Monthly Archives: March 2011

Hubspot’s Marketing Experts on State of Inbound Marketing: Part 4

Hubspot, a leader in Inbound Marketing, recently surveyed 644 companies to ascertain the state of both Traditional Media (print ads, telemarketing, tradeshows, etc.) & Inbound Marketing. As Hubspot defines it: “Inbound Marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and it’s products.”

This is part 4 of a 13 part series of blog posts that share bite-size portions of Hubspot’s overall report, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing.” If you’d like a full copy of the report, feel free to contact me by clicking here or search for the report by name on Google.

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For the purposes of Hubspot’s survey, 9 channels of marketing were defined and each company participating in the survey defined how much of their lead generation budget would be spent on each one. The channels were defined as follows:

Inbound  Channels        Outbound Channels        Not Classified

PPC                               Direct Mail                        Email Marketing

SEO                               Telemarketing                   Other

Social Media                   Trade Shows

Blogs

Since email can be used both as Inbound and Outbound, it wasn’t classified as either. Inbound Marketing is clearly the winner here, but I predict that outbound won’t completely go away. One other outbound channel that is not listed at all is direct response TV ads. Since The Association is a film and video production company, we are trying not to take offense!

More and more the lines between advertising and inbound marketing are melting together. A web page often has advertising on it as well as Facebook share buttons options to comment, etc. Facebook provides ads that target people based on their likes, dislikes and even provides a way to “customize” your ad experience.  Who knows? In a few years, advances in long tail keyword research may result in an advertising experience so slick, we don’t regret having a constant stream of advertising.
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Interested in learning more about how The Association can help you implement enterprise social media and Inbound Marketing? Visit my resources blog for helpful videos  or fill out a request form here.

Fletcher Murray

We tracked down The Association’s president Fletcher Murray (OK, he was in the next room) and talked to him about his life’s work and dedication to the Canon Boot Camp.

Fletcher Murray, President of The Association

What do you do here at The Association?

I’m the president, director, and producer here at The Association. I started out as a still photographer and then as a DP. I love imagery, and at the root of everything, I love to communicate with pictures.

When did you become interested in film what was your first film job?

Well, I made my first film when I was eight-years-old. My career turned upwards in college when I did two films… one the first year and it won a festival. I made another one the second year and it won, too.  A producer from ABC saw the film festival results and was intrigued, and thought that he could improve their tv ratings. At the time [ABC news] was ranked number two in the market and they wanted to go for number one. They thought that if they put an interesting little piece at the end of the news each night it would draw more viewers than just more of the same format.

So I was hired to be sort of an Ansel Adams, film student, Charles Kuralt, film guy [laughs].  And so my only directive was “Go shoot cool, unusual stuff and we’ll put it on the news and see how it works.” For example, I would shoot slow motion shorts of  kids running in the park in the fall with a telephoto lens, playing in the leaves. I would interview toy makers and people who collected historic guitars, human interest stories like that. They pretty much gave me free reign, so I really liked it there.

What is your favorite camera?

I love the Canon HDSLR 5D because it puts so much in your hands for twenty-five hundred dollars. Plus you don’t have to buy film, you don’t have to pay for the processing or the telecine. It can see in low light, which is a lifesaver. The magic things in life happen in areas that aren’t professionally lit by a gaffer, so with a camera this light sensitive, you can come closer to the reality of life. The Canon 5D can shoot up to 1200 ISO. You can shoot fast and the actors are fresh (because they don’t have to wait for the lighting guy to deliver). So it’s made it very magical. You can shoot almost as fast as you can think.

What is the most exciting project you’ve ever done or worked on?

So we had six camera crews, I shot the helicopter stuff. We were flying very fast, very low. It was probably my best work. It actually got funding for a movie that was made with Nicolas Cage. He used the piece that I shot for the helicopter company, so that was exciting.

What’s so great about the association’s canon boot camp?

