Olivine Productions

Another successful IndieGoGo launch! Olivine got a chance to build the pitch video, help with copywriting, design graphics and building MailChimp email blasts for this unique green motorbike. 

Due to a soft launch to interested parties the campaign reach 50% of it’s $200k goal in one day! Amazing! 

FIVE THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT THE FACEBOOK BOOST

I've been exploring the social media machine again with a short video for my father-in-law's store Williams Hardware. I was curious what would happen when I boosted the video for broader reach on Facebook.

Bob Williams has owned Williams True Value Hardware for many years. He inherited a love for his town and a strong work ethic from his dad, who worked in hardware with his grandad. Bob's legacy has been to bring profitability to the store even in the midst of challenging financial times, and to continue the charity and goodwill begun by his fathers.

Just recently the CEO of True Value (John Hartmann) was on a CBS show Undercover Boss and Bob thought it would be funny to parody the show with a 'Vermont Style' version.

We shot our spoof very quickly - one or two takes at most for any scene - and I chose to add in a variety of 'mistakes' during the edit (audio not synchronized, odd reaction shots) which I felt helped add an authentic 'homemade' quality to the final render. Then we created a few teaser Facebook posts (coming soon!) to whet people's appetites.

When we launched we started to receive a LOT of great comments, likes and most importantly, shares. The number of views of the video shot into the thousands on the first day. I was surprised - and decided to take action on the engagement.

1. YOU CAN GET A BIG BOOST FROM A FEW $$

I decided to spend only $30 to Boost the post on Friday afternoon upon seeing it's potential to go 'viral'. The extended reach from $30 was into the tens of thousands, all of whom are directly connected to the people who have liked the Williams Hardware Facebook page (1200). This is why 'likes' of your business page are important - you can capitalize on extended relationships that exist organically when you need to reach out to a larger audience. Our video would appear as 'sponsored' in thousands of regular feeds.

2. FACEBOOK WILL HESITATE TO BOOST CERTAIN CONTENT

FB reviews all boost requests and is usually quick to publish the boost. It took much longer than expected to have Facebook staff review our video for questionable content (I believe the infringement was the graphic elements I stole from real Undercover Boss posts to YouTube). I reviewed the 'Fair Use' laws related to parody in the US and felt sure they would ignore this infringement. I was right - the boost went public and we started to see even higher numbers. But having capitalized on the first hours of activity would have been nice - just an FYI when boosting.

3. YOUR AUDIENCE IS PICKY

The organic numbers from Friday to Sunday continued to amaze us. But even though the boost numbers were adding in (views, likes, shares) they didn't rise as quickly as I expected. And I'm going to attribute that to something specific: regionality. The organic likes, views and shares continued to outdo the boost numbers because the post is so 'Vermont'. I won't go into a definition of what that means but I will say that an authentic 'take' on the personality of a region can leave other parts of the country scratching their heads. Let's call it 'Portlandia Syndrome' - some people have never thought of putting a bird on it, but if you're from the Northwest, it totally makes sense.

4. BOOSTS STILL NEED QUALITY CONTENT

By Monday at the end of the 'viral' excitement the boost had taken over and was doing quite respectably and I attribute that to the popularity of the show Undercover Boss and the intention behind the parody that Bob wanted to create. He wanted something that's approachable - not slick and polished - something that didn't take itself seriously. By Sunday night the organic energy had dissipated and still we were putting on views from the boost. We eventually reached 10,000 views - not bad for a smartly produced video and a $30 Facebook ad investment.

5. UNEXPECTED MARKETING DISCOVERIES

There's one more item that I feel needs to be addressed: Is Bob a charmer or is there some other reason why the strongest engagement came from women - of a particular age? The gender breakdown of the likes and comments alone was 82% female and 18% male - boost or no boost. This kind of revelation is a boon for marketing to a segment of the population that hasn't historically found hardware stores in general very interesting. Unfortunately, I can't comment any further on this discovery so that Bob Williams will continue to retain his humility and keep his ego in check.

Olivine Productions got the opportunity to make a music video for The Fraidies, a local band with an international appeal. We produced, directed and edited the final cut. Big thank-yous go out to everyone who contributed to this project.

The Fraidies: http://thefraidies.bandcamp.com/

Cyclorama Rental: http://studiozseattle.blogspot.com/

it's the project management triangle! How often have i struggled with one or two legs of this axiom and found the struggle to be both life affirming and heartbreaking.

For the second installment of "Inside the Chef's Kitchen" Urbanspoon retained Olivine to edit and add some 'fun' to an interview of the Lee Brothers, two chefs from Charleston, SC, who's cookbooks have garnered them awards and accolades. 

The Lee Brothers have a jovial side and we cut the footage to enhance their camaraderie. The music track took a while to decide on, but in the end we think it's a perfect fit.

Olivine's video edit of Duff Goldman (of Charm City Cakes and the Food Network's 'Ace Of Cakes') at Feast Portland has made it onto the pages of the Huffington Post's 'Taste' section! We're excited to see the feedback from exposure to a readership of 150,000 viewers! So far it ranks as the highest number of loads of any Urbanspoon video (1,300 in two days and climbing). Laura Williams of Urbanspoon was the creative mind behind the shoot - thanks, Laura!

Lessons for you from Beer Camp

Since it’s a known fact that perseverance is the key to any successful campaign, I thought I would share a personal example of using video to build a social following and - hopefully win a contest.

