Transforming Your Video Marketing Strategy with Mike Vanelli

In this episode of the Dead Pixels Society podcast, Mike Vanelli, creative director of  Envy Creative illuminates the rapid evolution of the video marketing industry. Vanelli shares the trends and techniques for anyone looking to reach their audience on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram with videos that pack a punch in way less time than your morning coffee run. Vanelli brings his Los Angeles expertise straight to our conversation, revealing the magic behind Envy Creative's full-spectrum production capabilities: scriptwriting, ready-to-shoot standing sets, and a troupe of actors who can bring any message to life. 

Host Gary Pageau and Vanelli discuss the common hurdles small businesses face and spin them into opportunities, showing how to slice and dice longer videos into engaging morsels that keep your brand at the forefront. Step away from the noise of raw, user-generated content and into the realm of polished yet punchy advertising pieces that blend professionalism with entertainment. Join us for a deep dive into the creative and technological forces shaping video marketing today, offering practical advice and thought-provoking strategies to ensure your content not only turns heads but turns profits too. 

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Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by MediaClip, advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Mike Vanelli, who's the creative director at NV Creative, a Los Angeles-based marketing firm. Hi, Mike, how are you today?

Mike Vanelli: 0:33

I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.

Gary Pageau: 0:35

So, Mike, tell me the Mike Vanelli story. You know, and you've got an hour, so let it all hang out. No, I'm just joking. Tell me a little bit about NV Creative, the type of video work that they do.

Mike Vanelli: 0:48

Sure.

Mike Vanelli: 0:49

So NV Creative is an all-inclusive video marketing agency, so that's kind of the term we use, but in actuality we're a video production company mainly, but we help with marketing specifically in video for businesses, products, brands, and we mainly focus on either doing kind of long-form videos, so kind of explainer videos, or short form, whether that be for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, those kind of things.

Mike Vanelli: 1:22

We have our own studio which has a lot of standing sets in it, which means that, unlike a lot of other studios, we don't ever really have to rent locations. We also have in-house actors that are kind of vetted, so we know they'll do a good job, as well as we own all our own equipment and we have a scriptwriting team. So pretty much people come to us when they want an all-inclusive kind of service where they don't really have to go to this person for a script and this person for the video and this person for post-production. We have everything in-house under one roof and we're able to kind of be really competitive with our pricing, specifically because we have everything in-house and we have the workflow to support it.

Gary Pageau: 2:09

Since you're in Los Angeles, that kind of makes me think of the 1940s or 50s studio systems of the old Hollywood, where that was kind of the model we have standing sets, we've got contract actors and we're going to mill through. So how many productions with that sort of format you've got that infrastructure built in? You guys must be busy all the time. How many shoots do you think you're doing a week?

Mike Vanelli: 2:36

So during the busy season we're filming probably on average of like 20, 25 shoots per week, and then even during the slow season, like 10 to 15, so we're able to get them done pretty quickly. And again, because we shoot a lot on our standing sets, we tend to shoot multiple videos for different clients per day because we can just jump around the studio rather than having to drive places.

Gary Pageau: 3:07

So you kind of mentioned something earlier that I thought was kind of interesting, just sort of looking at types of video. An explainer video runs how long. Usually between a minute and two minutes and you call that long form.

Mike Vanelli: 3:25

Yeah, for advertising and marketing. Yeah, that's kind of interesting.

Gary Pageau: 3:30

That's considered long form.

Gary Pageau: 3:31

We've got microform, which is the TikTok and Instagram reel and all that kind of stuff. But again, that's what I want to talk about is, from a marketing transcend point, this sort of condensation of the video attention span. It's kind of fascinating. I grew up in an age where commercials were 30 seconds and that was when you wanted to get a message off. You could almost tell a story and all that kind of stuff. And now it's short, punchy to the point in a lot of different ways. Why is that? Is it because technology has given people the ability to skip, so you have to grab their attention right away. Is it a technology thing or is it a human? Just have lost their attention span? Just the story there.

