Our (now famous!) guide on how to create killer video content

We’re absolutely thrilled to be featured in Startups Magazine’s ‘Advertising and Branding’ Issue, the first edition of 2020!

It’s an awesome opportunity for us to really dive into how we work with our clients to tell meaningful and impactful stories - and share some of our biggest learnings across the whole process.

Scroll through to read our entire feature here:

Have a brief you want to chat through or you need some desperate help building out your content for the rest of this year?

Email josh@mattr.media and we’ll be in touch!

BBB tips: The marketing tools marketers can't live without, how to cultivate a learning culture and choosing your external partner properly

It’s no secret, we love sharing the key insights from our breakfast roundtables. Here are the challenges shared from our last one:

Live by the 5 Why’s

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One person spoke about the importance of using the 5 why’s - an often forgotten exercise that is really useful when planning your content strategy. 

Why? 

Because it gets us to really question why someone would care about the content we are planning to produce.

Why?  

Because you’ll find insights and quirks that will help your content become more authentic and more ‘on-brand’

Why? 

Because this will help directly solve some of your comms challenges you’re facing with your audience

Why? 

Because you’ll stop creating content for content’s sake, or worse, content that isn’t achieving the results you want.

Why?

By implementing this process into every part of your marketing strategy you’ll be able to truly understand the core human motivation for the purpose of your content and why your audience is going to engage with it. 

You know what we mean?!

Test and learn, but don’t forget to give time to learning

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It’s great to see more companies integrate a “growth mindset” culture into their ways of working, and nowhere is this more prevalent than in the content you produce. 

But one of our brand marketers confessed that while they test plenty and have weekly meetings to figure out what they’re trying next, they don’t truly allow for time to apply their learnings to it. It’s resulted in a cycle where things end up constantly being revised and sometimes making the same mistakes… 

One tip that was shared was to physically document your learnings all in one place and make it available for the whole team to access, essentially creating a publicly available wash-up deck (we’re huge fans of this and do this with each of our clients). But don’t write them just to forget about them the next day, re-visit them before you embark on a new project to remember what particular decisions might not always be wise. 

Another more collaborative and emotive version of this pitched to the table was to sit down with every team member involved (including your juniors!) and give each a voice on how they think the project fared.

Showcasing who your company is isn’t a crime

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A particular challenge that one marketer confessed is that while they may be good at talking about their products and services, they’re just not good at talking about themselves as a brand. 

As a result, some talk about their 1000 person company as if they’re ‘4 guys in a basement’. 

To truly solve this challenge, we discussed creating content that gives your stakeholders a voice, showcasing your team and champions your business for its practices not just its products. Of course there should be a balance but it’s no crime to show pride in the company you are a part of.

How to choose your external partners properly

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Of course we’ve all got horror stories about working with the wrong people and projects falling flat, so another topic that was discussed round our table (and a very interesting one as the only agency in the room!) was how marketing teams choose their external partners. 

A big tip was to trust your gut on whether the agency/partner you’re seeing would be a good cultural fit. Question their working process and especially quiz their buzzwords like “collaboration”  to find out what it tangibly looks like in reality.

Another marketer spoke about preferring partners who were honest and realistic about managing expectations as opposed to just being “yes men”. Understanding what can be achieved in given parameters is really important especially if you don’t have as much knowledge about the subject as the agency.  Having a partner interrogating your brief from an outsider’s perspective is healthy, as long as they can show they can provide plausible solutions…  

Dogs always win 

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And if all else fails, just shove a dog into your content… (in joke for those in attendance sorry all!)

Like what you’re reading and want to have your slice of the pie? Book a ticket to the next Brand, Bitch & Brekkie on March 11th. Only a couple of tickets left so book quick to eat a great breakfast and chat through everything going on right now.

Or, you can book yourself in for our new BONUS edition looking at the ins and outs of creating impactful video content on March 17th… 

Email sunnii@mattr.media if you’ve got any questions!

BBB tips: working on communications between teams, when to consider a re-brand, and how to create a genuinely engaged community

We’re back from another great instalment of Brand, Bitch & Brekkie, with plenty of fresh insights to share from the real-world challenges our community of purpose-led brands find themselves in.

