Video Production Has Been Inefficient

How to remove the pain from an antiquated process.

Currently, production companies and clients have to spend a lot of time together to get on the same page — doing things like hashing through the budget, concept, and deliverables. It’s been like that for a long time and apparently, that’s just a necessary part of the process. We called bull.

Now, there are three things we weren’t willing to sacrifice when searching for remedies to this problem:

1. The client must receive a fully original piece of content designed specifically to portray their unique brand.
2. The client should spearhead the direction of the project, but shouldn’t be overwhelmed with decisions (this was one hell of a balancing act).
3. The client isn’t just a wad of cash and should receive the same attention from us that they would expect from a bellhop at a 5-star hotel.

Our first step in expediting this antiquated process was the productization of video content. This was six grueling months of dreaming, fighting, and researching. Now I know why no one else is doing this (btw — if you can find someone that is, please let us know so we can give them a high five).

The productization process was a three-step endeavor:

1. We began by coming up with and defining five different types of videos that we would offer. We narrowed it down to the concepts that we knew would be both helpful for our target audience and well-aligned with our strengths.
2. We broke these products down into three variations each. This is where we were able to get much more specific on the subject and goal of each video. Taking into account the Saloon Content Standard, we established minimum requirements for the production of each of these variations.
3. Once we established parameters for variation, we were able to formulate regulatory specs for each — starting price, turnaround time, and average duration.

A quick note on the base parameters that we established — we refuse to make a low-quality iteration of a big-budget concept. Therefore, the only reason that a client would need to alter the given specs of a product is if they wanted to pursue a larger concept. The products are structured such that quality should never be a concern.

Upon completing the productization process, we felt we had a thorough remedy for the unnecessary, long-winded early meetings. Now everyone walks into that first product development meeting ready to dive into the real stuff, with a pre-determined baseline of deliverables. Allocation of a boosted budget, brand-specific messaging, and additional deliverables are now the opening topics. Yeah, that makes my heart flutter, too.

But we did feel like there was a potential pitfall with this new client-studio relationship. Clients could start to be viewed as sheep being herded for the slaughter and projects could get formulaically bogged down by a lack of originality. Obviously, these sins are not logical necessities of the productization of content, but there was an undeniable sense that we were suddenly more susceptible to bite into that apple. So we introduced a new role into the Saloon process, the account manager (AM).

This new role not only watches over these potential vulnerabilities but actually further combats the initial problem. Their job is to ensure that the client is happy and that they receive the most tailor-made content in the most transparent way.

The first way that they serve the client is through performing preliminary brand research. Upon scheduling a product development meeting, clients will provide some basic info. Leading up to this meeting, the AM takes a deep dive into your company to discover not only what you offer, but more importantly who you are and what you stand for. Now instead of showing up to a blind date, there’s an AM who is asking the right questions and offering fruitful suggestions.

Now that they really know your brand, they serve as a mediator between you and those pesky creative teams. They help to articulate your vision, monitor the movie magic on-set, and keep you up-to-date every step of the way. Everyone at Saloon wants a happy client, but we all know artists can live in their own world, so the AM exists as your advocate with a full bias towards you. In fact, we go so far as to say that we would rather every member of Saloon hate an account manager’s guts, before allowing a client to have the slightest ill-feeling towards their experience with their designated AM and that precious final product.

That’s pretty much how we approach the age-old issue of clunky client involvement. So why isn’t everyone else doing this? I honestly don’t know. Maybe we’ll be filing for bankruptcy at some point. Or maybe content production just got a lot less painful.