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Video is the most powerful tool in your marketing stack, and most of it is being wasted. Not because the footage is bad, but because no one’s thinking about the business outcome it needs to achieve. Everyone’s still stuck in the "fast, good, cheap: pick two" triangle. We say f*** the triangle.
We're David and Jess Siciliano, co-founders of Savvy Studios. We started in the traditional agency world and left it behind because, guess what? The model is broken.
Whether you're an agency or a brand, each episode you'll walk away knowing exactly what to ask for, what to push back on, and how to make video work harder for you.
We believe you can create great ads and brand videos with any budget. People just don’t know how to make it work. After listening, you will.
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David Siciliano (00:00):
The video triangle goes like this. Cheap, fast, good. And you can pick two. This doesn't make any sense because everything has changed in the world of marketing and that model no longer applies, but it's how video production is still operating because they are so far removed from what the business is needing to do nowadays. We're having different conversations now. This is Call Us Disruptors.
Jessica Siciliano (00:25):
A show for the agencies, the marketers, the brand slide leaders who are done pretending that pretty video equals performing video. We're David and Jess.
David Siciliano (00:34):
And this is Call Us Disruptors.
Jessica Siciliano (00:36):
Okay. Let's get into it. We are a video production company.
David Siciliano (00:41):
Yep. We're a video production company grounded in strategy and business outcomes first. Yes. What does this mean? This means that before we do anything creative, we want to align with your business goals, the repeatable resources, what your target audience is consuming other than your product and how best to optimize those things for the project.
Jessica Siciliano (01:01):
In other words, we just ask a lot of questions.
David Siciliano (01:03):
We do ask a lot of questions.
Jessica Siciliano (01:05):
Before a camera is ever seen.
David Siciliano (01:07):
Yeah. Our core philosophy is fuck the triangle.
Jessica Siciliano (01:11):
Do you want to talk more about that?
David Siciliano (01:13):
Yes. This is my favorite thing ever. Traditionally, the video triangle is ... It doesn't have a name. It has a name. I should look it up, but the video triangle goes like this. Cheap, fast, good. And you can pick two. This doesn't make any sense because everything has changed in the world of marketing and that model no longer applies, but it's how video production is still operating because they are so far removed from what the business is needing to do nowadays that they have no idea. We're having different conversations now. Business owners are in the world of AI, of automation, of measurement and video production is still in the world of you spend 300 grand on one video and then you wait till next quarter for your next project. Things have changed a lot. And so we created our company to try to bring that gap closer together.
(02:06):
Yeah.
Jessica Siciliano (02:08):
So this is our second career. Both you and I. We used to be performers.
David Siciliano (02:12):
What were you doing before,
Jessica Siciliano (02:13):
Jaz? I was a singer and a dancer.
David Siciliano (02:15):
On the West End.
Jessica Siciliano (02:16):
And all over the world. Yes. I did that from probably the age of three until the age of 28. And then I hung up my dancing shoes and moved to the US, really.
David Siciliano (02:32):
Yeah.
Jessica Siciliano (02:32):
What were you doing before this?
David Siciliano (02:34):
I really liked acting when I was a kid because I just enjoyed that hang and then I never really thought of- What? Well, I just liked that- You just
Jessica Siciliano (02:42):
Enjoyed that hang?
David Siciliano (02:43):
Yeah. What does
Jessica Siciliano (02:44):
That mean?
David Siciliano (02:44):
It's a good hang all the theater kids. And then someone told me I had to go to college and I said, "Well, I might as well keep doing the thing that was fun." And then in college they said, "You're trying to get a career right." And I said, "I guess so. " And then I had an agent and I was working in New York and absolutely hated it. But the whole time I was doing video production.
Jessica Siciliano (03:03):
In what capacity?
David Siciliano (03:05):
I produce, cast, write, shoot, edit. I did journalism broadcast thing. I made stop motion animation videos of my Legos. So
Jessica Siciliano (03:15):
Video production has always been?
David Siciliano (03:17):
A hobby.
Jessica Siciliano (03:18):
A hobby for you?
David Siciliano (03:19):
Yeah.
Jessica Siciliano (03:19):
Until?