Mike Vanelli: 4:22

Yeah, I think it's kind of a mixture of both. So technology definitely played a part in it because, again, with TikTok, with basically just a feed in general, so, whether that be TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, being able to scroll past something and being able to stop on something is kind of, I think, where it started, even on kind of broadcast TV when, like, tevo came out, like a long time ago well, not a long time ago, but when Tevo came out, the ability to skip past commercials was kind of like the first, I think, kind of jump into, where if people didn't want to watch commercials, they didn't have to and they didn't want to watch it. Or if people wanted to jump through a TV show, they could. So that kind of spearheaded, I think, where people could really just kind of see what they wanted to see.

Mike Vanelli: 5:15

So with that, especially TikTok being as big as it is, we even had to pivot. So we would do, like you're saying, 30 second ad spots and that would be kind of our. That would be the shortest that we would do. And then, a couple of years ago, we had to start offering, you know, tiktok style, 15 second videos to clients, to, you know, add into their marketing campaigns. So yeah, so you know, I think, just over the years, people's ingest of content has changed, so we've had to adapt to it, because businesses and brands have to adapt.

Gary Pageau: 5:49

And you know you're the creative director, you're not the production guy, so part of, I imagine, your job is to you know, come up with the creative, make sure the message is correct, and now you've got far fewer seconds to work with than you used to have to work with. Tell me about that change in your perspective.

Mike Vanelli: 6:11

Yeah, so you know, again, comparing it to the 30 second, you know ad spots we used to do, you know we would, we would ask them before. We would ask the client do you want a spokesperson on camera? Do you want it to be more like lifestyle? So you know, maybe just a voiceover and some nice visuals. You know where we take our time and kind of show a story, things like that. And yeah, now with clients, if they want like a TikTok or a vertical video, we pretty much have to ask them do they want it to be a UGC style, so user generated content style? You know our actor just looks like they're holding up the camera, selfie style and kind of talking about the brand. Or do they still want it to be an ad, where you know it definitely still looks like an ad. But either way, we still have to pretty much make sure we're hooking the audience in some way, whether that be with visuals or with dialogue, within the first couple seconds.

Gary Pageau: 7:09

Just so they don't, so they don't scroll past and it's easy to me like there's almost like trends that happen in the types of the short form marketing videos that happen, where it's almost like you can kind of see it, where you know if it's like you said, it's a user generated content style right, we're supposed to be more informal or friendly. The person will be like hey, I was just looking at this thing on this widget and everyone is doing that. Is there a lot? Is that there's a lot of copycatting going around?

Mike Vanelli: 7:45

Yeah, I mean we try to differentiate ourselves and our content by making stuff original, but we do get clients that ask hey, this is trending, can you do this?

Gary Pageau: 7:56

And obviously we say yeah, you know.

Mike Vanelli: 7:58

Or they'll even ask us like, hey, can you make us something that will go viral? And we say we'll do our best, but like it's not up to us whether a video goes viral or not, no way you don't have like the go viral button selector in it.

Gary Pageau: 8:13

Oh man, I wish man we would.

Mike Vanelli: 8:17

Yeah, we would have like a line down the street of clients, like the whole viral button. I love that.

Gary Pageau: 8:22

So so you've been doing this for, you know, a decade, so you've seen a lot of different changes. I mean, from the client side, though, the auto dealer who was doing 30 second commercials 10 years ago probably isn't even doing anything like that Now. You're getting a lot of different lifestyle brands, a lot of different kind of voices and brands who are doing this kind of stuff. Is there a conflict there where you know they're coming to you because maybe they don't have a longstanding background or they just have an idea or whatever, and they don't really. You know, it's going to be a challenge to communicate, right. They kind of have an idea, talk a little bit about sort of the you want to do what's effective for the client, but they sort of have a vision kind of thing. There's like a tug and pull there.

