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Video marketing has recently exploded onto the digital marketing scene. More and more people go online to help them learn about business offerings in their area of interest, and they are increasingly looking to videos to give them the information and experiences they need.
According to Adobe’s CMO.com, 50 percent of all mobile traffic currently comes from online video consumption. They also assert that 100 million internet users watch online video at least once a day, and that the average user will be exposed to 32.2 videos in a single month.
Taking notice of this trend, brands are investing in video marketing services in a big way. 87 percent of people who market online use digital video, according to HubSpot, and 65 percent of U.S. marketers intend to increase their mobile video budgets in the months to come. Others are seeing the potential for videos to internally affect corporate culture changes or attract new talent.
Those who aspire to work in the video production industry can find a launching platform for a lucrative career if they delve into online video marketing, where the market is ripe for growth potential. Partnering with clients means you have flexible creative autonomy from project-to-project, and your work will be highly visible since it can be linked to easily online. All these elements together mean a quick career path for those with the talent and motivation to make their visions happen on-screen.
What Do Video Marketing Professionals Do?
Video marketing professionals must fulfill many roles, often between just a few people. For example, Brice Benson Kelly and Willy Lavendel of www.tetrafilms.ca, a Vancouver corporate video production outfit, started out handling most aspects of production between the two of them.
“We used to adopt a John Rambo, one-man-army approach to video production,” reflects Kelly, “although we were obviously more of a two-man army.”
Now, Kelly and Lavendel take that experience and use it to produce projects using a lean, two-person oversight team while partnering with whomever can best meet their current project needs. They may end up working with other production companies, relying on individual contractors, consulting with casting and marketing companies, or hiring technical teams on a temporary basis, but the end result always has their distinctive fingerprints all over it.
“I guess you could say we have graduated from John Rambo to the Expendables,” quips Lavendel.
Kelly attended the Vancouver Film School and has an extensive background working on film and television projects. In addition to the theatre experience gained at a young age, these skills lend him insight when he consults with corporations and tries to pinpoint the perfect video to meet their needs. Then, he works extensively with the company to discuss their goals along with a projection of costs and a preliminary project timeline.
After Kelly and the client come to an agreement, Lavendel then assumes the role of creative director while they both manage the production together. He and Kelly’s goal at that point is to use the most efficient resources possible to create a final product that impresses while coming in at or under-budget.
Kelly and Lavendel often hire actors, crew and other staff on a project-by-project basis. If they require a particular type of expertise on a project like VR (virtual reality) or aerial photography they will work with a production company that can produce those specialty video elements. Other times, you’ll see them behind the camera calling the literal and figurative shots.
“We like to keep our team small and flexible,” explains Lavendel, “so when we approach a new project, we temporarily grow our team by working with the best talent possible.”
Even when trusting someone else to handle the actual directing, Lavendel will carefully plan out the project using storyboards, shot lists or a draft script. Then, he will oversee the process to make sure filming goes according to plan.
“Our goal is flexibility and agility, but always with a quality standard that we can be accountable for” Kelly reveals. “We can be flexible to our clients’ needs and offer varied technical and creative solutions because we aren’t locked into one studio or one cinematic process.”
Kelly and Lavendel are both apt to point out that this lightweight business structure benefits Tetra Films as a whole. Because their project scope can grow and shrink rapidly, they can also scale and take on new projects while their company grows.
These strategies evidently work quite well, too. Tetra Films has already attracted major business players, like Air Canada and international financial service provider Ernst & Young, both happy customers. Tetra Films also works closely with nonprofits, such as in this beautiful motion graphics animated video they helped create for the British Columbia Schizophrenia Society.
Curating Career Opportunities
Despite their early successes, Kelly and Lavendel are not ones to rest on their laurels. Instead, they are using their existing business connections along with their drive to create content to set up potential future business expansions.
One of these projects is their new digital media company www.canthandlerandom.com, which collects anything from zombie videos to inspirational stories and curates it to provide the best user experience possible. These videos are produced by Tetra as well as any other content creators willing to partner with them. As the audience for Can’t Handle Random grows, Kelly intends to market the videos to brands to help those clients grow audiences through content that has a high chance of going viral.
They already have a good stock of content ready to go, including their zombie web series (www.dawnofthederricks.com). Kelly sees the exponential growth patterns of viral content as a pathway for his own business to grow exponentially.
“These videos take off so quickly. They can get millions of views in just a few days.”
The Tetra team says they like to imagine what would happen if not only they were the ones hosting those videos, but one of our clients had their names attached to it. “They would be ecstatic,” Lavendel asserts, “I may even have to keep them from kissing me.”
All of these career opportunities allow Lavendel and Kelly to harness their own creativity while developing business networking skills and taking advantage of the viral tendencies of online communities. These ingredients create quite the recipe for potential success, and having companies recognized by Fortune magazine like Ernst & Young does not hurt their chances, either.
Pursuing a Career in Corporate Video Production or Digital Media
For those looking to follow the career path of Willy Lavendel and Brice Benson Kelly, they both recommend that you start where they did: with their own pet projects. “Once you have a few funny or inspirational videos in your portfolio, you can start to build a reputation that helps you clinch contracts,” says Kelly.
From there, he recommends that you enable each corporate video production job you get to help you network for the next one. Whether the client has another department that also needs services, they know a different company that does or they can simply endorse your skills to your next prospect, every foothold helps the next step get easier.
Adding on your own products to create a digital media portfolio can also help you grow in other ways, as Can’t Handle Random has already begun to show. Between these two ventures, Kelly says that he has a lot of work and opportunities on his plate, but still gets to use the theatre skills he honed in his youth.
“I get excited about going to work every day,” he asserts, “and not many people can truly say that.”