David Siciliano (03:20):
Well, until I switched careers, I said, "I really don't like this. Why am I doing this? I don't actually even want to have a career in this. "
Jessica Siciliano (03:27):
When you were performing.
David Siciliano (03:29):
Yeah. I don't even like performing. I really just like the creative process. I'm an introvert. Was that
Jessica Siciliano (03:37):
When you went to agencies?
David Siciliano (03:39):
Yeah, I made a short film and a friend of mine was like, oh, who had cast me in a play but was actually a producer at a big agency in New York, one of the most well known agencies in the world, said, "Oh, cool. Are you producing?" And I said, "Oh yeah, I'd love to get a job doing it at some point. I think that's what I want to do next." And she said, "Oh, I'll give you a job." Had no idea what that meant, had no idea the agency was a big deal until I was there working and was working on Budweiser, Eddie Bauer, Mountain Dew, Quaker. GE, HP, all these premium brands. And that was where I got my start producing. Yeah. And then I said, "Oh, hang on a second. I've been doing this my whole life. This job I'm doing now, I've doing this my whole life.
(04:18):
I'm getting paid more in a day than I did in a month at some months in my other career. And I also like it. I should probably do this. "
Jessica Siciliano (04:27):
You're also very good at it.
David Siciliano (04:29):
Well, thank you.
Jessica Siciliano (04:30):
You are very process orientated.
David Siciliano (04:32):
Very process oriented. I'm a mix of left brain and right brain. I really like creative stuff, but I like process.
Jessica Siciliano (04:37):
Yes.
David Siciliano (04:37):
You're very good at it too. How did you get into this second career?
Jessica Siciliano (04:41):
I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a second career because my body was so broken from dancing. I was like, "I need to not do that anymore to myself."
David Siciliano (04:50):
Your chiropractor actually told you you had the body of an 80-year-old.
Jessica Siciliano (04:52):
I did. Yeah, you did. Yeah. I wonder what age it is now that I've rested. So yeah, my body was so broken from my first career and then when I moved here, I kind of didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then I just joined you on set one day
David Siciliano (05:13):
And
Jessica Siciliano (05:13):
I remember just being like, wow, I just used every single part of myself, organizing, seeing things that no one else sees, making sure everyone's okay, making sure everyone's safe, making sure whatever needs to get done, it gets done and just being around people and making sure that people get what they want.
David Siciliano (05:38):
Well, totally. And that project, First AD had to step away to solve it. We needed a generator for a night thing and it fell through or something like that. And so we had a step away to go deal with the vendor and there was no sales service. So he had to go do something. And so you just kind of took over his first AD and my first AC on that set was like, my first assistant camera on that set was like, "Is your wife a first aid or is your girlfriend of first AD?" He said, "No, she's never done this before." I was like, "She's amazing." Yeah. You just naturally did it.
Jessica Siciliano (06:07):
Yeah. And then I'd tag along, help you out. I instantly fell in love with it. I feel like I was going to say, and I slowly fell in love with it, but I think I was just like, yeah. And you don't know if you're going to work well with your partner until you work with them. And I think we just always worked so well with each other. I feel like as we worked on communication as a married couple, it automatically ... We were like, "Ooh, we
David Siciliano (06:36):
Can do
Jessica Siciliano (06:36):
This as business owners too."
David Siciliano (06:38):
Totally. And people seem to like it. And at some point we decided we should make our own company. We see that there's a status quo out there between agencies, brands and video production and they're all having different conversations, different needs and landscape's changing. I think we can make a pretty cool approach to this process that is more streamlined, still really good quality, tied to business outcomes. We work well together. You as a former dancer are great with movement directing, working with talent, you're so good with people and with clients. And then I have more of the technical side and the process side or whatever. So we said, "Let's make our own thing." The
Jessica Siciliano (07:15):
Big
David Siciliano (07:15):
Brain. And you're the one with the big hearts.
Jessica Siciliano (07:19):
I'll take it.
David Siciliano (07:22):
Yeah. And then it's kind of grown. I mean, last year we hired 600 people, most of them for a day, but as actors or crew or whatever, but I mean, we've grown quite a bit.
Jessica Siciliano (07:31):
Belittle that comment. That's a lot of people.
David Siciliano (07:34):
It's pretty cool. Yeah.
