Building Trust and Authenticity Through Video

Hi everybody, and welcome to the Brandeans podcast series, Go Beyond, where we take a look at what's shaping marketing today and in the future. I'm your host, Brian McHale, and today we have a fantastic topic that combines a number of things that are on my favorite things list. One is authenticity and trust, another is video, and a third is AI. And today we're going to talk about talk about video and everything that's going on from an authenticity standpoint and the effects that AI are having in that area. I'm really happy to have a guest with us today who knows all of those things and more. We're gonna have a lot of fun talking about this topic. I'd like to introduce Ian Murray. Thanks so much for being here. Ian is president of SpotOn Productions. And, you know, Ian, it's, you and I have done some podcasts together and we had a good time doing it, so we thought we'd get back together and talk about this topic, which is near and dear to our hearts. Before we jump into it though, um, would love for you to tell the viewers a little bit about yourself. I, you know, from what I know of you, um, you know, you were doing video when most kids your age were flipping burgers. So you've been doing this a long time. It's in your blood. I have. Yeah. So, so give us a little bit of your background. Yeah. So my first job in high school before I could even drive was I worked for a local TV station and my mom would have to take me and drop me off. But I learned a lot. We, I worked for Westchester Community Television and we had a full production truck and I got a lot of experience running camera, technical directing, doing graphics. So I did that through early college, started going to college for this industry, got a little sidetracked in the middle there and ended up as a firefighter paramedic for a few years. And then my dad, we moved to Ohio because my dad was running AT&T and NCR's worldwide multimedia out of Dayton at the time. Um, and they downsized and outsourced that. So he started his own company in '98, which is now what became Spot On Productions. So we're a family business, been around for 28 years now. That's fabulous. And, uh, I took over leadership in 2014, uh, and helped really refocus on video. We were doing some other marketing and brand adjacent things and like, we're really good at video, we should stick in that lane. So yeah, started doing that, um, and we really help customers tell their, their story. We say we do bespoke video that inspires our, their audience to action. So no, that's great. And, and, and if people want to check out your website, what's your, what's your web address? Spoton.productions. No .com. We were early adopters of those new top-level domains, and sometimes people don't quite understand you don't need a .com, right? Well, speaking of, um, production, we'll get into this, we'll get into this, um, throughout our, I think, our conversation today. But one of the things that you guys talk about that's unique to you is your process. So tell me a little bit about your process. We start with listening. That's the best thing you can do. Video, a lot of people in this industry will show up and say, hey, okay, great, we're here. Point at what you want us to film, kind of like the Got Junk people, like grab that. Sure. We dig really deep into understanding a lot of pieces of what a customer is trying to do with video. We don't do packages because What works for one customer doesn't work for another one. So we really dig into what's unique, who's the audience, what story you're trying to tell, what goal are you trying to do with the video. We're not an agency, so we don't do the placement or the ad buys and stuff, but we wanna understand how you're using it so that we can design content for that. And then I think we'll touch on this later, but we use a process for psychologically, how do you tell a really good story? And we really try and dig into that to find the best character or the best person to tell that story and include some elements that really make it resonate with the audience. Well, good. Well, good. And thanks for sharing a little bit about your story. So let's jump in. Let's jump into the topic and let's start with the, the AI piece of it. Where, where does AI help you all and where have you seen it either not be effective or even hinder what you're doing? Yeah, AI is everywhere right now, and people are, are talking about all these ways to use it. We found that for us right now, AI is really good at helping you with tasks and efficiency and kind of being a creative partner that gives you some of that flexibility to focus on more important creative work. So we use it a lot for taking transcripts from interviews. Um, so when we're trying to find the right character, we do a lot of interviews and get transcripts and it can help pull themes out so it can review transcripts or it's great for brainstorming ideas. So you can, you know, we get stuck with this brain fog and you're like, help me with some ideas. So it's really good with idea generation. From a generative AI standpoint, I don't think we're quite there yet in our space. If you're looking for fantasy stuff like unicorns or fun things that AI can extrapolate that doesn't really matter some of the details. I'll give you a couple quick examples. So we had a shoot where the production team, for whatever reason, missed a shot that we needed with a person holding a phone and we had them holding another product. We took a still frame