Campaign Goal: My brother, Scot White, is an excellent home brewer of beer, and has even won some local awards in Bellingham WA. So when he came to me and wanted some help creating an entry video for the Sierra Nevada Beer Camp contest - I was in. For those of you that are not familiar with the contest, home brewers from all over the country make 2 minute videos sharing their love of beer. The top 10 videos (as voted on by the public), are invited to Chico, CA and create signature brews with the experts at Sierra Nevada.

The Process: I had started with a storyboard that involved a slew of Scot’s friends, a Sunday afternoon, some beer, and some dance moves. On Sunday I headed up to Bellingham and we got right to work on B-roll of Scot and his brewing equipment. The 1pm call time comes and goes and only one friend shows up (yay Hooper!). The Seahawks game was to blame. If they’d lost we’d probably have had a chance to shoot the original storyboard - unfortunately they won and everybody decided to have fun wherever they were!

Lessons you can use: Don’t be too tough on yourself. Even when you have an amazing community (like Scot does), it can be tough to get people to put the time on their schedule. Creative projects are an acquired taste. So plan accordingly, and have a couple of fallback concepts to make use of whoever shows up. A few helpful hints:

Use email or social to set a focused schedule for time. For example: “Please come over on Sunday from 1pm-4pm” not “if you want to drop by on Sunday that would be great.

Be bold and as time allows, reach out individually to confirm attendance, and to reinforce that they are truly needed (also, the more appreciation at this point, the better)

Share the process of your story - tell them the “why” behind their role. 

Never too many ‘Thanks!’ Make sure there are snacks and rewards followed by thank you notes galore.

Time For A Plot twist: That’s what my friend Emily Hine calls the moment when everything changes. Encouraged by Scot, I re-thought the storyboard and we started in. Day two, we get a few folks at the next location (a house right on the lake). I didn't get all the coverage I wanted but by the end of the day we had enough to do an edit with.

Lesson you can use: As Tim Gunn would say - make it work. There is no reason to pine over the great plan you had that never came true. Stay in the moment, and build from whatever strengths you and your team have.

Fast forward to today: For the past three weeks we've been building a voting team on Facebook to push Scot to the top of the heap and secure him a spot at Beer Camp by sharing the link on different feeds. The only guaranteed spots are the top ten, and since you can vote once a day on multiple devices the messaging needs to be regular, grateful and excited. Even though people are sick of the neverending ‘ask’ we are still pulling in team members, all of whom are voting, re-sharing.

In the meantime, Sierra Nevada decided 3 days before the termination of their contest to change the end date for submissions and voting to the middle of October, which has made the arc of our social media messaging a lot more challenging. It seemed difficult enough to keep a team engaged everyday for a couple of weeks, now we’re three weeks into a whole MONTH of messaging! So we’ve turned to other resources on Facebook - hashtagging to groups that have international reach (#biere and #craftbeer), and we’re relying on our team that will take us to the end of the contest (#scotforcamp).

Lessons you can use:

The Compliment Sandwich - Start with a heartfelt thanks, talk about how things are going, then include the ‘ask’ and end with more compliments. 

Pace yourself & your messaging - having an arc and being creative about planning your story helps a lot.

Sprinkle some humor, quirkiness, and gobs of gratitude into your posts to maintain your audience’s energy.

Building a strong video/graphic/website is only half of the campaign; a strong social strategy is paramount to getting views (or in this case votes).

Tech Talk: The beer camp video footage was shot around Whatcom Lake in Bellingham, and involved his friends, his wife, his dog and a motorbike (my first time working with a GoPro). I built the soundtrack in Acid (Sony Software) and then moved everything into Garageband for vocals which I recorded as well. The final edit in FCPx took a couple of days, but none of this compared to what took place on set or what’s been taking place in the world of online voting.

Here's a fun video I shot for Urbanspoon with the help of Allen Kim, an intern for the social media team. Post production was where the magic happened - FCPx, Motion, and tons of Photoshop to make everything pop.

The Urbanspoon Blog - Which Sandwich is Best?

Here's two things that we find fascinating at Olivine Productions - computers and the Internet. On the computer side, we've always wanted to do a documentary on the One Laptop Per Child Project. On the Internet side we've always wondered how OLPC would do in areas where there wasn't any access to the world wide web. It just so happens that one website is attempting to bring these and other concepts into reality under the title 'AHumanRight.org'. There's a documentary in post production entitled 'Web' exploring OLPC as well as the effect that computers can have on children and their families, along with a campaign to purchase a satellite!

Seattle film luminaries and The Servant team talk about new project. In the Seattle area? Come to our June 1 Fundraiser: http://theservantfilm.com/post/49903...

I was an hour away from heading to a meeting with Zino (prepping for an Seattle angel investor presentation later in the month) and I got a call back from one of the producers of ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’. I wanted to know how their social media campaign helped the film and he replied that it definitely helped. They ran it like a political campaign - getting people to be ambassadors for the film a month or two before the landed at Sundance.

AMBASSADOR CONCEPT: Engagement through challenge - take part - KickStart a film with people in your network and help something good reach audiences world wide.

Their hunch paid off. BEASTS is a great movie from a great script - with magic in the form of an actress (so young!) - the social element helped to carry their vision to new heights.

KUDOS.