Jessica Siciliano (07:35):
We've niched down. We were doing all sorts of things. We still do all sorts of things, but we
David Siciliano (07:42):
Do
Jessica Siciliano (07:42):
Shoots for all different types of
David Siciliano (07:44):
Companies. We have an approach now that is pretty like, this is our approach, this is what it yields, and then here's the results to prove it.
Jessica Siciliano (07:54):
And we like to remain with a brand to know what the outcome was to, I guess, better our company.
David Siciliano (08:01):
Well, yeah, I mean, if the project is a success, then you can measure it and it makes more sales or whatever it needs to do and then you want to work with us again. So we try to align ourselves with that. So we're not trying to make all of our money from one project and then see it later. We want it to be a relationship that builds over time. Many agencies are bloated, overpriced, slow, very into the creative ideas more so than the business goals. Agencies are kind of optimized for creative awards most of the time or traditionally as opposed to being oriented like our favorite partners. We work with Mountain quite a bit and they're more oriented on measurable results or vibe. They're not really an agency. They're a publisher, but I put them in that category and they're more oriented on, we want results.
(08:46):
In fact, they give you free managed services just because they really want the videos to perform. That's awesome. That's very new though, and that's not a lot of agencies. Traditionally agencies are for how cool is the creative idea or they're not really optimized for the business goals typically.
Jessica Siciliano (09:03):
Yeah. There's not really any transparency with anything really in some of the bigger older agencies.
David Siciliano (09:10):
But they're just not motivated to. It doesn't even have to be a knock on them. It's just they're not motivated to. They're not motivated to align themselves to the business's goals.
Jessica Siciliano (09:18):
Yeah.
David Siciliano (09:18):
There's nothing there to that.
Jessica Siciliano (09:19):
But I do feel like they lose businesses
David Siciliano (09:23):
Because
Jessica Siciliano (09:24):
Of it.
David Siciliano (09:24):
And I think that model is dying because of it, which is why some of these other agencies that are shifting and able to provide more for less, or there's a lot of different models that they're now that are trying to change that. Originally in the very, very beginning, I had heard this story so many times that it was the story I said of why we created Savvy for a while. I was working at one of the top agencies in the world, very recognizable. I will not name them. My client was a
(09:50):
Beer brand that does a lot of advertising. It's very recognizable. They were running a limited time run of a beer. They had a certain amount of it they needed to sell. It was just for the holidays during football season. They wanted a 30 second ad to play during linear TV football season. So they're not going to be able to measure it very well. It's just that they're going to be able to measure it like we can now. This was 10 years ago. They shoot the ad, it comes to me. I'm the post producer. We edit it. I work with the editor, work with the colorist, the mixer and all that stuff. We're working on the score. So what the music's going to be, we put in some stock because I had a budget of like 2,500 or 1,500, something in there for stock music. I present some options.
(10:31):
What are you feeling? What are you liking? What aren't you liking? Yeah, we're just not liking anything. We really like the song from the animatic now.
Jessica Siciliano (10:38):
Which is an animated storyboard that's kind of the whole commercial in animated form.
David Siciliano (10:44):
Yeah. It's like a hand-drawn animation, very simple with music. And they had done that process in pre-production to show a bunch of concepts to Budweiser, which in itself is just a lot of money spent on something that doesn't seem very worth it, but whatever. It's big agency, that's how they do it. The animatic. Okay. So that department is in a different building, in a different borough in New York. So I call them and I'm trying to figure out, okay, who made the animatic? Got it. Where'd you get your music from? It's this band. Okay, that's not great. Okay. Well, I go email the brand, "Hey, we want to use your song in this TV commercial during football season and during the holidays. What do you think? " And they said, "Let me get my agent involved as the agent gets involved." And they say, "We would like to quote you $100,000 for this use." My budget was 1500 to 2,500.
(11:33):
I poo my pants a little bit because I'm new to this and this is my first big time producing job. Then I tell my boss, they say, "Well, we got to present it to client because that's what they asked for. "
Jessica Siciliano (11:43):
So then you're on a phone call with the
David Siciliano (11:44):
Head of marketing. Actually in person, the head of the VP of marketing comes to the office to our office or our branch or whatever of the agency in person and standing there, I can still see it in the bullpen with all the editors and people and she's talking about blah, blah, blah. And then it's my turn to bring up, "Oh yes, the music. Yeah, we did hear back from the brand. They're asking for $100,000." She goes, "Yeah, yeah, cool, whatever." So next week when we're working on the other and then just completely moves on. And I don't know, it kind of grossed me out $100,000 for a song that really wasn't that much different from what we were already presenting.
