker
right It's like open happiness or like you know just do it, but it's not. it's It's like going further back. The core creative idea is literally like it's a longer thing. It's a sentence. It's not consumer-facing. It is how you explain to everybody what the North Star of the brand is. So and ah ah a really good example would be, so MasterCard, something, you know, they're the priceless, which is a really fantastic campaign if you think about it and the lengths that that campaign had for years and years and years. The core creative idea is not priceless. The core creative ideas is something like everyday necessities, all things that you need purchased with your MasterCard. You know, you contrast those with a lifetime moment, which you can't purchase, right? like
00:19:49
Speaker
taking your kid to a ballgame or what all the things that are priceless. right so Priceless isn't the core idea, but it's the things that that money can't buy. That's sort of the creative idea. And then if you have a really good one, like a really good creative idea,
00:20:07
Speaker
like you see with the priceless, you can make endless scripts out of that. There are endless stories to tell. like it Literally, if you if you spend the time finding the right insight, you know maybe it was the the insight was the universal truth of you know money can't buy the most important things. right that is it That is a true insight. That is ah a way to get to people's like hearts. right it's It's meaningful.
00:20:31
Speaker
And if you can unlock that, then you're not just writing, script like the the scripts will literally fall out of the tree that you've built with this idea, but it's taking a step back and going, like building the, like planting the seed of the tree first. And then all the other stuff will fall out of it naturally rather than like, Oh, what's a good idea? Oh, like take a kid to the ball. You know, if you start there, it's great. Maybe you have one great story or one great script, but if you have this core creative idea and like Geico or MasterCard or Nike, whatever, you can spend years and years making content that still feels fresh and interesting stories out of this this one little piece, if that makes sense.
00:21:15
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense and I think that's really smart and wise advice is to find that that core idea. I used to work for a company called Creature up in Seattle and they Jim Haven had this real great system and he always the system always ended up producing a beautiful problem and it was their version of the core creative idea and the beautiful problem became the the gospel for everything from that point forward once you and it took a lot of work A lot of strategy, a lot of thinking. I mean, I was surprised. It was tactile. It was digital. It was everything to try to get to what that beautiful problem could be or the core creative idea. And then once you found it and the client understood it, it just that was the beginning of the campaign. It's right there. that you could You could do a lot of different stuff. That's
Pitching and validating creative concepts
00:22:04
Speaker
where I learned that. So I think really smart advice.
00:22:06
Speaker
Again, and myself included, I would always jump, you know, adhere. I'd hear a brief from a thing and I'd be like, oh, we can make this cool thing like this. And, you know, again, my CCO or my ECD or somebody would be like, you got to pull that start further back.
00:22:21
Speaker
start from. We need a concept. We need an idea first, a conceptual thing that leans into something that's going to matter to people, some some truth right about a product. You can't just shill shitty products. There has to be some truth and some value in the product and why people want that. Say you do think that you can or you have come up with that core creative idea.
00:22:46
Speaker
you still have to sell it through this how do you do that do you have any ideas any mechanisms any other like any tools these days that really can test a campaign so that when you're selling it through to the different layers of decision makers for a client they can see the evidence that this is something to build on do you do you have any experience or.
00:23:08
Speaker
anything that you pulled on that was worth sharing? One reference, I'll tell you, there's a movie, a documentary called Art and Copy. If you've ever worked as a direct, yeah, it's great, great director. But, you know, some real legends, you know, George Lewis, you know, who is this amazing outspoken art director, Esquire, launched Tommy Hill, you know, all these great things. And he talks about, it's funny, because he talked about it before,
00:23:33
Speaker
before I think Jordan Belfort and Wolf, well, you know, the sell me this pen thing, right? He's like, give me that fucking, I'll sell you the fucking pen, right? But what they both talk about, I think is, or what Belfort especially talks about is the first thing I need to do is ask you questions, right? I need to know what you want, you know, how long you've been in the market for a pen, what kind of pen do you usually use? Like not just like, oh, this is my pen, here's how great it is, right? But really listening, right? listening right I think is the first thing listening to what it is. And we have all this data now.
00:24:03
Speaker
right We know audiences, we know consumer you know we know how people purchase when they're considerate, all these things. And I think you have to use data as your friend, but you have to take it all again with a grain of salt right because it can't always explain the sort of magic of an idea that's going to open up people's minds to something they hadn't thought of.
