5 Questions with the ENX2 Crew: Emily Sutton Explains Video Marketing

Keith R. Stevenson: Hello, and welcome to 5 Questions With ENX2. My name is Keith R. Stevenson, photographer and designer, and a newcomer to the world of digital marketing. I’ve got a lot of questions about the ins and outs of the business, so I’m sitting down with a member of the ENX2 team to pick their brains and learn more about this dynamic industry.

My guest today is Emily Sutton, Executive Assistant to the CEO at ENX2 and video production specialist. Thank you for joining me today, Emily.

Emily Sutton: Thank you for having me.

Keith: So this is really exciting. You know, I sit across the desk from you all the time.

Emily: I’m excited that you’re excited.

Keith: Inside jokes are inside. So, you know the format. I have five questions here for you. I’m going to just run through them and every so often, I’m going to throw you a curveball, just to see if you’re paying attention.

Emily: Oh, ok.

Keith: All right. So, first question on my list here is, as a video production specialist, why should companies be using videos as part of their marketing plan?

Emily: Well, companies should definitely be using video because research says they should. And the research has been saying they should for almost five years now. Video is the number one thing people look at on social media, when they’re online. Just take a look at YouTube. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, right after Google. It’s because people like to see visuals.

Keith: It’s a big draw. People searching on that, that’s how they find your business. So I guess that would be good as part of your marketing plan. It’s the second largest search engine.

Emily: Yeah.

Keith: Now you do a bit of video work here. I looked over your shoulder and I can’t figure out what you do. It just comes out really great.

Emily: Thank you.

Keith: When you’re working on a project, and you start your video work, what’s your first step when you’re trying to create a whole video project?

Emily: The idea comes first, usually. When you’re like, “Ok, I want to create this type of video.” And then, honestly, the first step is just visualizing what you think it’s going to look like in the end.

For Nicole, I already saw her as an elegant and inspirational type of person. Very personable, likes to talk. And I was like, “You should do these videos.” So I started coming up with questions to ask her that would prompt her to go into the monologues that she does. So, it’s just visualizing what you think the outcome is going to be first. So, I see her becoming a YouTube star in the entrepreneur world. And you heard it here first. And then also, an inspirational speaker who will travel around.

Keith: But do you draw it out or do you just sit and meditate?

Emily: I personally just meditate on it. Sometimes I’ll write some ideas down. I think people have different processes, so it depends on how you work.

Keith: Depending on the project for me, I do know a little bit about video…

Emily: You know more than a little.

Keith: I know a lot about guerilla video, going out with no preparation and creating something out of nothing. But the more polished video, I’m not very good at. But I’m getting better.

Emily: You are.

Keith: When I try to plan out something like that, I do a little bit of the meditation, like you said, but then I also will take and sometimes I’ll sit at the whiteboard and kind of draw pictures about what I want to happen. Just to crystallize it in my head. Sometimes, when I get to that stage I’ll say, “Oh, this isn’t going to work, because there’s no way to get from here to here.” I have to start over to get to the beginning. That’s my process. I’m always interested to hear how people’s processes are, to see how they come up with their ideas.

Emily: Me too.

Keith: Now you’re working on her videos and such, what do you think makes an appropriate marketing video Like what are the attributes that make it good for a company’s image and marketing?

Emily: So of course that’s going to depend on what you’re trying to market. So if you’re trying to make a scary movie you want it to be like, “OMFG, what is going to happen? This is crazy! I need to go see this.”

Keith: Right.

Emily: But if you’re trying to market a sneaker you’re going to want to be how Nike is. Like inspiring. They’re like, “This is like the next generation” or “This shoe is going to allow you to have comfort and speed,” stuff like that. And what will make a great video is evoking an emotion. I think that’s the number one thing that is memorable because I think emotions are memorable. They always say you remember what people said to you, always remember how they made you feel. And so you have to evoke a particular emotion that you want. So scary movies obviously fear; sports and athletic wear, obviously an inspiration to get after it.

There is also the branding aspect. So there can be a really great video or really great commercial with vocals and emotion, but if you don’t remember the brand then it was all for nothing.

Keith: Yeah, exactly.

Emily: But you have to add those two things.

Keith: My brother worked in advertising for many years, he still works in an aspect of it. That was one of the things he taught me early on while I was still in high school. I said, “Oh, I saw this great commercial today! was so funny.” And he would say, “What was it for?”

Emily: Exactly.

Keith: “I don’t know what it was for.”
“Then it wasn’t a very good commercial. It might have been funny, but it wasn’t a good commercial.”
“All right you got a point there. Got a point there.”

And again, with my experience in videoing in the journalistic world, you try to show the facts of the situation but you also want to show the emotion of what was going on. And sometimes that can get really difficult because you can’t prime the pump so to speak you can’t go in and put sad music in to make something more sad.

Emily: Yeah because then that’s he or she is being sarcastic.

Keith: Well you’re leading them on to come up with what you want them to come up with and that’s really not what journalism is.

Emily: Genuine. It can be like being genuine. I’m trying to say genuine, is that the word?

Keith: I don’t think it is.