Jessica Siciliano (12:21):
Kind
David Siciliano (12:21):
Of like unknown too. It's not a known band What did that really do and we're not measuring what that did. They sold their beer faster than the run of the ad. The ad did well, I guess, but I mean there's no way to measure that at that point. So this was just they liked that song and to me it was, but that's not a reason to choose.That's a creative choice based in just what do you like as opposed to the creative choice based in what are you trying to do?
Jessica Siciliano (12:51):
But there was no one at this agency to say like, "Hey, that's not really a good use of money of the budget."
David Siciliano (12:59):
Totally.
Jessica Siciliano (12:59):
What about these different ideas?
David Siciliano (13:01):
Ironically, actually that vice president, I believe, got fired a year or so later. I don't know if I've told you this, but because I don't know why, but I assume probably because they were spending hundreds of thousand dollars on ads that, what was it really doing? Was it lifting anything? How are they measuring the performance there? Yeah. Anyway, I'd heard a version of that so many times. I've heard we spent $400,000 on this one video, it did nothing. I've heard that from so many brands. We have heard that from so many brands. Still, we hear that from so many brands. And then by the time they come to our doorstep it's right, well, let's talk about what are you trying to do, who are you trying to target? What is the competition doing? What else do you need to be doing? How often do you need to be doing it?
(13:39):
Can we create a project that gets you more assets for the same day that is a fraction of the price and that way you can be a bit more nimble and try things out and experiment and make what you need. And it can still all look really good because all the technology has gotten better. You don't need all that anymore.
Jessica Siciliano (13:54):
Well, yeah and streaming services like doing a CTV commercial, you don't need to be a brand that has 100K to throw down the toilet.
David Siciliano (14:01):
No, you need $50 a day to start streaming on TV. And that same ad on TV can perform on Meta, can perform on Google, you can do photos, you can do static, you can do website, you can get everything you need from that one shoot for a quarter or a year if you do it right, but that's not what agencies want to do. They want to sell the one video for $100,000 and tell you it's going to be great for your brand. How are you measuring that? That same commercial that they had shot, I wasn't part of production, but they built a fake alley out in Brooklyn on an empty street in the middle of summer and made it look like it was a blizzard in New York. So they made fake snow. They made it look like nighttime is the middle of the day.
(14:42):
They spent-
Jessica Siciliano (14:43):
Why?
David Siciliano (14:43):
Because the whole thing was this- Why didn't they
Jessica Siciliano (14:45):
Just go to Canada or something?
David Siciliano (14:47):
I was going to say, at that point, you might as well just go up to Canada. I know it was a litle weird. They made a fake alley in a big wide street. They made it look like night. They added snow. They made it look freezing just to have this speakeasy entrance moment.
Jessica Siciliano (14:59):
Do you think that that was the brand's fault or the agency's fault?
David Siciliano (15:05):
We're not having the right conversation. I think the conversation they're having is we have this cool idea for this thing and we could do it this way and how cool would that be? Which is the agency's creative agency's job is to come up with cool ideas. So the creative director is coming up with this idea. The creative director isn't thinking about MER, you know what I mean? What's that? Marketing efficiency ratio. He's thinking about like, "What's a cool idea to sell this thing? Speak easy while we're shooting in July." Well, we'll make an alley. It'd be fine. That's what they're thinking. And then the brand's thinking, I need really good creative and it needs to look really good and I guess I'm going to spend a bunch of money so it looks good. We're not having the right conversation. You don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have something look really good.
Jessica Siciliano (15:47):
Well, there's this kind of disconnect from something looking really cool and obviously each brand wanting it to be as cheap as possible and there has to be a conversation surrounding all of that of like, what is this for? Does it need to be that cool?
David Siciliano (16:06):
Right.
Jessica Siciliano (16:07):
Right? Because a good video doesn't have to be necessarily cool. It needs to be good.