Changing the mindset internally towards to your marketing team

We’ve touched on this briefly before in previous roundtables, but there is no one-size-fits-all answer to helping your internal teams work more efficiently together. But what we have noticed is that the usual tension lies between how each team is perceived in terms of the value they add (explored further in “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni).

An interesting method to resolving this, for one particular brand, was to have the marketing team sit in on sales meetings and vice versa. This helped ensure an understanding of what types of collateral were integral to guarantee sales and the loyalty of customers, and essentially drew a line in the sand to what shouldn’t be changed or branded as ‘not on brand’ - making sure all voices are heard.

Understanding the red flags that can help identify if you need to consider a re-brand

When you’re starting a business and your team is small, everyone knows each other, your brand and its values so intimately. But naturally, as you grow, new faces join the team and many of them won’t really know who you are or what you really stand for.

Several guests shared their experiences of why this was a problem: 

1. “If it’s not resonating with us, how are our customers going to understand it?” 

2. “I sat down with 10 different people, and nobody could tell me what we actually do” -

3. “OK they say, I get it you’re purpose-driven, but now what?” 

For a lot of the people around the table, it became necessary to go through a rebrand process with the aim of ensuring their values, tone of voice and general ways of working matched up with the vision they had for the company...interestingly the most successful of these processes was done extremely collaboratively with the whole team and became the benchmark to plan all communications out of.

Taking the steps to build a genuine community

Creating a genuinely engaged and involved community is something that many brands struggle with. It’s a tricky field to navigate and execute properly - as engaging each of your users/customers face-to-face is a big leap. But luckily, we had some fairly experienced guests round the table who could spill secrets on their success...

A great example of this from one of our guests round the table was through a closed Facebook community - but they take care to make sure the channel isn’t a free for all. The brand’s marketing team are admins, and the only ones who can post, but their audience can like and comment to their heart‘s content. These parameters essentially protect their digital community space from becoming another customer service channel, and also cultivate a very authentic channel to communicate to their community, when organising face to face meetings is next to impossible. 

Another brand told us of how they host monthly pub sessions for their brand ambassadors.  This brand prides itself on the fact that the ambassador roles are volunteered by their community, so as a reward and a way of getting insight to their guerrilla outreach, what could be better than going to the pub? They recommended this method as a way to boost your company culture and exchanging ideas straight from the eyes and ears of your brand’s community.

Be open about sharing everything, even if you think it isn’t a big deal 

But having the foundations for building a community isn’t enough - and one guest fought this argument with a pretty great idea. 

Using the digital medium above, they’ve actually benefited from their community being directly involved in their business decisions. As an example, they’ve collaborated on working files of brand guidelines and tone of voice documents, product initiatives and web designs, even down to the design and layout of a button on their app because of free flowing feedback. 

It’s been an adjustment to create an additional feedback round in all these processes, but it’s led to a huge amount of brand loyalty and investment in their brand. It’s a lesson to us all to be open about allowing your community to help make decisions that you might not consider important or be able to resolve internally.

AND we host a great roundtable breakfast for our community of purpose-led brand marketers: they’re small, intimate and exclusive - and works a treat to see your beautiful faces.

We’ve got our next Brand, Bitch & Brekkie on Feb 11th, and there’s a couple of tickets left. 

Book yourself in here OR email sunnii@mattr.media to find out more!

Looking back over our f**k-ups of 2019 - what a year..

Why is it when we get to the the holiday season, most companies only talk about the things that have gone well that year? The road to your success is paved in mistakes and failure, so in spite of some amazing things that have happened, this article wants to do something more real and raw, focusing on our 4 biggest f*ck ups of the year and what we’ve learnt from them.

Our hope? Whether you’re a brand marketer or agency partner, the below will encourage you to share your own failures from this year. It’s these things that have ultimately got us all to where we are today.

Learn to say no by coming back to your mission

2019 has been challenging for many reasons and I am not shamed to admit, we have had some real tough moments this year. When times are tough, it becomes difficult to say no to things you would usually ignore. But the trouble with this more reactive attitude is if were to fast forward 5 years, you may end up with a company that differs from the vision you had when you started it.