Well, there is a fundamental difference between the way we teach and the way a college professor teaches. With a college professor it’s mainly lecture. You just sit and listen for 50 minutes, you may get a chance to ask a question or two, but it’s kind of all about him or her. We assume everyone here wants to learn a skill. The reason people take our boot camp is that they want to be able to pull off a shoot on their own. It’s not about me, the presenter, unless I have a story that applies to what we’re trying to teach them. Our main purpose is to empower them to make their movie and not screw up [laughs]. So it’s all about them, it’s about their questions; it’s about their confusions. Most people I see doing those sixty-minute PowerPoint shows don’t even look at the audience. The people could be asleep, yawning, totally baffled, lost, and the presenter just steams forward with their show. We have three or four people who are trained in the cameras and ready to answer any questions that people have. As soon as a person hits a point when their lost we get them back on track. Also, we ask our students to demonstrate what they were just told. We want them to be able to apply their knowledge in the real world. The boot camp is all about the student; we’re just here to help.

 

 

Hubspot’s Marketing Experts on State of Inbound Marketing: Part 3

Hubspot, a leader in Inbound Marketing, recently surveyed 644 companies to ascertain the state of both Traditional Media (print ads, telemarketing, tradeshows, etc.) & Inbound Marketing. As Hubspot defines it: “Inbound Marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and it’s products.”

This is part 3 of a 13 part series of blog posts that share bite-size portions of Hubspot’s overall report, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing.” If you’d like a full copy of the report, feel free to contact me by clicking here or search for the report by name on Google.

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The question in my mind is, if over half the company’s involved in Inbound Marketing are increasing their budget, where does that leave the companies that are not involved at all? I run into companies all the time that just haven’t started participating.

Obviously there is a pretty significant barrier for 71% in terms of the economy.  I guess. But since many of the tools are free to use, how inaccessible can inbound marketing be? I’d be very curious to know what kind of corporate social media campaigns these companies are running that the cost is prohibitive. Interestingly, only 3% say they are decreasing their Inbound Marketing budgets due to past success with Outbound Marketing! ONLY 3%! That’s a pretty low number.

Is your company increasing spend on Inbound Marketing? If your company has an outbound marketing campaign, what do you find is most successful? What challenges does your company face in either area?

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Interested in learning more about how The Association can help you implement enterprise social media and Inbound Marketing? Visit my resources blog for helpful videos  or fill out a request form here.

Online Visibility and Press Releases, Part IV

Trevor Eisenman's Press Release SeriesNote: This is Part IV in an seven-part series I’m writing about Press Releases. Press releases are possibly an overlooked item in the enterprise social media toolbox, so I’m going to cover a few points and talk about how I’ve used them successfully for client campaigns.

I’m already on the 1
st Page of Google for my name. Why do I need a Press Release? Getting on the 1st page of a Google Search for a specific person’s name, or a company name, is fairly easy to do without a press release. If you need more than a name to show up, such as a distinction or niche that sets you apart from the competition,  a press release is one way to accomplish 1st page recognition for that niche.

Once time we featured a CPA’s “Enrolled Agent” status and explained in the press release the advantage his clients would had when it came to dealing with the IRS. At the same time we started a referral campaign using social media. In the 3 months following, he received nearly double the number of new clients from referrals than the entire number of new clients from referrals the previous year! He had been in business in his area for 20 years, so he wasn’t new news. However, we were able to take his status and turn it into news.

Incidentally, although the press release was a one-time cost, it’s still showing up on the 1st page of Google for the two keywords the client requested, over a year later! Long tail keyword research carefully nailed just the right phrases, so that press release paid for itself almost immediately with new clients from referrals.

If you simply want to dominate your own name on the 1st page of search engines, you may do it yourself by getting on a number of social networking sites. I’d still recommend investing in some long-tail keyword research, so you can include words and phrases that cover your industry, products and services. Your name will show up anyway. Common names like “John Smith” are problematic, so consider including your middle name or a nickname to set yourself apart.

If you are willing to wait 4 to 12 months, profiling yourself on 10-20 social networking sites will pay off in search engine visibility. If you can’t wait that long, press releases are a great alternative.

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5 Benefits to Using The Canon 5D DSLR for Custom Video Production


Regardless of whether a company is producing website videos, direct response TV Ads, a custom video production, television commercial productions or marketing videos, our past 26 years of experience communicating a message with pictures has always proved one thing:  Everybody loves pictures!
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A tasty analogy

Granted, there’s more to an effective marketing plan than a single picture. A tremendout amount of work goes into creating visual treats that communicate a client’s message to the target audience. For example, similiar to how a great chef communicates with foods, sauces and spices, a video production company’s “kitchen” prepares visual treats. There are different kinds of sous chefs: researching chefs (who find out what people’s eyes like to see and what their ears like to hear) and creative chefs (who devise custom recipes called scripts and storyboards).