from that, had AI replace it, and then had it do a 5-second clip of the actor interacting with it. And that worked surprisingly well. We had to run it through a couple generations 'cause it does kind of hallucinate still even on the, the video side. A bad example is we had a customer with a— they do really expensive, like luxury lifestyle Sprinter vans. And we did a lot of feature content showcasing like the trim and the interior. But we were like, we really needed a, like a lifestyle shot of people using it. And we didn't have the time or budget to get that done. And the client was like, why don't you just throw it into AI and see what you can do? That only works so well because, you know, these vans have very unique interiors. They have a specific look. And as soon as AI starts tweaking something or glitch, it doesn't look like the customer's product anymore, which is a problem. And then with people, you get 5 or 6 fingers on one hand or a face kind of gets a little weird. So we had to beat AI up for probably a day to get a 5-second shot. So it can be great, but sometimes you have to work it really, really hard to get what you need. So for you, to kind of paraphrase what I'm hearing you say, it's a good tool for certain things, but that human element still has to be a big part. And I would imagine still is a majority of what you all are bringing to the table. Yeah. Yeah. And what does that look like in terms of when the human element, is it for you all, is it the strategy piece of it that is largely what a lot of the human element is bringing outside of obviously physically production and those sorts of things? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that— direction we can go with this. So for us, I've heard the term human in the loop with AI is really, really important. I think you mentioned that at one of your presentations. We rely on the expertise of the person because we all have a unique perspective. And in the creative space, in the marketing space, we have a term that the most important lens you have is your perspective, your unique perspective. And I think, you know, if you watch a Christopher Nolan movie or a Martin Scorsese movie or something like that, they all have that person's unique creativity in that look. And AI tends to be an amalgamation of a lot of different things. So it kind of goes to the lowest common denominator. So I think that's why for us, we're very choosy on when we use and how we use AI. So that craft element and that human perspective that makes us do, makes our team be able to do really great work. AI just can't get there yet. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. And so it, in many ways, it, as you say, it can help stimulate content, but that human element is really what's bringing that content to life. And even if it can stimulate or simulate content, it's still sort of missing that lived experience, if you will. Very much. Yeah. Well, let's talk— that leads us, I think, to kind of another topic, and that's authenticity. That's something that at least our company is always talking about and always trying to bring forward with any of the brands that we work with. You said something when we were talking about this podcast leading up to this, you said something to me that I thought was interesting, that being authentic doesn't mean unscripted. So talk a little bit about that. I think there's two things at play, especially in our space. There's the issue of production value in the age of user-generated content, having that look more authentic. And then the other part of that is the message. I don't think that authenticity necessarily equates to low production value. Because I can give somebody an iPhone and say, "Give me something authentic." But if the message isn't well thought out and doesn't resonate and they just kind of have that verbal, just throw stuff out there, it's not going to convey what you want or need it to convey. And on the flip side, I think adding some production value with a really good message helps enhance that authenticity and that credibility. And on the far extreme, you can have production that looks great, but there is no message that it's quote unquote cinematic, but it doesn't have the message or the key points that help you convey that authenticity that you need. Yeah. And I think the way I often think about it is many marketers kind of confuse inauthentic with kind of, or authenticity with, I'm going to lose control. And gets back to some of your unscripted piece of it. And we've done a lot of work in trying to bring authenticity forward in brands and working with real customers, talking with real employees. And while you can't put words in their mouth, you can help them kind of put thoughts together in a way that will communicate it. So there's a strategy behind that messaging, even though someone is going to be using their own words and really speaking from the heart or bringing that emotion forward. And we do a lot of work on pre-interviewing people before we actually get them in front of a camera. That helps us understand the messaging, their unique story, what they want to talk about, and then that allows us to help prompt them. So we do a lot of guided prompting when we get somebody in front of a camera. So kind of like you do on a podcast, we help guide you down this path to The message you want to talk about, but it's still authentically you and still conveys the points that you want to talk about. Right. One of the things I've heard you mention too in this