Of course any brand journey requires some level of flexibility, but if like us you believe in brand purpose it’s critical to recognise when you’re slipping down this road. That’s why we’ve spent a lot of time recently checking back in with our values to ensure they are at the core of all the decisions we make, from the customers we work with, the team we hire, to the value we provide people beyond our services. We even have our own criteria checklist for jobs that come in, to act as a guide so that if times get tough again we are consciously making a decision, not just doing so because we feel we need to.

Make sure stakeholders feel a part of your project, not just people who green light it.

There have been a couple of projects this year with really drastic last minute requests. On reflection, it’s been because of a combination of being rushed into delivering a project for tight deadlines or because certain stakeholders were not informed about the creative route we had agreed to, until they actually saw the end product.

Drastic last minute changes can be painful for all involved- for the client it can lead to lengthy delays on delivery times, additional fees or worse. If the changes are impossible to make, then you’re in dangerous waters of producing an under-par campaign or even canning the whole project. And for your agency partner this situation is also really tough: agencies always want clients to be thrilled with their work, but there’s only so much one can do once everything has been filmed.

There’s nothing worse than thinking “if only we knew this in the briefing stage”. So ultimately we’ve learnt it’s absolutely critical to ensure all stakeholders have not just signed off on ideas but are actively involved too...

When agreeing on responsibilities, ensure people really understand the tasks they’re taking on

The nice thing about working so collaboratively with clients is a shared sense of responsibility when it comes to getting a project done, none more-so than when budgets are tight and we are all looking for ways to make savings. Often a way to do this is for clients to take up the mantle of organising talent, finding locations or even supplying props and wardrobe on the day.

Most of the time this strategy has worked to aplomb, but sometimes clients haven’t quite understood the resource required to carry out the work they’ve taken on. A good example of this is when we are looking for user generated content as part of the narrative. It’s really important to factor in the necessary time to source this internally because it usually takes longer than you expect to get customers (or even staff) to do things for you.

So, have an honest and frank chat with your agency partners about what’s entailed in the work you’re committing to before doing it, work out what gives you the best chance of completing it without delay and sometimes if the conclusion is actually you don’t have the resource to do so, paying that little bit more goes a long way.

Try to speak the language of the person you’re talking to…particularly with email!

I sent an email earlier this year to a client of ours. It was sent with positive intentions, was tapping into a subject we thought we could help with and was framed as an opportunity that we thought could be really exciting. Yet it was only after we received their response- highlighting the negative impact it could have on them personally- that we realised we’d f*cked up an otherwise great idea.

The reality is, if we’d really considered the language we used, we’d be looking at a very different outcome. The matter was resolved swiftly, but naturally the opportunity was dead. To say we learnt a lot from that experience is an understatement. In emails, your tone can be misinterpreted, there is no context behind the words you are writing and once you’ve sent an email, it can’t be unsent…So whether it’s to a client, a supplier, colleague or boss, you should never send an important email without putting yourself in the shoes of the person receiving it. And better yet, maybe just have a call or meeting if it’s that important!

Thank you to everyone whose allowed us to fail emphatically this year. It’s allowed us to grow as content creators and human beings. As we look forward to 2020, I’m sure there will be even more lessons to learn. 

p.s. please feel free to share your biggest mistakes of 2019!

Top 4 things that have mattered to us this November

At Mattr we believe that in today’s world the best brands do so much more than sell products. Below are four of our fave examples over the last month:

1. In a world where men wear the tampons - Thinx

We’re all witness to the changing conversation around femcare - its inclusion in political manifestos, new product innovation, and now the latest advertising campaign by Thinx. 

Their new TV & social film depicts a hilarious world where men wear the tampons and deal with having their period. There are no corny sport skits or women wearing white - instead we’re privy to a son telling his dad he’s got his period for the first time, male colleagues handing out spare tampons, and a tampon string peeking out of a guy’s boxers. 

While we think this ad is awesome for its rebellious and hilarious nature, it actually matters because the heart of the narrative is helping normalise sensitive and everyday experiences. Creating impactful content in the femcare space (as we learned through our film with myFreda) is tough to nail but can be powerful when you do!