00:24:25
Speaker
but I do think you can support you should come in and support it. like We went and talked to this memory of people. This study says that people think this. and A lot of times, what's really interesting, and our strategy team will tell you this, is that you know what might be thought of as common wisdom is wrong. right so don't right Don't take things at face value. you know Going back to the the deodorant thing for Old Spice. right You wouldn't have thought that 60% of people who are buying men's deodorant were women necessarily. right So using that stuff and having that help support your argument, but it really is about like listening to you know you know i don't know what I don't know if there's a tool of magic, some it's relationship, it's trust, it's all those things. Definitely bring some data with you. Don't just go, we think that blah, blah, blah, because our guts tell us this. right I think it's important to have some supportive information and most most real good insights as you're looking at it are some consumer thing.
Identifying market opportunities and white spaces
00:25:27
Speaker
The two data points that I've seen work pretty effectively to get ideas sold through is one is when you can show that you've talked to the customers of the client. right the you the you're The data somehow represents their customers or their competition's customers. right you know pairing it up against the competition that you're facing is also an effective way, either saying your competition's missing an opportunity, or they're doing something right, but there's more to be had, you know, and kind of bringing that into it. I find it's a great motivator for decision makers to really want to act on something when you've brought introduced those two, ah you know, people, those two types into the conversation.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, 100% when you can find white space. That's it. Other people, I mean, we were just talking about like, whether it's it's men's deodorant bought by women that other all the other men's deodorant weren't we're going in that direction. You know, we were talking about Dove Real Beauty. I don't know that the other brands in that space were talking about that sort of like reinventing beauty and what and and standards and and showing different kinds of people and different skin types and body type. you know they I think they were really the first to do that. I mean i was looking at you know the Like a Girl campaign, which is another one. Big sort of reframing of this idea of like a you know what is like a girl, right throws like a girl. do
00:26:53
Speaker
you know and And for a brand like Always, but you wouldn't necessarily put those together. But but looking at the kind competitive landscape, there was there was a white space. right Nobody else in their space was doing that. I think that those are always opportunities to look around and you know not just sort of do what everybody else is doing. If you can If you can make a ah turn and and find that those things that make your brand distinctive and again like standn really stand for something or or come out about what you believe in as a brand, then I think that you have the possibility to to make a difference in your marketplace and and with consumers.
00:27:33
Speaker
I knew a strategist once I worked with, she found this white space between um craft beer and crush beer. And she called it the crush, you know, like the frat party kind of thing. I love that. Yeah. And she found this white space that was so open that I just, we just called around beer companies and we just discovered something that that we thought that would fit, that could really fill that space. and um If you want to hear about it, give us a call back, you know, kind of a thing and it worked. People were dying for and we end up getting a client out of it. I love that. I never, I've never done that before where you find a white space just by happening, but ah you know, you look at a liquid death or something like that. Those guys absolutely blew open the water white space, right? Nobody, I mean, like when you go to the supermarket, there is so much fricking, there's so much water, right?
00:28:20
Speaker
But nobody else, nobody else is doing water the way that liquid death is doing water and the whole idea of death,
Measuring creative impact on business goals
00:28:28
Speaker
you know, plastic. I mean, it's talking about, and you know, it's not surprising that those guys came from agencies. Yeah, right.
00:28:36
Speaker
and So ah this is really insightful. what about One of the things I love about Zambezi in your kind of ah your your statements of what you do is talk about measuring work, right? Creative that gets measured. That is one of the biggest things I see production companies struggle with.
00:28:53
Speaker
I think it's important when you're pitching an idea that you so talk about how you believe this campaign will take the client as close to if not hit or exceed their goals as possible. That could be a a desired outcome. It could be a ah statement of we are going to achieve this. If you do this, it's often a ways to sell up, you know, like you could you're you're spending five hundred thousand dollars, but if you spend a million, we can get you more.
00:29:19
Speaker
But it's really tough to feel that you actually can make a measurable difference when you're so far removed from the variables that influence that outcome. So do you have any tips for that? I mean, I think i think you're absolutely right. You have to. in order to influence, you have to, again, get upstream. You have to understand what the business is and there's and you have to understand what you know what the KPIs are. right what What are the results you're after? Because what I think a lot of brands do, and this is some of the bigger brands with like seasoned marketers, but especially with less seasoned marketers, is they want to tell all the stories at once.