Mike Vanelli: 9:09

Yeah, I mean we, you know we do deal with all sorts of clients. You know some some like that as well, but we, we try to. We try to let clients know that they can be as involved in the processes they want. You know, we have a full creative team behind us. So we get clients that that are on one end, where they come in they say, hey, we, we have a draft of a script ready, we have our, our concept ready. You know, maybe you can tweak it a little bit, but like this, you know, we're pretty much ready to go.

Mike Vanelli: 9:41

You know, we, we have writers, we have, you know, copywriters, we have creative and we just need, we need you guys to make the video. And then we have the other end, where we do have clients that come and say, hey, this, you're the first person I'm working with. I've never done anything like this before. This is our product. You know, I don't really know what else to tell you. Can you just look at our product or website and make it go viral, you know, yeah, exactly, and then just, you know, make something out of it.

Mike Vanelli: 10:11

So so we do have the, the, the full range of clients and, like I said, we can, we can tell them they can be as involved in the creative processes they want. And you know, nowadays, like you were saying, we do have clients that, uh, maybe they don't even have a business, that's mainly. Maybe they're a developer, that that made an app and now the app's doing well, and they, you know they're not a business person, so they don't really know the ins and outs there. You know they're a coder or whatever, and so they're really just coming to us from, um, you know, not really from a business perspective, kind of like a entrepreneur that has to kind of been pushed into the business sector. And so you know, we really we really try to hold hands if needed, um, but you know we have the experience behind us and we we try to just kind of, you know, reflect to that on, on helping the clients.

Gary Pageau: 11:04

And one of the other challenges you have to cope with, I imagine, is the whole cross-platform craziness of you know different formats or horizontal, there's vertical, there's square, there's who knows what and then you also have to manage like, like it's going to also appear with in a lot of cases, I imagine, with some of your more advanced clients, with other assets. They're developing right Another campaign and some other stuff. I mean that's a lot of crazy coordination. Do you guys have built systems to optimize for that?

Mike Vanelli: 11:35

Yeah, so so basically, we, um, we kind of have a uh, a few different product offerings. We do, um, you know we used to, when clients would come to us, we used to give them the whole like song and dance, like, oh well, if you want this kind of video, just let me know, we'll make a quote, we'll send it off, blah blah. But we've been doing this for so long and we've been, you know, we've done so many videos that we pretty much know exactly how much, uh, the videos will cost, based on what they need. So you know, on our website, uh, if a client goes there, they can literally just see the, the, the couple of different services we offer, watch a sample video of what it kind of looks like, and then they can just place an order for a video right there and we can just get working. And then we can go back and forth with quotes and filling this out and zoom calls and stuff. I mean we can if they want. But but some people do come in saying like I know I want a few TikTok videos and so they can go, they can just order the TikTok videos. If they say I have an Amazon page and I want a, just a simple product video, they can go and order that. They want an explainer, they can do that, um.

Mike Vanelli: 12:48

But what's been really popular lately is we have what's called a media package, and if we have clients come to us saying, uh, you know, maybe it's for um, they're just about to release a brand and they don't have anything for it, or they're doing a Kickstarter campaign and they don't have anything for it, we made this thing called a media package and basically it includes like a 30 second ad spot, what we call like a how to video, kind of like just getting into the nitty gritty of whatever the product is, uh, and then photos as well as short form versions of the main ad.

Mike Vanelli: 13:19

So basically we shoot the 30 second ad, but then we also, um, make short form videos for the different platforms, like you're talking about, so, uh, so pretty much like people can walk away with like just all the content they need at least to get started. And we do that a lot for the the uh 30 second ads as well. If they just order that um, if they just say, hey, we also want shorter versions of that, we just say, yeah, no problem. We kind of shoot it and write the script in a way where we can chop it up and have it still make sense, you know, instead of doing that after the fact.