David Siciliano (16:13):
Yeah, it needs to work.
Jessica Siciliano (16:14):
It needs to work and do its job, but having stunts in a video or renting five cars or something is going to cost a lot of money. Will it be cool with just one car? Will it be cool without any stunts? If not, then that's another conversation. But I do think that there is a disconnect for a lot of brands on really cool shit, but does it do the job that it needs to do?
David Siciliano (16:51):
Connecting the cool ideas to the thing it actually has to do or the reverse where brands are so into like, "Well, it just needs to sell the product. I just need you to say the features of the product." It's going to get lost. If it's so boring and is just working, it will be so boring and so interesting and not hooky at all and not sticky, it'll just disappear.
Jessica Siciliano (17:09):
So
David Siciliano (17:09):
It's this kind of balance. And also if it's on Meta, they'll probably only watch the first three to eight seconds. So all the good ideas need to be in the first three to eight seconds, then the rest can fill out whatever we need it to be, but we don't need a really cool, expensive idea at second 28 on Meta or on CTV and they can't skip it. So that's a different conversation. There is a disconnect there. I think some of it too is they just don't really know how video production works and nor should they.
Jessica Siciliano (17:34):
That's
David Siciliano (17:35):
Our job.
(17:35):
Yeah. Well, so they don't know how to scale things up or down. They just want it cheaper, faster, better, which makes sense. The agencies that care about how good the creative is and as long as they're feeding their mouths, right, feeding everyone on their team and then the brands who just need more, faster, better, right? Things need to work for them, that's a big disconnect. And then we should talk about traditional video production, which comes from back in the day in marketing when you'd have your one project you did and you have all the people there to make it the best it could be because you get your one project and it's expensive, but it's okay because it's your one ad, you're going to do that year or whatever on TV and that's where the process comes from. But now you need ads on ads and ads, you need to iterate, you need to shift, you need to test.
(18:23):
So that old foundation doesn't work anymore. We need to start it from the ground up. What do you really need here for this ad? If it's on Meta, do you need all the gadgets and gizmos? Probably not. If it's on TV, you do need some because it needs to look like a TV ad. But do you need all of them? Because you're going to have to reiterate on the idea if it doesn't perform well now that you can measure TV ads.
Jessica Siciliano (18:42):
And is the video actually showing what you are, who you are or is it just some cool idea
David Siciliano (18:48):
That you have, which
Jessica Siciliano (18:49):
A lot of brands do. That's a really cool idea.
David Siciliano (18:51):
I know we see a lot of ads. I feel like when we're doing research, we see a lot of ads that have, it's like a 30-second ad and they don't mention the product until second 22.
Jessica Siciliano (18:58):
And you and me are like, who are you? What is this product? But that's what we do and how we come in is having those conversations and asking those questions and figuring out what the answers to those questions are that aren't asked and I don't understand why they're not asked.
David Siciliano (19:15):
Yeah. We get that a lot of like you guys ask the best question. The questions we're asking are what are you selling? What's its features? Who's your target audience? Who do you consider your competition? Yeah.
Jessica Siciliano (19:24):
I feel like if
David Siciliano (19:25):
You're not being asked
Jessica Siciliano (19:25):
These questions, then
David Siciliano (19:27):
Don't
Jessica Siciliano (19:27):
Work with that person.
David Siciliano (19:29):
I feel like at some point we looked at each other and said, I guess this is our positioning, that we're a video production company that think like marketers, they want our videos to work harder. But that to us is not like a sales point. It's like, well, but if the video works, then you'll come back. And that's what we want. We want a relationship. We want to make more. We want to get to know the brand more. This product looks the best when it's filmed this way. It means that we can make things more efficiently and stronger each time.
Jessica Siciliano (19:56):
Having someone just turn up and shoot some cool shit, but then there's no wide of everyone enjoying things. There's no close up of one of the features of the chair that is so important. Yo have to be strategic. Yo have to have a shot list. You have to have some sort of plan going into these shoots because if someone just turns up to film some cool shit, have they got the edit in mind? Have they got cutdowns in mind? Have they got the platform in mind that it's going to go on?