area, and it gets to what you're talking about, I think even in the pre-interviewing or really trying to understand who's going to be part of this, you've talked about having the right person, the right setting, right tension. Talk a little bit more about how you think about that. Yeah. So we didn't invent this, but we found it's called the Muse Storytelling Process. And it's built on 4 pillars. It's people, which really brings the emotion to a story. Place, which is where the story happens. Purpose, which really gives you the impact of a story. And then plot, which is the engagement that you get with the story. So we really focus on people first, finding the right character to tell the story, and then that purpose. What's the impact of the story we want to tell? We take those two, pair them together to find the right person, the right message, and then put that on this plot structure. And then an important piece of that is the place that the story happens. And that can be things like environment or time, whether, you know, you're not going to do a snowblower video in the middle of summer. So that seasonality, or if it's daytime or nighttime, or if it's historical, and then maybe there's objects that you need to have in it or a key situation. So things that really help bring that story to life and bring that authenticity. Mm-hmm. And storytelling is, is too, it's about really in many ways demonstrating experience or helping people understand what that experience feels like, not only looks like, but feels like. And And being able to show people that type of experience obviously leads to greater authenticity, even if they haven't experienced it themselves yet. Yeah. I mean, we, on the people side, we always look for unexpected people. A lot of times people want to put a company leader or CEO that might have authority, but may not have, may not be the best people with the unique situation to tell that story. So we look for the best person. We really look for desire, uniqueness, and complexity. So 3 characteristics that are going to make that a person that somebody who's watching that will buy into or associate with. And then you pair that with things like what's inspiring about that story or what's different from any other story that's being told? Because it's easy to get lost in the generic these days, especially, and I think that's a challenge with AI is everything can be generic. And we found that we had it try and write a blog for us. It's like, if I can take my company name out and put any other of my competitors in there, it's not unique to me. It's not different. It's not how we do things differently. So I think that's a really important watch out when you're doing AI content is make sure you're not racing to that just generic level that everyone else can get from hopping on ChatGPT or— Yeah, I think that's really important. Trust is built through specificity in many ways. How do you ensure or help people get there? Because I'm sure they're coming to you with ideas that at times can feel somewhat generic. They may not feel generic to them as the idea, but for you as an outsider helping them think through the strategy, you might say, well, anybody can say that. Let's get to the crux of of showing or talking about what really makes you unique. So do you guys have a way of pushing for that specificity? We do a lot, again, a lot of pre-interviews to really dig for who's the right person to be on camera telling that story. The people that desire uniqueness, complexity, those purpose points are really some of those devil in the details differentiators. So it's the what's different, what's inspiring, Who's the audience that that person can uniquely speak to? What do we want that audience to then feel? And what action do they want them to take afterwards? So really understanding that, and we actually create a scorecard. So maybe there's 3 people that we've pre-interviewed. We'll take those 3 uniqueness, complexity, and desire. And then those 5, we do a keyword exercise for each of those kind of plot or purpose points. And then we'll say, you get a 1, 2, or 3 for each person for each of those things. And at the very bottom, whoever has the highest score, is probably going to be the best person to tell that unique story. Yeah. Well, yeah, going back to kind of our topic of authenticity and truth and specificity really is a signal of truth. And the more generic you are, the more it feels like marketing. And I think consumers are smart enough to pick that up. And just like you're saying, AI, if you don't work it right or use it right, can feel very generic. It doesn't have that emotion. It doesn't have that heart that the real and the authenticity can bring to it. And I think the other challenge with AI too is we're in this race for content. All about content. And it's like, oh, we gotta push out content, content, content. And it can be very easy to get stuck in that trap of like, we're just gonna hit the run button and see what it puts out and we're just gonna keep doing it and maybe, Maybe it'll resonate with the right person. And we focus on quality content that connects. I think that's a thing with AI that is an important thing to be aware of is back to that generic, but as you're trying to put out more content, put out better content. And as you say, that connects, that there's that emotional connection because 80% of any purchase decision is typically based on emotion first. You're using that part of your brain more than you realize when you're making those