Emily: Well having a genuine intention, I think, is very important too. Especially in today’s day and age. Like they say my generation, about 64 percent of ads, they just brush it by because they’re like “Oh, they’re just selling something to me.” I feel to get genuine attention…like they market us for skincare. So you have acne and they’re like, “Hey, like this acne treatment genuinely has all these great, great things like go for your skin.” And then they have all these like people who have actually used it. Stuff like that.

Keith: Yeah. Awesome. That’s one thing I find I’d say that too often when I’m doing these.

Emily: I say honestly all the time. But I’m being honest.

Keith: So when somebody is trying to tell me that they’re honestly, honestly I immediately suspect of them.

Emily: Do you not trust me?

Keith: So you were talking about appropriate marketing videos. Is there such a thing as bad video? And what could a bad video do to harm marketing more than having no video at all?

Emily: I think that bad video, yes, you definitely have bad videos because you can have a very poorly put together video, doesn’t go with what you’re trying to get at, poorly targeted, stuff like that and people will see it and they’ll look at your brand and associate that poor video with their brand. And so that’s just a negative association. There is that comment though that no bad press is or no press is bad press — where if you made a horrible, horrible video depending on what way is horrible.

Keith: I think yeah you have to be a very specific set of circumstances.

Emily: You might become much more popular, you know. But then it does present the opportunity to fix it and then you kind of have to have a voice on that because people are interested. So, I don’t know. It really depends. But yes, there’s definitely bad videos. You don’t want to put out something that doesn’t go with your brand, doesn’t have a clear message for people, it isn’t genuine. It’s definitely going to end poorly. Yes.

Keith: Yes it goes beyond just poor production value.

Emily: Yeah.

Keith: You know you could have a low production value video that’s really good. And it tells your story. Tell your message. And you know you’re going to be much more effective.

Emily: Right.

Keith: Yeah but you could have a highly polished, really well produced video that really doesn’t. And that’s still bad too.

Emily: Yeah. Well that goes a lot until like the psychology of marketing which I think is very interesting because people really do like take in and they look a lot like values to certain things based on like interaction.

Keith: All right. So now we’re onto the fifth question which is I want you to look into the future. which is always out there. The future’s that way.

Emily: All right.

Keith: So what is your take on what the future of marketing video is?

Emily: OK. I think the future of marketing video is going to be an immersive experience with virtual reality. I think people are going to be using virtual reality a lot more often than we see. I feel like it’s been like a slow start, but I feel like once it’s available, a lot less expensive to a lot of people, it’s going to exponentially rise. And I think a lot of people are going to use it for clothing, like you’re going to be able to like try on and see what you look like wearing certain clothes. I think you’re going to be able to walk around your house and see what color paint you want to put on your walls or the furniture you want in there.

Keith: This is like augmented reality.

Emily: Yeah. And you’re going to be able to watch videos too or like commercials for movies like you’re going to be able to be in the trailer. And I think that’s it’s just going to be so much more immersive. That’s the future of it.

Keith: Yeah I can definitely see that. That’s one of those areas where it’s like looking at lithium ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries, for years, people had these ideas about portable technology and what you can do with it. And because they didn’t have batteries that worked very well, like nickel cadmium batteries, they didn’t have enough charge for long enough to be any portable technology useful. Lithium ion batteries came around, they were rechargeable, they had enough amperage in a small space, that’s where you get mobile phones, and all your camera batteries, and everything else like that. So that one little leap changes everything.

Emily: Yeah.

Keith: So again, with virtual reality technology I think it’s just a matter of giving the processing power and the imaging down to a small enough size with a smaller footprint. And being able to offer it at a certain price point. And once you hit that tipping point, it’s going to be huge and the next thing you know, it’s going be just a giant river of augmented reality.

Emily: You’re going to be doing an augmented reality everywhere.

Keith: It’s going to look weird without it.

Emily: I’ll get lost in the sauce because I can really talk about this forever.

Keith: I see it more as like, you’re walking through a supermarket, and you’re looking at cereal. And you look at the cereal and you pick up the box, and then it will project in your glasses the nutritional facts.

Emily: That’s cool.

Keith: And then you can look at the price and then it will tell you, “This is so many dollars for so many ounces, and this is how that breaks down per ounce.” And then you can pick up the next one and compare it. And then you’ll see, “Ok, this one is a better deal.” And then you get that.

Emily: And then you can click on like the next thing that says, “What does this pair with?”

Keith: Exactly.

Emily: Oh my God, like you’re walking through a liquor store, and you’re at the wines and you’ll be like, “Well this pairs well with steak.” That’s so cool.

Keith: Basically, all that you need is a target and then a connection to a database and then it will tell you everything. All right, well thank you so much for joining me again.

Emily: Thank you again for having me. I’m going to grab me some lunch.

Keith: Thanks again. I’m not sure who’s up next on our podcast list. We’re going to find out. But be sure to watch this channel, subscribe if you like what you’re hearing and find it interesting. Again, my name is Keith R. Stevenson and we are ENX2. Do something amazing.

Emily: Have a good day!