David Siciliano (20:29):
Yeah, you end up wasting money because you're not getting all you need from that
Jessica Siciliano (20:32):
Shoot. I just feel like that journey has been really cool because I think them going from having just one guy going and going and shooting their product to finally getting someone to sit down with them and be like, "Hey, what do you like? What looks good for you? What do you enjoy seeing? Where does this exist? Who is using this? What situation is this chair in? Where do you want this chair to be? " And them saying like, "Oh, well, let me have a noodle on that. "
David Siciliano (21:06):
Well, what happened was they said, well, our brand's about bringing people together because when you're camping, you're sitting around the fire, we want people to be comfortable so they stay a little longer and enjoy, that's when you hear all the stories and you meet these cool people around the fire. And I was like, okay, cool. Well, all of your photos and videos of your chair are solo people in the chair. If your chair is bringing people together, maybe show them bringing people together. Your
Jessica Siciliano (21:28):
Chair should never be alone.
David Siciliano (21:29):
It should never be alone. Okay, great. Rule number one- Well,
Jessica Siciliano (21:31):
No, that's not true. The chair can be alone
David Siciliano (21:33):
To show
Jessica Siciliano (21:34):
Features.
David Siciliano (21:34):
When people are involved.
Jessica Siciliano (21:35):
But when there's a scene happening.
David Siciliano (21:38):
Yeah. When there's people in the scene, so it's rule one. When people are seen with the chair, you should stack bodies. So have someone in the foreground, have a shoulder, right? Shoulder.
Jessica Siciliano (21:48):
Yeah.
David Siciliano (21:49):
Right. And so that was a rule number one. Okay, what else? I remember one of them was like, well, a lot of times it's too dark. What does that mean? Well, the cooler is black. And so if the image is too dark, you don't see the detail of the cooler and it's like really nice welded rubber with like it's like really high quality material. Okay. Okay, great. That doesn't mean it's too dark. It means that the blacks and the shadows of the image have to be lifted enough so that you can see the detail in the cooler. That's very specific. Okay, great. You should always have a wide medium close. What features do you want? Well, the main features are these zippers and these things. Okay, great. So every setup needs to have these six features shot. So we just started writing it all down and then we put it into a sheet from them and said, "Here's how you shoot your chair after the first couple shoots." And he said, "This is great." Now they give that same document out to all their shooters, all their creators, everyone they work with who creates content for them now because they've grown a lot, they give them that.
(22:47):
And that was such a great, that's a very good example of one end of the spectrum of they're not working with a big, big agency because they can't afford it, but they're like a $10 million brand. So they're established, they're going and they're growing like wildfire every year, but they can't do the big agency thing and they need to do a lot with their content. They keep hiring these videographers or solo people to come in and they're not giving them great direction. The videographers are shooting for the one asset because traditional video production is for the one asset you create for the one thing, not for the system. So that's the three pronged problem right there. And so we came and gave them, "Here's how you shoot your chair. Let's shoot a couple different scenarios in this one day so you can bucket it and make multiple things out of it.
(23:32):
Here's all the footage clipped and colored and organized for you. " And we created a content system for them so that they could churn out ads quickly for all their meta stuff and I've been building on it with them since. It's been really fun. But they had asked us for, "Hey, we want a founder's video." And we said, "Cool. What else can we make at the same time?" "What do you mean? ""Well, works on day rates. So you have us for the day. We're only going to interview you for an hour. What else can we shoot?" "Oh, well, I mean, we're trying to do this dog walker persona right now and all this stuff started coming out and they quickly changed into a much more robust shoot for the same price because we're already there instead of just shooting the one video. "What is the other end of the spectrum?
(24:15):
I guess that's what's kind of interesting is what we're finding is that story with Parket is kind of every brand we work with no matter how much revenue or the agencies their size they're working with, they all kind of end up having the same conversation. It's, hey, we need ... So we're working with this furniture brand. It's a parent brand that owns several furniture brands and it's the same thing. It's, hey, we want to make one CTV video, but we do need pictures of the product and we need lookbook and we need social assets and we need iPhone stuff. And we're saying," Well, hey, we're already there. It's already set up. Let's give you a coordinated ward chest to work with for this corner for that brand. And by the way, you have multiple brands. And we have the talent and the space, let's make the most out of these days.