decisions. Buy with emotion, justify with logic. Exactly, yeah. Well, you said something earlier that I strongly agree with, and that is trust is built through proof, not claims. And a lot of marketers love claims. Love 'em. So talk a little bit about about proof versus claims? Claims are really easy for people to throw out there, to put on a print piece, to throw on a website. We have the best people, we're technologically innovative, we do this and this and this. But again, it— how are you showing people? We do the facts tell, stories sell. So you can put a bunch of facts out there, but really showing people what's the proof behind that. And for us on the marketing side, one of our favorite— if we're working with a customer and they're like, we need to do something in marketing, that shows our authenticity. We say start with a customer testimonial. That is the best way. You know, hey Brian, I need a plumber. Who do you use? Who did you have a good experience with? Word of mouth, right? There's 100 plumbers out there and they probably all, we fix leaky pipes, we can clear your drain. They all have the same claims, but you know, why should I choose you over somebody else? And I think customer testimonials and even in marketing brand, employer brand has gotten pushed to the marketing teams a lot recently. And when you're looking to hire employees, that employer brand is, instead of marketing a product to a customer, employer brand is marketing the culture and the organization to prospective candidates that you want to work there. Plus it has a really good benefit of kind of peeling back the curtain and showcasing your customers what your culture's like, what your people are like, who they're going to end up working with. So I think that brings a lot of authenticity to the conversation too. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. And any examples of where you've been able to bring claims to life for folks? I don't have a great one for me, but my favorite one is the Flex Tape guy. Okay. He saws the boat in half and you can make claims. Oh, was it yours? It was not mine, but it's one of my favorite examples. I use it with customers a lot because it's so clear about showing how something works. You can claim, oh, it sticks to this and it'll hold that. Guy saws a boat in half, puts Flex Tape on it, takes out in the middle of the water, he doesn't sink. Or he slaps it on a leaky bucket. So, uh, that's, I think, where video especially does a really great job of being able to show those claims actually lived out. Or, you know, we have great technology. Show me how your people work together, how they collaborate with a customer to drive that innovation, right? Yeah, I mean, Trust, maybe not in the boat being sawed in half because there could be some level of uncertainty still with that, but trust is increased if you're able to reduce uncertainty. So no, I love that example. That's funny. We're obviously talking about, and I don't know if we've really used the word yet, but in many respects it's storytelling. You have a good framework for storytelling. Let's kind of go through that. So we really use that Muse storytelling process. We've hit the people and we've hit the purpose, but the plot's really important. And you're in 4th grade English and you learn about rising action and conflict and falling action. We break it into 6 key points or key stages along the storytelling process. 25% beginning, 50% of the content should be that middle, and then the end should be your last 25%. And like any good story, you need a hook at the beginning. You need to draw the viewer in. And social media, the day of social media, or just anytime, if somebody doesn't align with it right away, they're not going to spend the rest of the time to see, no matter how great the message is at the end, they're not going to watch it. So hook gets them into it. And then conflict. Why does the story matter? What does somebody care about enough to watch the rest of it? And then the end of that first 25% is the initiation. So our hero or whoever that, that person is, is going to start this journey. So that initiation is, what are we going to do next? What's going to get them to the end? The journey is that middle 50% where we learn about this transformation that this person or this company is on, and it resolves with this resolution. Every great, um, story needs to have a resolution that makes you feel good. And what did I learn from this? And then at the end, we like to leave you with a jab or a gut punch, like what next? What should I have learned from watching the story? Or what action do you want me to take next? Yeah, that kind of brings to mind my business. And I'm thinking about not so much what we do, but how we attract new customers. And been doing this a long time. Years ago, it was working the phones, having people cold call, all that, trying to introduce yourself and try to build trust over time with people. And now that buying cycle for you as a consumer or us as a business is so different. I mean, you know a lot about somebody before you ever pick up the phone to ask about doing business with them. So our customers have researched the heck out of us before we ever hear from them. They've researched you well before. What role can video play in that? I would imagine it's a great role as far as building trust before there's ever a first interaction. Yeah, for us, video does a great job of peeling back the curtain a lot of times for a business or an organization. It allows people