Then, there are chefs who specialize in lighting, props, wardrobe and casting. There’s the head chef, the director, who watches that all the ingredients combine into a moving image that tells the story. The Director of Photography captures the images of the fine actresses and actors. And lastly, there’s the producer, who makes sure the “visual meal” for the eyes gets to the table on time and on budget. Oh, and one more chef. The editor takes all these ingredients, assembles them and, with the Director, puts the final touches to them.

But it all starts with the image.  How did the Canon come so far so fast? Two big milestones.

the last three minutes

When Shane Hurlbut, the D.P. of “Terminator Salvation”, shot “The Last Three Minutes” on the Canon 5D, Hollywood held their breath. In what most would consider a risky career move, Shane took the first “official” step of proving the Canon 5D’s visual beauty and economical cost and size was a godsend for video production crews.

House, M.D.

When Gale Tattersall, the Director of Photography on the award-winning TV show “House, M.D.” shot the entire season finale with Canon 5D’s, we really knew the game had changed…forever. All kinds of cameras can be used to produce aesthetic images the audience can’t resist – from Cinemascope, 35mm, Hi-Def all the way down to lipstick cams on airplane wings.  But the Canon brings a special new look with new capabilities. The Canon 5D Mark II has a huge sensor (larger than 35mm motion picture frame).  It captures gorgeous color and has the beautiful shallow depth of field video cameras have never had.

Christine - Taco Bell

Below is an example from our Pro Level Two Boot Camp students, who shot a film noir look with the Canon 5D.  The Canon held the rich blacks and pure whites. Normally you’d have to sacrifice something with video. Either the white of the nun’s habit would blow out or you could stop down and lose detail in the dark shadows. The Canon kept the whites from blowing out and at the same time gave great detail in the dark shadows. This is something a video camera just doesn’t do. Certainly not one in Canon’s price range.

the Nun who Lied

The Canon’s also extremely light sensitive. It can deliver rich images (no “sparkling dots in the black shadows”) up to 1000 ASA (ISO).  The nun image above was lit with one light overhead bouncing off a white table below.  What this means is that if you like the groovy look your nightclub location already has, you don’t turn off all the lights and bring in twelve lights, extension cords, flags, filters and three electricians to recreate what’s already there. This saves time, money and produces more realistic scenes.

5 Benefits to Using the Canon 5D DSLR for Custom Video Production

Benefit #1 – You can move 50% faster. This saves you money, but it also gets better performances from a number of people as detailed below.

Benefit #2 – For a Director and his actors, the Canon’s a dream come true.  If they’re “in character” and delivering the performance of their life you don’t have to stop them and send them to their trailer for two hours so we can light the next shot from scratch.

Benefit #3 – Gaffers (a gaffer does the lighting) love the Canon 5D because they can concentrate on the fine touches they never have time to do because they spend most of their time putting up lights to make the scene bright enough for older cameras to see. But with the Canon 5D, most of that work is done. So, the gaffer can add the cool touches and get that eyelight just perfect and lay a kiss of light on the girl’s cheek.

Benefit #4 – The Producer and the Assistant Director are happy because they’re able to stay on schedule! No more freaking out, rushing the director and yelling at the gaffers to hurry up.

Benefit #5 – Bottom line is that you save money and get a better product in the end. And when you find out that you can get the look of 35mm fillm for 85% less you’ll see that happy days are here again.

Brain Zoo

The image above was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II for Producer Karen Dixon’s client, Brainzoo.

Canon 5D has put serious filmmaking in everyone’s reach. Stunningly gorgeous images can be yours.  The Association trains people how to use Canon cameras in our Canon Boot Camps. We have one coming up March 26th for experienced camera operators, directors of photography, and grips. If you’d like to see some of our work with the Canon 5D, visit our YouTube channel.

Direct Response TV Ads – Part One

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This blog post might save you thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It’s a behind the scenes look at the advertising game, specifically Direct Response TV ads and Google AdWords.  We’ll start with Direct Response TV ads.