2. The Twitter community’s power for good - Football Beyond Borders

The girls are all kitted up for fixture evening 1! ⚽💪🏻

A team: Kiaira, Gracie, Maddison, Esme, Imogen, Daisy, Esmae

B Team:, Lisa, Willow, Kirah, Lottie, Maisy, Gracie, Carla.@BHA_TQ#remarkablelives #girlsfootball #womensfootball pic.twitter.com/VI72vEvVtd

— Barton Hill Academy Girls Football (@barton_girls) November 11, 2019

Campaign reported a story we loved this month about Barton Hill Academy, a primary school in Devon. Their girl’s football team had no kit of their own, with budget dedicated to the boy’s kit leaving the girls to wear the outgrown hand-me-downs. 

Their coach involved Football Beyond Borders, an education charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged kids get into sport, who took to Twitter’s biggest community to get support from athletes and sponsors  to raise funds for a new kit for the girls’ squad. Within 15 minutes new sponsorship and endorsement from Nike and West Ham Women’s Football squad had sorted free kit for all young ladies. 

When we talk about using your audience to help your brand live and celebrate its purpose, this is a great example to remember. It’s all about Listening to your community and acting on what mean the most to them.

3. Brewing for clean water - Brewgooder

TUESDAY CHALLENGE! Tag a brewer you want us to work with below 👇 ⠀ Yesterday, we launched the Brewgooder Global Gathering 🌍🍻 We're using the power of craft beer to unite 500 brewers around the world, to each create a one-off beer for World Water Day weekend in March 2020 💧 ⠀ This collaboration will help impact the lives of 100,000 people, and we already have 129 breweries signed up! Who else should we get involved? Tag them below! ⠀ To register, simply head to brewgooder.com/gathering 📲 #BGG2020

98 Likes, 15 Comments - Brewgooder (@brewgooder) on Instagram: "TUESDAY CHALLENGE! Tag a brewer you want us to work with below 👇 ⠀ Yesterday, we launched the..."

We found this next piece really intriguing - Glasgow based brewery Brewgooder has created a global initiative collaborating with hundreds of breweries to raise £250K for World Water Day in 2020. 

It’s awesome to hear that breweries are able to harness their global and passionate craft beer community to support sustainable growth. It’s a clever initiative that works two-fold; limited edition products are bought by loyal customers to boost the brewer’s profile internationally. 

At Mattr we’re all about partnerships and working for the longer-term, so it’s great to see breweries break down the barriers of competition and get together to help solve a monster challenge as an industry. We’re excited to see the content that comes out the back of such an initiative, and maybe to even see it as an annual event?

4. Acknowledging your environmental footprint - Hovis

With everyone jumping on the bandwagon, it’s becoming incredibly hard to see news online about a brand doing good for the environment and thinking it’s committing some form of greenwashing. And whilst admitting to your eco-vulnerability as a brand has never been more important, the key lesson to learn is how you communicate that properly. 

Just take EasyJet, who in spite of announcing their plans to offset their carbon emissions from its 329 aircraft by planting trees, still came into trouble by people claiming they could be doing more. There are many arguments to support both sides of the announcement - perhaps one could look at their execution and wording in their statement as a reason for the backlash, or even that because of the statement, it served no greater purpose than to cover up the real issue at hand.

A great example of a brand getting this kind of messaging right is Hovis and their new OOH eco advertising about their new electric delivery fleet. We laughed at the way Hovis made a jab at businesses claiming to be ‘100% green’ by claiming to be 100% yellow (how on brand for Mattr.. Luckily it’s not our pantone code). This matters because it’s authentic and effective - we love it when sarcasm hits the streets…

There is no definitive answer of what to do to be loved in today’s world, but the best you can do as a brand is to be honest and authentic when you don’t have everything in place. It will earn your brand more respect from your audience instead of creating tone-deaf content that doesn’t truly reflect what you stand for.