00:29:58
Speaker
on every channel all the time at the same time. And I think you really need to establish with clients what are you doing? We talked about the funnel a little bit. Is this an awareness play? Are you just building the brand? Do you just want people to know your name and have heard of you so that when they're thinking about the space that your product is in, that you're in that consideration?
00:30:20
Speaker
Do you want to be in the consideration set or or do you need to literally, you know, some, some brands, if they're startup and they need to be much more DR, they just need you to buy it and you need, you know, and maybe that's like Facebook ads or YouTube and you're like, here's the product. Here's why you should buy it. But that will only go so far, right? You need some bigger brand work. I think what we, you know, we, we have been a long time partner for Traeger grills and they were a company.
00:30:50
Speaker
that were very popular with a very niche audience. right I'm one of them my own ones. Yeah, there you go. And they were like fanatic about that this very, but they wanted to, it was a very specific thing that we did was they wanted to grow from this core group, right which is different than if you came to me and said, nobody knows ah who our brand is, and we want to drive more sales, and we want people to know who we are. So we analyze the shit out of the audience, right? Who were these people? And how and and in some ways, how could we use them as part of it, right? So there's influencer strategy that was part.
00:31:29
Speaker
How do we open up a bigger awareness right from this core group?
Adapting campaigns through feedback and testing
00:31:34
Speaker
And then ultimately, you know eventually that trickles down to to sales at some point, but the first part was like, how do we get people to know that this brand exists? And not only that it exists, but that it is beloved by many because part of the research shows you know more and more people are not taking in advice or information from just sort of advertising telling them they want somebody and in you know somebody they know or somebody they trust or somebody they watch to tell them that XYZ is good and you should use it. So we came up, you know again, like months of ah strategy and audience and whatever, and coming up with this bigger sort of bigger idea, this housing that was welcome to the Traeger hood, this idea of like a neighborhood where you are welcome and and we made
00:32:22
Speaker
all these different things and that was again like one we did a big you know super bowl spot type thing and and put it out in different places but at the same time we were doing also very localized out of home and like influencers so there was like multiple touch points and multiple tactics used at different parts of the funnel and used in different ways. And I think what we established, because they were you know the clients were were fantastic, Todd Smith, who actually going back came out of that Coca-Cola, that training and that background of like really understanding marketing on a high level. And to their credit, again, understanding that we were telling different stories in different places to different people, right? and so
00:33:08
Speaker
we were making social videos that featured influencers and very like documentary, like regular people, like grilling on Traeger's and spreading the word. And then we had this very polished, you know, with actors and things doing welcome to the, you know, and it's all sort of lattered up into this bigger idea of the Traeger hood that you are welcome, but it was in different, seen in different places that ah at different times by different people. and worked it was It was crazy that it was right around the time of the pandemic and all these things and and grilling became a thing, but i mean it was massively successful. so You made me think, ah it kind of inspired me to think about one method of perhaps
00:33:47
Speaker
being able to see yourself more in the outcomes of these campaigns could be to introduce AB kind of testing, right? You know, like, Hey, we're gonna, I think a smart way to go here would be to, but we're gonna, we're gonna do one style this way, one style this way, we're gonna, you talk to your media buying team, we're gonna play it out in this way and we'll know. hundred percent performing. And based on that information, I think we'll try to, you know, develop a campaign into two more episodes or whatever it might might be is a strong way to indicate to a client that you are thinking that way. And that you are you can produce the work to actually test in their best interest and hopefully get results of that that succeed right that that I think that could be a really strong play.
00:34:25
Speaker
a hundred percent and and from a production lands again you need to be we need to be more nimble we need to be more creative we need to be it we need to shoot and capture things in a way that they can be tested and broken up and tried in different formats and,
00:34:41
Speaker
and giving options and shooting you know two endings and shooting like different things i think that the trick is you know we're lucky we're fortunate enough to have our media partners part of our company sometimes that listen not all of our clients.
00:34:57
Speaker
work through our our media services. and Honestly, in some ways, and we you know we play great with everyone in the sandbox, but it can be challenging when you don't have day-to-day knowledge of what is going on with the buys. If you have that, then it's great. i mean With our our clients at HealthAid, our media team does it to we do a ton of A-B testing and literally to like this color background, or this all the way to all the way to like you know different CTAs and different copy language and and You know, it depends again, like how granular you want to get, but I think as a production entity, having those capabilities in house to change things quickly, to try things, to make multiple versions of it and see what works in some places that I think that's really important. And I think.