Like most games, the Direct Response TV has rules and players.  Some of the players in the Direct Response TV game are prepared to fleece you as fast as a poorly-designed Google AdWords campaign. To understand why, let’s look at the facts of the game and its players.

FACT ONE: TV stations make money by selling airtime to sponsors.

TV stations sell airtime – blocks of time usually in 30 or 60 second lengths. The airtime salesperson comes to work each day with a shelf full of air to sell somebody.  Now, you probably know how hard it is to find a new customer. Would you agree that the best scenario is for that new customer to return over and over again? Of course it would. That’s how you build your customer base.

TV stations are no different. They’d like to sell you lots of blocks of time…called airtime. But if you have a TV ad (or a TV spot as they call it) which worked well the first time and delivered 30 leads, you might only buy one time slot. That would be a bad thing. A good thing for the airtime salesperson would be if your TV spot produced fewer results over a longer period of time. In this way they’d have to buy one hundred time slots than just one or two.

In other words, if we made a TV spot for you that gives you 30 leads the very first time it runs, you might just be happy with that and take it off the air until you need thirty more leads.  But the airtime salesperson would prefer we produced an TV spot that only delivered 3 calls each time it ran.  That way he can sell you ten times more airtime.

There’s another villain in the piece.  Another person who also makes more money if your TV ad produces slowly rising results rather than produces a lot of leads right away.  We’ll reveal the villain in PART TWO.

Dr. Evil As Seen on TV

Have you noticed TV ads that are “cool” but don’t really make you buy what they’re selling?  Send me your comments fletch@theassociation.tv We’ll tell you some reasons why ads like this keep running in PART TWO of this series.

Direct Response TV ads: Part Two – The Villians

(This is an ongoing series of blogs about TV commercial production and specifically, Direct Response TV commercials)

We’re spilling all the secrets in this series.  Pardon me, but I’m impatient with half-truths and rigged systems that bleed people dry.

FACT TWO: Ad agencies make money from the percentage of airtime they buy to run the TV commercial they made for you. This is why they like long – running commercial campaigns.  This is why they like to convince you it takes a LONG time to be effective.

 

Here’s the game. The ad agency is looking for a client.  They spend a lot of money to develop a campaign pitch on spec to land him. Maybe they only land 20- 30% of those they pitch. That means they’ve run up a lot of red ink.

Losses Graph

How are they going to recoup their costs?

Answer: They’re going to make their money back off a new client. They’ve got two jobs to do. They not only have to pay their staff working with the new client commercial, they have to pay back the red ink they rolled up on those bad pitches.  This is why they’d like their commercial productions to run for a long, long time because they make a commission each time it runs.

So, if you’re running an ad agency, would you rather have the TV spot run twelve times and achieve huge success and have the client walk away happy?  Or would you rather run 52 times and watch it slowly build so that in a year the client was happy? Let’s say you made $1,000. every time the TV ad ran. So, we’re talking about the difference between $52,000 and $12,000.

Anybody? Bueller?

jaguarI’d go with the $52,000.  But then my conscience would get to me. Or would it? Sure it would. Especially when I find out that the new Jaguar isn’t that great a car like it was when each one came with its own British mechanic.

The other side of the coin is that a good ad agency, with good consumer analysis and a fresh creative idea that “cuts through” the clutter on TV, should make money by providing a campaign that gives immediate results. Bad ad agencies can make a lot of money running a bad TV ad campaign and putting clients off with a bunch of excuses.   

You don’t have to put up with it.

You should see results soon after the ad starts running. On one local, So. California Direct Response TV campaign, we had 320 calls the first three times the spot ran.  We didn’t really set out to be a Direct Response Advertising Agency. We just kind of backed our way into it.  We just took logical steps to produce a direct response tv ad that communicated with their target audience and got them to pick up the phone and get on their computer to sign up. The spot worked so well, the client had us take it down, so they could catch up with the leads. So effective direct response can be accomplished quickly.

In the next blog, we’ll discuss How to get good results the FIRST time the TV ad runs and how to test your TV ad inexpensively before you buy all the airtime and blow a lot of money on the wrong ad, with the wrong message, targetted at the wrong audience.

By the way, you won’t see many Jaguars The Association’s parking lot.

Canon 5D/Betacam Hybrid… “FrankenCam”???