to see the inner workings or meet the people they're going to work with. So from a sales enablement standpoint, I can learn a little bit more about your business that maybe wasn't on your website or see a little bit more about your process and people before we have that initial conversation. So I, as a customer, already feel familiar with you. Can decide if you're credible or not before I ever even— Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Or can you back up what you say? You know, show me how you're going to do that video. You know, there's a ton of stats out there, but if I, if I put a video on a page with the text and the exacts of what the video talks about, 80+% of CEOs are going to watch that video. Overread the text because we're hyper-distracted in today's society. Maybe we're getting lazier. I don't know, but we want to watch the video and not read the text. Plus I get the added benefit of getting all that same messaging. Plus I get all the visual reinforcement of seeing the person's face that maybe I'm going to go meet with, or the faces of the people that will be executing on my project or, you know, the rest of the team. So it really adds this. A lot more depth to a conversation and building that trust before they ever have that very first interaction with you. And you can— and the receiver or the prospect can do it on their own time, right? It's asynchronous. They can decide, hey, you know what, I have the time, I'm going to learn a little bit, I'm going to watch that brand video, or I'm going to watch that customer story. I mean, those are, I think, good examples of ways that video are helping that pre- exchange. And like you said, the power is in the customer's hands more than it ever has because of Google and the internet. People are doing their research before they may ever talk to you. So, right, right. And have you seen, have you seen those types of videos increase in, in demand over time as, as buyer behavior has shifted, or has that always been something that you've been doing? I think that's always been something we've been doing. I think the bigger thing I mentioned a minute ago is the employer brand piece too. We do a lot of that on the marketing side. Um, for customers to learn about the people, because that's— at the end of the day, if I have the same machines as my competitor, we do the same product, then what's the difference between us? It's people, it's experience, it's the process. And those are things that those videos can really showcase to a potential customer that, you know, maybe a website or just reading through a print piece may not convey, right? We started off by talking a little bit about just common ground in AI, and I think we both think about it in a lot of the same ways. I mean, for us as a company, we classify ourselves really as human first and AI forward. It's not about the tool leading the way, it's about the human leading the way and using the tool to be better, faster, smarter, whatever it can do for you. And you mentioned operationally, we do that as well. But we also do it via using it in research and all those types of things, content creation where applicable. As you think about the video process, where do you see AI sitting in that process? Is it only at the beginning or are there ways that you see it as the future unfolds here, kind of finding its way into different areas of the process? First, I would say I agree with you 100%. It should be human-led, AI-supported. We look at it from this, this idea of support work versus soul work. And we're in a very creative space. And at the end of the day, our product kind of is our process, that creative process and what we turn out and what we can deliver. So we want to make sure that those things that make us uniquely us, that soul work, stays with humans, but that support work is where AI can help us. We talked about some of the front-end stuff with the, you know, going through transcripts or helping with idea generation. We've also started to use it for things like AI voiceovers. So more on the post-production or the backend of everything. AI voiceovers are great. We started using them just as scratch tracks and then we're like, these are actually really good and really fast. And you can make changes in them really quickly. You can, Now you can even coach an AI voiceover on emphasis and how you want it read and emotion behind it and breath breaks and stuff. So that's gotten really cool. We use that a lot. Just the tools that AI can help with too. In a noisy environment, there used to be, you know, we do a lot of manufacturing work. There might be an annoying truck or a sound in the background. Might be, always. Always, always. The AI voice processing, it is mind-blowing, like how it can take a noisy environment and take that voice and make it crystal clear, isolated, and that's the only thing you hear. So there's a lot of things that we spend a lot of time on, like taking out the low end or the high end, or really trying to niche that voice where you can hit a button and 5 seconds later you got this perfect voice track. Mm-hmm. So that's great. Even in music, I mean, some of the stuff AI can do with helping you retime or fit your music. We use a lot of stock music and it comes in like set lengths and maybe my video or my interviews didn't quite hit that. AI can help fix those sections where maybe you cut it and you need it to flow together better. So there's a lot of ways AI is doing some really cool technical stuff that helps with that efficiency