It's beautiful - but it doesn't move the needle
A couple of nights ago, I had dinner with a filmmaker who, as part of a wider production team, has achieved the very highest levels of success. The films are well known to all of us and have won Baftas and Oscars. He was now stepping out of this support structure and creating a feature film of his own - a wholly different proposition!
His energy was raw, and super-impressive. What he delivered was a stream of consciousness covering every conceivable element of the process; it was a verbal assault of camera and lighting angles, movie references and, at one point, a four-mile scroll on the iPhone to show me every frame of the film he’d already storyboarded. His enthusiasm was truly infectious.
There is no doubt about it: focus, as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet agree - is a key part of achieving your goal. My dinner companion certainly wasn't short on this but somehow, in today's feature film landscape, this creative excellence in only ? of the pie. We’re increasingly having to compete for attention with the smartphone and projects such as ‘New TV’ that is set to bring shortform Netflix production values to the mobile (and has just raised $1 bn to do so).
It reminded me of something that has come up on the Movidiam creative leaders’ podcast:“It’s beautiful - but it doesn’t move the needle”. ROI is a challenge: whilst at the box office you see it in ticket sales, for a brand it’s less tangible - although consumers are often driven to a brand on the strength of its film and video output.
Without a completely closed digital loop or a futuristic tokenized blockchain solution, it is really very hard to determine if the cost of the strategy, idea and execution of video content was ‘worth it’. What are your metrics? Marketeers can only get way for so long writing content off as brand building and the old adage of ‘50% of my advertising budget is working - I just don’t know which 50%’ is potentially reaching its final chapter.
As creatives and content producers, I think it is crucial to understand the ecosystems and platforms our work sits on. Distribution planning, in my view, should be part of the ‘craft time’ - if it wasn’t for the resources, the craft would dry up. It’s increasingly complex and some of the tools are ancient - the LinkedIn ad platform, for example - but it’s vital that content producers understand the model of targeted media buying until the future delivers a blockchain solution which will count and attribute the ROI.
Moving the needle is a very beautiful feeling for all involved; be practical and broad in your approach to distribution and you won’t be left searching the haystack when you come to answer the ROI question.
P.S. Have a listen to our podcast with Megan from Under Armour