In my pursuit of all things related to HD Video Production, I stumbled across this:

http://www.dop.net.au/Canon_5DMKII.htm

No offense to Mr. Beck from Down Under, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around this one.

hyper5D

Yes, there is a Canon 5D “down under” there, sandwiched between the lens and the Betacam body.

Don’t get me wrong, I can think of many applications for this rig, from corporate video productions to TV commercials. It’s just so… out of the box. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’d really like to get my hands on one to play with for a day or two. If any of you see a video production crew using one in the L.A. area, drop me a line, Ill be right over.

And Mr. Beck, if you happen to stumble across this blog, I’d like to talk to you. You’re either completely mad, a genius, or a little of both. Anyone else seen an unusual rig or combo?

Hubspot’s Marketing Experts on State of Inbound Marketing: Part 2

Hubspot, a leader in Inbound Marketing, recently surveyed 644 companies to ascertain the state of both Traditional Media (print ads, telemarketing, tradeshows, etc.) & Inbound Marketing. As Hubspot defines it: “Inbound Marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and it’s products.”

This is part 2 of a 13 part series of blog posts that share bite-size portions of Hubspot’s overall report, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing.” If you’d like a full copy of the report, feel free to contact me by clicking here or search for the report by name on Google.

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Great news for those business owners who jumped into blogging in the past two years as part of their enterprise social media campaign. With a 55% lower average cost per lead, Pretty consistently through the report, blogs had a great score. One thing that wasn’t clear to me was the conversion to sale aspect. Obviously, if very few of the blog leads convert to a sale, that would be important to know. However, it’s also difficult to track that data with over 600 companies.  

But since Hubspot software does have the capability to track sales from social media, using their closed loop analytics package, individual companies do have the ability to track this kind of data. Perhaps someday Hubspot will be able to share an overall view of it as well.

What’s very clear is that SEO utilizing long-tail keyword research, social media tools like Facebook and especially blogs are a must-have for pretty much every effective marketing plan in 2011.

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Interested in learning more about how The Association can help you implement enterprise social media and Inbound Marketing? Visit my resources blog for helpful videos  or fill out a request form here.

Canon 5D Shines in TV Commercial Production

The Association been training 5D directors of photography for over a year now.  Over 145 professionals have completed our Canon Boot Camp. It’s the fastest selling camera in history and you see it more and more today. In fact, the Canon 5D continues to pervade TV Commercial Production with it’s awesome film look at 85% less cost than a 35mm film rig.

This blog post features story about a Honda commercial production shot by our friends, Michael Hartog and Chris Toth, of Camera Control in Santa Monica.  It’s airing right now. The commercial’s storyboard was a continuous time lapse shot from sun up to sun down as the camera approached, then flew through the back window of a Honda Accord and then out the front window.

Motion Control Storyboard
(above: the storyboard for the motion control shot for Honda’s TV commercial)

You can see the finished commercial spot at:

http://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan/videos.aspx

When you get to the site, click on the videos, and select the one named “Sun”.
This commercial was shot in one day using time lapse to compress sunrise to sunset to 30 seconds.

Camera Control used the Milo motion control rig to do the long camera move which approaches the back window of the car. 

Milo Long Arm Motion Control

At the back window of the car Michael Hartog and Chris built a custom low profile camera rig to slide into the back of the car.  The window was removed and the shot continued inside the car past the driver’s steering wheel.  

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When the camera got past the front driver’s seat they started booming left on the camera and back, panning to bring the camera out the front drivers window.

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At the front drivers window they again took over the move with the Milo to do a long track back away from the car.  The whole commercial ended up being shot over the course of one day! The size of the Canon makes it the perfect choice for shooting in tight spaces like the one described above.  For example, Gale Tattersall was able to get three Canon’s into an ambulance in the season finale of “House, M.D.”

If you’d like to be trained in the Canon 5D SLR we offer Pro Level One, Pro Level Two and Pro Level Three boot camps. Click here to register for the next Canon Boot Camp.  If you just want to direct and leave the shooting to us, hire our trained video production crew.  Go to The Association’s website or our YouTube channel to see our recent Canon 5D work.  All our crews have their Canon Certification in the Canon 5D and 7D.  We’ve got 27 years of experience in TV commercial production – aerials, car to car, underwater, or just a nice air-conditioned studio with Caffe Latte’s all around.