and saving a ton of time. We've found too that We're using it more and more in the storyboarding process for clients that are very visual, but, um, and need that, you know, and they need something in order to really understand where, where you're trying to, trying to take the brand or to really understand what, what's that, what's that going to look like. Are you doing anything from a storyboarding standpoint? We do, and that's a great use case I forgot about. We do that. We don't do a ton of storyboards, but for like high creative stuff, we will still do storyboards, um, and we it's been a huge tool. You used to have to go find stock photos that were close. Right. And like, but that's not what I want. I was like, that's what I got. Sorry. Like, imagine this isn't there and imagine this is over there. Yeah. With AI, you can get it much closer to the actual shot that you're trying to recreate and that look that you're going for, even from like color toning and the types of characters that are in it. So yeah. But to kind of summarize a lot of this AI discussion, I mean, AI is great for helping in ways to generate content, whether it's even kind of behind the scenes and not doing any sort of final product. But really the human-led, the human judgment, the human creativity and strategy, that's still what is helping build trust long-term in what we're doing, showing people, showing experiences that bring that emotion home. Yeah. And I think there's unique things that your team does that makes working with you a better experience than working with someone else. There's a classic story. It's one of my favorites. It's about, oh my gosh, I just forgot the— it's not Monet, but there's a famous painter, Picasso. He's painting in the square and this woman walks up to him and says, oh my gosh, would you mind? Could you paint a portrait of me? And he's just like, Sure, sit down. She sits down, Picasso's painting, 5 minutes later she comes around, looks up like, oh my gosh, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Like, you captured me perfectly. Like, this looks like me. It's all the, all my essence. And she's like, I would love to buy this from you. How much? It's like 500 francs. She's like, that took you 5 minutes to do? And he's like, no, madam, it took me a lifetime. And I think that's in our space, in the creative space, in the marketing space, back to that perspective and our experience. And what makes any story unique is I have different lived experience than you have that influences how I look at the world and the things I bring to the table. And I think that's really important when we're looking at AI versus the human work, how we can differentiate the things that humans are really good at and then those efficiency and task things that AI is really good at. One thing we haven't talked about, but it certainly plays into authenticity, is in the social media space. I mean, For years now, talking to our social media team, video was king. I mean, if you had some video in the social media space, it was really likely going to help your brand if it was good, even if it's organic or polished or any of those sorts of things. Now, most people would say, I don't know what I can or can't believe on social media anymore. So clearly there's a trust and authenticity issue. On social media. How do you see that changing what's going on with what you're doing? Because clearly if people start to get used to not believing what they see in video, it's going to be in the back of their brain no matter what channel they're using to view video. Yeah. And some of that deepfake stuff is getting really good and really scary. You have to fact check. You're like, Is this real? Like, did this actually happen? For us and the clients we work with, I think that authenticity and the trust factor comes back to the real people inside an organization doing the real work or having those authentic stories. We do work with City Gospel Mission and they do hard work in the community. They deal with homelessness, drug addiction, joblessness, and we get to help them tell some of those really redeeming stories of life transformation that this is an actual person and they got so low on life, they were living in a doghouse and eating food that they found on the street. And those are things that connect to a real person and a real story and a real redemption in the work that City Gospel is doing. And it's truly authentic because that's that lived experience. And I don't think AI is going to do that. That's what makes— we love drama as humans. We like that conflict and we like to see a good redemption story and a happy ending. And I think that's where focusing on real people and their real unique stories, that devil's in the details we kind of talked about earlier, builds trust and builds authenticity. And I think for us, we in the age of AI really want to focus on video that uses real people and their actual stories to build trust, credibility, and tell a compelling story that connects with an audience. Yeah, well, no question, content is scaling, skepticism is rising, and hopefully, hopefully proof is winning. Yes, I hope so. Thanks for your time today. Thanks for being here. This has been a great conversation. Hope you enjoyed it, and hope you all have enjoyed it. So please feel free to comment in the notes section of our video. And we also have some links there to follow not only our podcast but also our newsletter. Thanks again for being here, and we will see you on the next episode of Go Beyond.