00:35:45
Speaker
you know you can get in your own way if you're a little too rigid about like this is the only way it can be. you have to you know Going back to entertainment models, all all big movies go to testing. They don't talk about it a lot, but they all go to to ah almost all of them go to testing. you know you If you are into that kind of thing, you can read about endings of movies being changed, you know fatal attract you know everything from fatal attraction to la la la.
00:36:12
Speaker
to modern movies, the audience didn't like the ending. We got to change it to something that is more sad. I was just listening to a podcast about election, one of my favorite movies. They shot you know at least one or two, if not three different endings. Because the first one, just audiences were like, no, we don't. And and i I think it's tricky. I think you have to be careful about like focus groups and things like that. You have to take them ah with a grain of salt. And I think you have to let them tell you what might be working or not working, not necessarily let them tell you how to fix it. But if you do a hundred if you do a marketing test of a piece of content or an execution or an ad or something, and 80% of the people go, I didn't understand what happened at the end. That's all you need to know, right? You you can't ah you can't just go, well, they don't what do they to take that seriously. um And the worst thing that you know we can do in advertising thing is not communicate clearly. Yes, we are creative. Yes, we can talk in metaphor. Yes, we can be symbolic. But if if audiences don't understand what we're saying, and I think it's true in in movies too and entertainment and TV. and If people don't understand the point you're trying, they don't understand what you're saying,
00:37:29
Speaker
And you're not doing anybody any favors no matter how cool or artistic or whatever it is. You're not communicating effectively. On the same thing, I think you can over-rev on those kind of focus and you can be sort of too beholden to it because it's not a true, you know, an audience that knows it's part of a focus group is going to have a stronger opinion than just people who are just watching casually in their living room while they're eating dinner and making a sandwich and doing whatever they do, right? yeah They're forcing emotions to react. They're forcing and they and there're and they're like, oh, I have to have an opinion about this. so it's okay you know but take it you know So you take it with a grain of salt, but there are things that are worth uncovering and ah that I do think the audience and focus groups and testing um can give you. I think your job or our job is in the interpretation of that feedback that maybe it's not exactly literal, or can but but how we interpret that
00:38:24
Speaker
is important and that is again something I feel like you know experience and and doing it a lot of times and and really getting a feel for what it's what the what those results are telling you is really important and then you know trying stuff and if you start to see the things that you want out of it then you know obviously you're on the right path and we have so much more ability to do that now than we ever have. like you know Clicks and and pixels and and and all these things that you can do to see in real time what is going on with your ads. is we've never We've never been in that world and it's only going to get faster and more sophisticated.
Offering diverse content solutions
00:39:00
Speaker
One thing that I think production companies have to their advantage is the experience, the equipment, the knowledge of how to film a lot of different kind of content. right That's the advantage that they have. They may have more experience than agencies in this way and more expertise in this. yeah So when it comes to, and I think one of the great things that they can offer ah brand clients when they're working directly with them is to offer a whole but suite of companion content. right
00:39:32
Speaker
You talked about this with your story with the you know sports players and taking advantage of them there. That's a great example. But if they thought more in terms of companion content for all of the different places media is is seen and viewed and and taken in now.
00:39:48
Speaker
I think that's a really strong sell and it plays into the strengths, I believe, of production companies. Do you think that's true? Yeah, I mean, I think it can be. a Listen, I think every everybody has to think about that. Whether you're the production company, go, oh, you know what? We could also, while we're shooting this, we could also do these two things and we could cut this differently. I think sometimes a production mindset can think of those things. A director or a producer can be like, oh, we can For doing this, we could double up and get this three versions of that where maybe a traditional agency creative may or may not think of of that kind of thing. I think certainly agencies are being tasked by their clients to have to create a ton of content with everything they do.
00:40:31
Speaker
but yes i do think that production companies and again you see it both ways and there's so many production companies that are now you know going straight to brand and bringing their production expertise and i think it's attractive to brands go like oh i would like to work with that director why couldn't they.
00:40:48
Speaker
come up with the whole thing and do like have it come through that talent but i i absolutely think that the capabilities of production companies and their resources can a hundred percent help ah clients create more of the kinds of content they just just need to think through all the different needs of those contents all the different channels they need to exist in.