The 6 steps you need to follow to create a killer crowdfunding video

Like many start-ups raising investment through crowdfunding, fintech brand Chip knew their investment video was crucial. With only 2 weeks till the raise, they were worried the traditional ‘talking head’ interview with their founder they had produced just didn’t do their mission justice. They needed help…and fast!

Enter Mattr Media, who helped create one of the fastest ever campaigns to reach £1m (eventually raising over £3.5m+ with a 380% oversubscription rate) and a video shortlisted for Crowdcube’s Video and Campaign of the Year.

So, how did we do it? And how do we continue to achieve record-breaking results for our other crowdfunding clients? Well, the below are 6 key steps we take with all our crowdfunding projects…

RULE 1: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR VIDEO

Unlike pitching to traditional investors, you aren’t going to necessarily meet crowdfunding investors face to face and they aren’t just looking for a 10x return.

Dan Hardy, Head of Business Development at Crowdcube, summed up perfectly why that means your video is so important: “video is the dominant media format online and since Crowdcube is primarily an online investment platform... (so) your pitch video is the best chance you have for investors to learn about you and your business…”

So doing one and doing it well is crucial.

RULE 2: TELL A STORY

So how do you do that? Well, don’t forget on crowdfunding platforms, most of the people watching your film are not as financially savvy as traditional investors. So whilst top-level metrics are important, it’s just as crucial to answer deeper introspective questions that your audience will connect with. Things like “why did we start this in the first place? What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? How can we show we’re a big deal (PR/Awards/Team etc.)? What does the future hold?”

It’s also important to not get lost in explaining the “features” of your product. As Hardy explains, “the objective here is to get people to invest in your business, not to buy your product. That's a big difference… You need to strike the right balance.”

Overall, keep the message simple and save the detail for additional supportive content.

RULE 3: BE DISTINCTIVE 

Depending on how much time you’ve spent defining your brand tone of voice, this will make life easier or more challenging for you. But if you haven’t the foggiest, this is where a creative partner like us can help.

In order to make this video feel distinctly “you”, it’s helpful to consider questions like-

• If we were a brand from a different sector, which would we choose to be?

• If we had 3 words to describe how we want people to feel after watching this, what should they be?

• If we had 3 words to describe our product, what would they be?

• If we imagined our brand as a celebrity, who would they be? And why?

It’s exactly these kinds of questions that led us to creating such a fun and quirky fundraiser for Chip.

RULE 4: PUT YOUR AUDIENCE FIRST

The rise in popularity of crowdfunding has been born out of a desire for consumers to feel more connected with the brands they buy from. And that’s why so many successful crowdfunding campaigns are community focused - just look at Monzo and their amazing £20m crowdfund, or Brewdog and their 2000% overfund to total £10m. 

Alex Latham, Chip’s CMO says “It’s really imperative that our staff and customers feel a part of our mission, particularly for crowdfunding. There was no better way of doing this than when Mattr recommended we champion these guys in our films. I would say a lot of our Crowdcube success has been because of this attitude. ”

You should not underestimate the value of people being your advocates, helping spread the word for you and hopefully investing too.

RULE 5: CREATE VALUE BEYOND THE HERO FILM

For some investors, watching your main film may not be enough to sway them to part with their money. So think about what content you can create to support their final decision. 

Supportive “product explainer” films are great for the nitty-gritty you haven’t spoken about in the main film and of course, there’s the pitch deck for the financials. However, if budget can stretch, we also encourage films about the staff.

It surprises us that not too many companies create update films on how the raise is going  after the campaign goes live, a useful tool to stay top of mind.

RULE 6: CHOOSE THE RIGHT PARTNER

Most video agencies have fixed “packages” (as do we) for crowdfunding campaigns and many of us have proven experience, so how do you choose the right partner?

A big component of that will be whether you believe your chosen agency is not just doing this to get paid, but ultimately because they believe in your business.

You can gage part of this from initial conversations and the value they provide. But whether they “walk the walk” is tough. That’s why at Mattr we developed two further offerings to the standard package, which aligns us even further to you in your quest for a successful raise:

1. A part fixed fee part success fee package 

2. A pure success fee package (i.e. absolutely no up front fee to do so)

Finally…

You’re at an exciting stage in your company’s journey, but we know your video will be a crucial piece in the success of your campaign. If you’re interested in learning more, do contact Chief Shmoozer Josh at josh@mattr.media

Build a Brand Movement Round Up: Alzheimer’s Society, LoveCrafts & Method + Ecover

The #mattrmovement came back with a bang this week and wow was it an amazing night!