Gary Pageau: 13:56

I just, I just keep going back. I was laughing earlier just because you know I remember when a 30 second commercial was considered a short form video, that's let's talk a little bit about like using video as a marketing tool. Right, cause that is a big thing and a lot of my audience are among the folks who are, you know, kind of. Maybe maybe they're not wrestling with it Cause, honestly, most of them have, you know, great video equipment in their storage. Right, cause they've got lights and cameras and things. So they know, from the equipment side it was truly what can, what is possible, but it's a lot of them struggle with the actual like, what do I do? Right, what you know? Does anyone really want to see me talk about how a lens works or whatever? So what are some ideas or a process you go through to help people kind of jumpstart that process?

Mike Vanelli: 15:16

Sure, yeah. So basically, like we asked them a few questions and this kind of gets their mind going and then, as soon as they know the answers and we can, you know, get started on the scripts and the concepts with their whether it be a business, product brand we just say, like what's the main point that you want to get across here? So if you're a camera store, like what do you want, what do you want people to know about your camera store? So maybe it's oh, we, you know? Like, do you have a gimmick? Is you know? Will you beat anybody's prices? Are you the only camera store and, you know, in the city?

Gary Pageau: 15:56

Right, which in a lot of cases is true.

Mike Vanelli: 15:58

Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of like what's the main point that you want to get across here? And then, once we have that, we ask who's your target? Do you have a target audience who's buying your stuff? You know who's downloading your app, things like that. And then we pretty much say, like the last thing, especially for video, is what's the call to action that you want people to take after watching your video? So do you want them to buy the thing that you're showing or do you want them to learn more at your website? Do you want them to set up a call? Do you want them to come into your store? Like, what's the call to action? What do you want them to do after this? Because with advertising, you would think that a call to action would just be intuitive, like you know, based on the ad. But we found that, you know, it converts better if people are told what you want them to do.

Gary Pageau: 16:56

Go to the website call click here for more whatever.

Mike Vanelli: 17:00

Exactly and you know, once you kind of know those things, you can actually start to get a lot of ideas on. You know what you can make content about. So you know if your target audience is people who, yeah, let's like use the camera store, people who do bird photography, then you know you might want to focus more on, like, zoom lenses or you might want to focus more on cameras with, you know, with a high shutter speed. You know things like that and you know, kind of knowing those few things kind of gives you a baseline of content that you can create.

Gary Pageau: 17:40

So a lot of times when you see these videos, especially cross-platform, it's like they're repurposed, I guess is the word I'm looking for, right, they're taking like a content and, you know, slicing it, like you said, slicing and dicing it to certain ways. But I mean you constantly need to be creating more stuff too, right? I mean that is part of the beast with video is you can't just drop one video and expect, you know, unless you've got the access to the go viral button, you know you're going to have to keep doing this. And that's where I think I find a lot of small business people I talk to struggle with. Is they have one or two ideas, but it's the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th idea that they have. That's not just, you know, a straight promotional offer. Do you encounter that a lot and what do you suggest for people who kind of get into that rut? I've shot my wad, so I guess I'm done.

Mike Vanelli: 18:42

Yeah, so one of the things that people can do to really help with that is if they make kind of one or two long form contents and I'm talking about maybe like YouTube videos, things like that where it's you know five, 10 minutes long about whatever the topic is or whatever they wanted to create the video about, and then they can either chop it and then you know, off of a five minute video you could get you know 10, 20 short, 10 second clips from just that.

Mike Vanelli: 19:14

So right there, you know you have, if you're only posting a couple of times a week, you have a couple of months worth of content. And there are even tools out there that if you just Google long video to short video clips generator, there's a number of services that all you have to do is either upload your long video or put in your YouTube link and it will actually cut those up into small short form, like TikTok things, and it'll even put, you know, some subtitles in there for you and then again, right there you have a whole stack of them just from one long form. So, yeah, I mean, and what those do also is they drive traffic to the long form content. So it's kind of like if people are interested in that little clip, then they might wanna learn more from the long video.