00:41:09
Speaker
and sort of how those work. So maybe you're not shooting your anamorphic to but you know to to end up as a one by one you know on Instagram or something, but you know ah all these things are also you know continually changing and keeping up with them. but yeah i mean I think thinking through the the logistics and the practicalities of like, okay, we have one shoot day, how much stuff are we going to get? you know We'll get the script, but how much other things and how can we make this modular and how can we have options? and ah Good directors know the drill of sitting there while the agency is like, can we do one more? where you so you know
00:41:46
Speaker
um so But thinking through that in advance and suggesting those things and coming up with those in advance are are great. And like, oh, well, we could do you know three different endings here. we could do you know All those things are great ways for productions, companies to show their chops to clients for sure.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah, I love the term production mindset. We're sitting, you're talking about agency mindset, but it's obvious that there's a ah lot of value in that production mindset too. And I think if you are someone going after more, a direct to brand clients, bringing that together as part of your methodology and being able to articulate that. And I think would be really, that'd be really strong as strong' a strong case to be. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what we say and I i see it. I mean, again, we see it a lot, lots of, lots of top tier production companies who have amazing talent and creative directors again some of them former creative directors are absolutely pitching themselves to you know as that one stop shop come here will help you come up with the idea that will go make it and
Blending agency and production for client success
00:42:44
Speaker
you know.
00:42:44
Speaker
with this you know these great directors you like and we pitch ourselves as at fin studios as a production company with the dna of an agency right we we can come up and show up and shoot your boards and give you a director that's gonna help bring your vision to life but we also have a little bit of an agency mindset where we understand all the things that you've gone through with this client. We understand what they're asking for. We want to help you on a deeper level. Again, when we're working with an with an agency or an internal creative and we're just the production company, we we want to understand all the things that get them there and what the servicing what the client is looking for, not just what we are as a production.
00:43:27
Speaker
you know, a company or trying to create, but sort of bringing all that thing. And I think, you know, I do think it can go both ways. Production companies doing creative and and agencies, obviously, you know, in some cases doing more production and it's all, and that's just sort of the way it's going these days. Yeah. Yeah. It's all morphing. Well, I feel like I could talk to you. I could talk to whoever runs the newsletter. I could talk to your social influencer team. i should I'm sure they'd be glad to to chime in.
00:43:54
Speaker
I'm going to do a whole series. You should do a whole series on our different ah all our different departments, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100 episodes for every employee. Happy to do it. Well, um any last you've been so generous with your thoughts and your experience and what you observe and what you practice. Anything that I've missed here that you think is really important that listeners need to know about?
00:44:18
Speaker
I mean, I don't think so. i I think at the end of the day, it really is about partnership. I think that's what we take. we yeah One of our long standing clients that I just came back from a shoot from Taylor make golf, we like 10 years. We've been with them and every year we do a giant, what we call the super shoot, which is all their pros. We get them all together over two days and shoot literally almost all the content we're going to make for next year.
00:44:44
Speaker
So it's you know seven or eight commercials, social content, ah literally the Christmas card, photos. like you know Every year is a giant challenge, but a very satisfying one. And again, those 10-year partnerships, you don't see those as much as you did in the old days, those AOR
Building trust and alignment with clients
00:45:02
Speaker
relationships. But it is about it's about trust. It's about are what are values and what we're trying to do with them is aligned with what they're trying to do right we're not working cross purposes we we're trying to satisfy their needs but we're also. Being an objective outside i and so we build up trust and we can talk openly with each other and we can and and talk about sort of what are goals are you know and their goal you know growing them from a.
00:45:30
Speaker
from a four hundred and twenty five million dollar company to a two billion dollar company that's super satisfying obviously for us and super beneficial for tailor made and all their stakeholders and that's really ultimately what we're trying to do is help businesses grow and supporting them in creative communications and marketing to help them do that and achieve the goals that they have.
Conclusion and thanks to Alex Cohn
00:45:54
Speaker
Alex Cohen, you've been so generous with your thoughts you and your experience. I started of the show with a challenge of prying information out of you, but you were just a willing participant. So thank you for doing that. um Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, James. It's really been a pleasure. I love, you you know, your insights and and your thoughtfulness is is really helpful in these and and I love the podcast and I'm happy to be a part of it. So thanks. All right. To be continued. Thanks, James.
00:46:25
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S dot com.