(25:01):
"And so those shoot days are packed, but we end up yielding several CTV ads, social media assets, photos, all sorts of stuff that they use across every channel of their marketing. And that's what I think video production companies are missing right now and what a lot of agencies are missing too is like, "Hey, we're already there. "It doesn't make sense to charge them more. They just need more out of the same cost. And that means that we don't photo brush and get rid of every single blowmotion every photo. If they want to go further on certain assets, they can just means that they just need more ingredients. We're now pre-chopping all the ingredients into little bowls and giving them that as opposed to giving them like, " Here's your perfect 30 second ad.
Jessica Siciliano (25:43):
"Here's your pizza.
David Siciliano (25:44):
Yeah, right. It's now like, " Well, here's a bunch of ingredients. What are we making? What do you need to make over the next few months? ""Oh, you know what we should really talk about is how now it used to be that, hey, we need to do this for this quarter and so we need to make this video to do that. " Now what it is is, "Hey, I can measure and see what's working, so I don't want to spend a bunch of money on a 30 second ad and then find out it's not working and be like, Oh, I guess I'm shit out of luck until next quarter. I need to shoot two or three concepts in case one of them doesn't work so that I can find out which works the best. And then, hey, if I find out if I learn actually this concept B is working the best, well, let's iterate on concept Maybe let's tweak the intro, maybe let's change the hook out.
(26:31):
They have to do more. There's
Jessica Siciliano (26:33):
A lot more experimenting.
David Siciliano (26:34):
Yeah. And because it's all measurable and they can get that feedback. And so I can't tell you in pre-production, I'm a brand, I can't tell you in pre-production, I can't tell you what I need the video to be. I don't know yet. I hasn't ran yet. And I think that's where a lot of the traditional model is a litle bit broken is it was built around like, here's what I want to make as opposed to the process I need to go on with this material. And so we're shooting now for the process that brand needs to go on after the shoot, not the one asset that they're ordering that they think they want in pre-production because of measurement. Measurements changed everything, which is actually a really good segue. We have some really cool people coming on our show to talk about some of these things.
Jessica Siciliano (27:16):
Tell me some fun brands that we're going to be talking to.
David Siciliano (27:19):
We have someone coming from Meta to come talk to us about how everything has changed with the rise of AI and how publishing works and creative is the new AB testing, which is a really cool idea I can't wait to talk about. We have some coming from marketingops.com. Marketingops.com is the only marketing ops community out there for operators who are in marketing operations. It's
Jessica Siciliano (27:42):
Like a hub.
David Siciliano (27:42):
Yeah. We're going to talk to them about how their jobs and the marketing has changed because of measurement. Everything's measurable now.
Jessica Siciliano (27:49):
We plan to have some of our clients come on and talk about their journey with us and their learnings.
David Siciliano (27:57):
Yeah. And just how things have changed. We've had some cool conversations on set with Maxwood Furniture and Untucked about the way they used to be doing things and the way they do things now because they have to and we have to all shift with it. So what do we want people to take away from the show?
Jessica Siciliano (28:12):
How to make video work.
David Siciliano (28:14):
Yeah. What questions to ask, what things to focus on based on their goals
Jessica Siciliano (28:18):
And how to make it accomplish what needs to be accomplished.
David Siciliano (28:22):
Yeah. We want there to be a better conversation about what the video needs to do. We think there's a lack of that. Agencies are having one conversation, brands are having another conversation, traditional video production is having a third. So we want to try to have a better conversation about what does your video project need to do
Jessica Siciliano (28:40):
And how can we do it?
David Siciliano (28:41):
Yeah. Cool. So we're going to bring on some really cool guests. We're going to talk about some of our takes on how to approach different things and hopefully this becomes a nice resource for brands, agencies, video production companies to have a better conversation about what their videos need to do
Jessica Siciliano (28:58):
And to know what to ask and what to look for with their video production company that they use or even in- house
David Siciliano (29:05):
Really
Jessica Siciliano (29:06):
Questions and conversations that need to be had now.
David Siciliano (29:10):
Before anything's come. Yeah.
Jessica Siciliano (29:12):
Before any cameras are seen. All
David Siciliano (29:14):
Right. See
Jessica Siciliano (29:15):
You soon. Yeah.
David Siciliano (29:16):
See you on the next one. All