Gary Pageau: 20:09

See, that to me makes a little more sense than having to come up with, you know, new ideas all the time. Rather, you know, maybe do a five minute video on how to make a great photo book and then use that as the basis to chop other stuff. You know, like I said, take stuff out of it, maybe get three or four shorter videos out of that. So that's cool, that makes sense. Okay, cool, cool, cool. What are some of the other trends you're seeing in the short form space? Because I think it's interesting to me is by short form I mean like the less than 20. Second thing is not 30. Yeah, is that it seems like they're really going high for entertainment, but not necessarily, you know, great for either messaging or Sales, unless there is a, you know, great call to action.

Mike Vanelli: 21:07

Right, yeah, I mean Right now, a lot of the, a lot of the brands and a lot of the companies we work with. They are, they are still pushing UGC but Recently we've kind of seen a little bit of a shift back to not traditional advertising but they're wanting to show more advertising. I think Maybe it's because you know, like I said, we, we do UGC content but we also do Advertising content. So you know, you can tell it's an ad and and it looks like an ad. But we're thinking maybe that they, like the brands and companies, got you know an influencer off of tick tock or whoever that you know they they just have their, their phone and they're just recording themselves and maybe, maybe they're not converting as much as they would have liked because you know, even though, even though you have an influencer, maybe you know, or a tick, tock or whatever they're, probably you know they, they don't have like background in advertising.

Mike Vanelli: 22:11

They don't know like, make sure you do a call of action, make sure you know the target audience, like all these things that go into making an ad and making it, you know, a high converting ad. So what I'm guessing is maybe these brands are going to Just an influencer that doesn't have that experience, you know, paying them and maybe not seeing the return that they wanted. And so now they're like okay, maybe we do, maybe we should go to the professionals to get this done and so, and you know, that's, that's when the gun does, that's the problem, I think, with influencers in general is the the brands they work with tend to forget.

Gary Pageau: 22:51

The influencers brand is themselves, it's not the sponsor. So their first foremost they're gonna make themselves look good and then they're going to mention, you know, the, the drinker, the gear or the, whatever it is there they're using. But you know, in the end they're the product, not the sole product. So, as a content producer, are you at all concerned about, like, some of the AI stuff that people can do with video? Now, is that an opportunity?

Mike Vanelli: 23:25

probably more so for you guys, because, as a tool, yeah, so you know, we, we use AI kind of strategically, just in the background, you know, if we're, if we're just needing help on on this and that, but At least in the, at least in the space that we're in, where we produce, you know, custom commercials and custom ads, we're not too worried about it. Just because, even though they're not Too worried about it, just because, even though there are some like AI video generators, they're not, they're not producing the things that we are where, you know, people still want to see real people interacting and especially if you know they have a physical product and we have to Film a video around it where we show the actors using it. Yeah, I mean, we're not. We're not too worried as of now. We'll see in the future things are evolving every day, but as of now we're we're.

Gary Pageau: 24:19

I mean, I mean in the still imaging world. I think it's a bigger concern because Some of the stuff is creepy good, but I think in the video realm they still you still. There's still the uncanny valley issue and some other issues that are happening in there. But it is amazing. It just says a tool, like you said, just take just spare clips, dropping it into some of these tools out there that can create this kind of stuff. It's pretty crazy In terms of just what it can do for to the person who may be a layman. Right, they shoot some clips, drop it in one of these things and out spits a tick tock video. That's probably better than they would have done around probably not, as it is what you guys do, but you know that's.

Gary Pageau: 24:58

The challenge for you guys is to stay a step ahead of those folks. Right, exactly, well, cool, listen, Mike, it was great spending time with you. I appreciate your expertise and learning more about Envy Creative. Can you tell me more about where people can reach out to you and find more information on you, your company and the stuff you do?

Mike Vanelli: 25:17

Sure. So yeah, they can just go to think envy comm, so that's T H I N K E N V Y com and we have all of our info there. And, like I said, take a look at some of the services and you can just place an order for video content right then, and there, awesome.

Gary Pageau: 25:33

Well, thanks, Mike, and have a great week, all right, thanks so much for having me, gary.

Mike Vanelli: 25:38

Thank you for listening to the Dead

Erin Manning: 25:39

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