Think Tall Films

These are the top comments on "Browser Airbag" video.

An attempt from Microsoft at  doing social "viral" video but in a disingenuous way. Although the marketing message is not prominent it is hardly hidden and the whole thing feels wrong.

Looking back at the videos for app and software developers we made recently it is really nice to see that they have all proved fairly popular, not "viral" but steady growth.

Our most recent Zoho Pulse video has reached 75,000 views in less than 2 months.

Our Magicsolver "Valentine's Day" reached nearly 100,000.

And the "Advent calendar" one reached about the same number

They all have a similar success on YouTube but each app is very different and so is the style of the videos. So what do they have in common?

Here are just a few elements: - They don't show the product, just its effects - They tell a story - They are aimed at entertaining first of all - They are less than 2min long and fast-paced - They use real people instead of animations

Today was our first venture in branded entertainment with the creation of a corporate comedy series on YouTube. The goal? Start with 5 or 6 humorous episodes related to the industry of our American client, a software company. Without hesitation I turned to the actors used on a previous shoot for  bobble: Paula Gilbert and Simon Thompson with the notable addition of Emily Hartridge (Emily Hart) who belongs to a small but growing YouTube elite who can boast over a million views per month on her channel.

Working with such experienced performers along with DoP Mihai Andrei made the process easy as they were able to make the script alive effortlessly AND with an American accent (although we are in London). The project is a fully collaborative process where each actor has the possibility to contribute, remove or add to the script (written by Simon based on ideas from the client). We use Google Docs so that everyone can overwrite anonymously and that there is no feeling of "ownership" and no hierarchy. I actually loved the fact that as the producer my ideas were easily dismissed, showing that 1) the process works and 2) my contribution was useful as the early stage of the process demands quantity of ideas, whilst quality comes later.

The goal of this series is to attract viewers and goodwill to a business that is generally not seen as entertaining, the success will be easily measured: by the number of views and engagement (likes, comments) generated. We can't guarantee to achieve that at this stage but by combining the fun content that we created today with a well-thought YouTube plan and channel optimisation I am confident this will be a success… no pressure!

With the 5th June deadline to migrate on the "One Channel" design looming I decided to make the changes and share the experience. The 2 biggest changes are: you need to have Channel Art which will is a branded picture appearing on top of your channel and you can create a channel trailer but you don't have to. Having checked a blog and many vlogs on the subject it seemed that the new layout was fairly simple to implement and a rather welcomed change. Mind you I was mostly reading what professional YouTubers had to say. My personal experience was a bit different.

  How painful was it to make the changes?

There is a convenient checklist provided by YouTube, and luckily most of the boxes were already ticked for me as the Think Tall channel was organised and curated: in fact there are no uploaded videos there only links to client work. The web links, annotations, icon and playlists were already there and only required minor adjustments if any.

As we are in the process of rebranding I have decided not to put any channel trailer but it seems a very interesting feature to explore. Rather painless so far, but here comes the "Channel Art". What seemed as simple as uploading a picture at first glance turned out to be much more complicated than that. You soon realize why it is called "art" and not just "upload a picture".

  Beware the Channel Art

I started by picking a picture that looked good and seemed representative of what we do (behind the scene on a big shoot). First problem: the maximum size is 2MB, I had to re-export the picture in lower quality Second problem: the lower quality picture was too small in size. It took a few attempts just to find a picture that I was allowed to upload, only to realise that it did not fit at all into the framework. The picture needs to be adaptable to all the formats, from mobile phone to large TV screen. Because desktop and mobile is still the focus you need to have an image where the centre looks good if isolated, allows for text, logo and links but where the surroundings still work in a bigger screen.

Conclusion: You are unlikely to just "find" the perfect picture for your brand, so you have two options: a) go for a bland uniform background (my choice) or b) get your designer hat on or hire one that can tailor made it for you.

  What is the impact of the new layout for brands?

Methodologies from the official website of all things Lean Startup presented by Eric Ries.

I am very inspired by the lean methodology:

a) as a way to create a business