It's about the story, stupid

From mid January 2018, I begin a new career in a senior role with a new company in a totally new field. I consider it a great privilege and I’m really pleased because my employer has been a client for two years and attaches such value to my advice that they want me on board full time. I won’t apply the awful cliché and say I’m humbled. No I’m not humbled, I’m honoured and looking forward to the challenge with excitement.

The appointment follows what has been a very satisfying but often frustrating journey.

In 2015, after 25 years in TV news and 6 or so years in corporate affairs, I took the mildly insane step of dropping the fat corporate salary to do my own thing as a content creator.

Prompted in part by the ineptitude that flourishes in big corporate sheltered workshops and also in part by the lingering grief-hangover following the death of my mother, my decision to go it alone was scary, rash and downright irresponsible, but hell it felt good.

Of far greater surprise to my former corporate colleagues and in all honesty, to myself, was the fact that I actually did quite well as a one-man-band company delivering video content for social and mainstream as well as a little media training and media strategy work.

The fascinating aspect of my 2-plus years in business was the varying degree to which clients embraced my offering. The really experienced hands-on managers with a great grasp of social and mainstream media loved what I did. The mix of vast TV experience and wonderful production technology allowed me to produce cut-through authentic content for a fraction of what the big production houses charged. And even then the big production houses would get the story wrong.

The smaller clients who fully appreciated they had a skills gap also valued the service and in particular, the advice. And then there were the large corporates. Let’s just say the ignorance displayed by many within their ranks was breathtaking. Don’t get me wrong, they had good operators, but as is the way with large corporates, they survive on the good work of a few who carry the dead weight of the many.

The good operators know and understand that content needs a story. It can’t be the contrived corporate sales crap that advertising agencies come up with. Like any good content on mainstream or social, it has to be a good yarn.

It also astounded me how many of the so called millennial social media “experts” buried within the bowels of large corporates were actually imposters who knew and understood nothing about social.

The classic observation I had from one such expert followed the production of a cute little video story. It was a little too contrived for my liking but that’s what the client wanted and as we know, client knows best. The video was crafted for Facebook and came in at 39 seconds duration. The feedback from the resident millennial expert was that the video had to be cut to 30 seconds exactly. Such is the quality of experience and knowledge that flourishes in big corporates. Scary. By the way, the video remained at 39 seconds after I took said expert on a little journey through the durations of the most engaging Facebook videos of all time.

For now though, it's time to move on from such trifling frustrations and put the success of ALEXSMITH.TV PTY LTD to bed and embrace new challenges. It would be remiss of me though not to offer one last bit of free advice for social and mainstream media content managers. It’s the same advice that’s applied for decades: it’s about the story stupid!