We loved the energy and insights from our amazing speakers Sylvia, Nigel and Sara and loved the questions from the audience...thank you everyone once again!

Here are just a few golden nuggets we took away from our lovely speakers, and if you want to see the full talks, look out for the videos we’ll be posting soon...

Sylvia Lowe, Alzheimer’s Society: Look beyond your brand

“No business is an island, everyone needs to help one another” explained Sylvia

With people developing dementia every three minutes, Alzheimer’s Society are constantly asking themselves... is the key to growing donations creating awareness about Dementia or creating awareness about their brand? The conclusion: if they can lead with the former, the latter will follow.

Sylvia showcased how effective this approach is using the grassroots #askusanything campaign which the charity launched during Dementia Action Week. The campaign focused on educating the masses about the condition and empowering those who suffered with Dementia to speak about what everyday life is like. This was capped off with a great film that totally humanised the issue without ‘sadvertising’.

The results? 28,000 more dementia friends (now totalling 2.8 million!) volunteering, added awareness through a series on Channel 4 ‘The Restaurant that Makes Mistakes’, and great media coverage to position the society as global pioneers. Not bad for a campaign that didn’t put the brand front and centre of its comms...

Takeaway: Turn your thought leadership into action leadership

Nigel Whiteoak, LoveCrafts: Data and creative are a match made in heaven

Nigel confessed “I’m a data geek”

Nigel loves his data, and he isn’t afraid to show it. In fact, it was this data that led to the success of their biggest in-house brand label: Paintbox. Online conversations suggested there was an untapped market for a broad range of colourful and affordable yarn so they seized the opportunity.

Using feedback from staff, customers and influencers in the crafting community, they perfected their product and brand, transforming LoveCrafts from a platform to a popular brand in its own right.

Earlier this year, Paintbox Yarns launched in the US with an advertising campaign created off the back of their learnings and data. The result was a colourful and playful film which tapped into influencers and the wider knitting community. This achieved a brand lift across social 5x over the average (I wonder who was the clever agency behind that ;))!

Takeaway: Get your customers involved in the curation of your brand

Sara Mendez Bermudez, Ecover & Method Cleaning: Your brand is only as good as the people behind it

“Brands don’t die, it’s the passion of the marketers behind it”, joked Sara

Launched in the 1970’s, Ecover was considered a seriously rebellious company in the cleaning sector. Fast forward 4 decades, the modern consumer is now looking for a shift in narrative - from one that looked within (Ecover is for the world of cleaning) to one that looked out (Ecover can help clean the world).

Their mission became clear: to lead a clean world revolution. This mission would guide them through everything, from who they work with, to how they present their products. Thanks to this communication strategy, the company saw not just a brand uplift but their sales and market share boomed too.

There were many things to take away from Sara’s talk, but her enthusiasm for embracing the ‘inner rebel’ in people and making them feel part of a movement rather than just selling a product was something we particularly loved.

Takeaway: Get comfortable being uncomfotable

To summarise… never settle

An extremely important pattern throughout all of our speakers’ talks was the importance of not fearing failure, and instead dedicating time to look at what can be improved.

Sara highlighted in her presentation that “progress and not perfection” is what to strive for when looking at how to build a true movement. At LoveCrafts, Nigel spoke about not fighting the feedback, instead, learn from it. And Sylvia explained how a brand has the power to disrupt the status quo of an entire sector, you don’t always have to settle.

It isn’t easy to build a movement. But if you put the audience first, think about your impact beyond your product and communicate yourself in a way that feels truly valuable, you’re on the right path.

Josh Fineman, Mattr Media Co-Founder rounding up the night

And before we go...  

If you enjoyed coming to our event, or even reading our tips from the eve, you may wanna check out our next content workshop on July 10th. For more info or to book your seat book click HERE...but hurry seats are limited and already selling!