The Franchise Edge | Toven Stith

In this episode of the Franchise Edge Podcast, host Jamie Adams interviews Toven Stith, Senior Creative Director at Scorpion. They discuss the importance of video in brand storytelling and highlight the differences between working on traditional Hollywood projects and helping businesses tell their stories. Stith shares his background in video production and the process Scorpion uses to create impactful video content for their clients.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back to episode eight of the Franchise Edge Podcast, brought to you by Scorpion. I'm your host, Jamie Adams. This week is another first on the podcast. This is the first episode where I'm actually going to be having a conversation with one of my colleagues here at Scorpion Tovan. Stiff Tovan is a senior creative director on our studios team. Many of you probably recognize Scorpion as a provider of digital marketing solutions, software and services in the franchise community. We also actually have a really large studios team too, and our studios team does a few things. They shoot primarily photography and video creative for our customers. They don't just shoot the creative though. They actually oftentimes are brought in to write scripts, to write commercials, to produce, to direct, to do all the editing, and Tovan is a key part of that team. So I decided to interview Tobin and talk a little bit about the importance of video. There's a lot of great stuff in here if you're interested in telling your story more effectively as a franchise. Video should certainly be part of that strategy. And then additionally, we just talk about some of Tobin's background and as family's background, you're going to hear about Scorpions ties to Huey Lewis in the news. I'm a big eighties music fan. That one's pretty cool to me. Eric Roberts, the actor who is actually in one of our customer commercials. So lots of great stuff here. Hope you enjoy this conversation between Tobin and myself. And until next time, if we can be of service, you can find us@wwwatscorpion.co. Until then, enjoy this episode, my conversation with Tovan Stiff. A lot of people in the marketplace know Scorpion as a digital marketing software and services company, so we build websites, we do SEO, we do advertising. Something else that we do not a lot of people know about is a lot of video production. More people should know about it. I agree with that. That's why you're here. So, no, but I think one of the things that I've been here for a decade now, and one thing that we talk about internally a bunch is that businesses that do invest in their brand, right brand through the right marketing campaigns, the right media strategy, be it offline, tv, radio, print, coupled with good digital, they always seem to perform better than the ones that just try to focus on what we refer to as lower funnel advertising and marketing, like search base just on Google being there when someone's searching. Right? Right. So Nvidia is a really big component of that, right? Absolutely. Making sure, sure. You've got great video content either on your website that you can use on YouTube channels or on Facebook or on Instagram, but also you could use offline. And of course you lead our team here that comes up with a lot of the concepts we end up shooting for our customers. How'd you get into all this? How'd you get into video? Tell us about your start. Well. I got into this because of, well, my dad. My dad is a producer and a director and I owe everything that I know to him. Okay. So what types of stuff was he doing? Obviously not exactly what you're doing today, but. No, I mean two degrees, some of it he started off in music videos and commercials as a producer. Music. Videos. Yeah, like anything that I would know. Are you familiar with Huey Lewis in the news. Sports dude? Yeah. You. Serious? Yeah. No way. He produced a bunch of those. He produced the Power of Love and No way. Yeah. Power Love. Is. Easy. Top. Okay. You know that I'm my huge eighties music offic. I do. I do. Yeah. How. Did I not know? This. Is Easy. Top another one, the. Spinning your cars. I saw your legs and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Out in the desert. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Eliminator, all that. No. Kidding. That was your dad? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alright, so you got the pedigree. I come from it and I was fortunate to be around it. That's awesome. Yeah, that's really cool. Okay, so you started your dad's in music videos or in video, but film, music videos. I'm sure you's doing a bunch of other stuff. Corporate and commercial, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Okay. And before you ended up here at Scorpion, you've been here, what now? Four or. Five years going on? Five. Yeah. Five. Wow, that's crazy. Time flies 10 for me next month. Crazy. Yeah. So before that though, what were you doing? What was your time spent on you working in the film industry in la? Yeah, sort of. It's funny, but I've dabbled in a bunch of different things in my life. I was a pool guy at one point. Okay. All right. I worked at a telemarketing company at one point. I was VP of marketing at another software company at one point, but also worked in film and I was a photo assistant at Tech and sort of wanted to learn a lot about the different hats and different facets of telling stories through images. And so I have taken it upon myself to spend my life learning more about that and how I can help other people share their stories. I think. I'm glad you brought that up. I think a lot of times, and by the way, I'm guilty of this too, a lot of times whenever I use Word like video, just I think about it that simply is like, oh, video. But really the true beauty and the value of what video is as storytelling for sure. And I know we do a lot of that internally. I mean, I think a lot of what gets people that work at Scorpion really fired up is videos that we promote and produce internally for new company events. Those are things. Just for own people. Yeah, exactly. But then all the stuff that we're doing for customers and for businesses that we work with, that's really what it is about, is capturing their story and telling it through that. Medium no matter the type of the business. And we work with lawyers and they have their own type of stories and there's a multitude of different types of lawyers too. And the types of stories that they have or cultivate, be it a criminal defense attorney or private or a personal injury attorney or something like that. Two very different sort of fields even beyond that. Home services, we just did an oil and propane company out in Connecticut and it was fascinating to hear their. Story. Yeah, it's interesting too because pre-internet, one of the primary ways that a lot of businesses would market or advertise their business was TV and radio. Traditional. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you'd have your local TV spots. I mean, I grew up, I talk a lot about the script in Shreveport, Louisiana, near Shreveport, Louisiana, and you've got the cheesy promoted, the local video, local TV company, send stuff out or whatever. But that was such a popular way for the local business to market themselves. And then I feel like when the internet happened, a lot of businesses that typically spent money there, they just said, oh, we're not going to do that anymore. We're just going to go only on Google, only in display ads or on Facebook. And now I feel like, and this is not super recent, but over the last eight or 10 years, businesses are starting to find that medium where they see the value in the offline broadcast, tv, radio still. And then they see the value of maximizing some level of digital and there's more places where you can actually produce and launch video content and digital formats now too. There's just somewhere so many places to put that stuff these days. And that can be a challenge, but also can be very helpful to businesses. Streaming is an example of that, and smaller businesses can now get onto streaming like Hulu and that sort of thing. Yeah, for sure. What about, because again, I'm going back to the storytelling thing. You're talking about your dad shooting music videos and that's one kind of genre of video content. And then did you work in the film industry at all in la? Did you do any of that? I dropped out of school at 15. Oh, how dare you. Maybe don't put that in the podcast, but dropped out of 15 and went to go work for him and learn the ropes, and I figured that's the best education that I'm going to get for what I like just. Doing it. So going from that though, where you're doing what I would kind of think about, again, you're in the LA area, that's like traditional video is music videos and TV and movies and things of that nature to now working here with us at Scorpion and you're primarily shooting B2C oriented business video content. We're helping businesses tell their story. What are the big nuances or differences between working in a more traditional Hollywood video setting versus helping businesses tell their story? Really a big difference. There's probably a lot, but a big difference is just budgets. You know what I mean? If you're doing the big, big Hollywood stuff, you just have bigger budgets and a lot more crew and a lot more access to things that you wouldn't necessarily, if you have a smaller budget and you get to work with big high caliber talent and that kind of stuff. With a smaller budget, it's a little bit more difficult to get that, but it doesn't mean that you can't tell a story. And that's sort of what I learned from that experience with my dad's production company is no matter whether it's a big thing or a small thing, how do you tell a story? And it wasn't all the big music videos, it was also corporate stuff or Princess Cruises or whatever. We did a lot of work with. Princess Cruises. Oh yeah, you mentioned that before. Yeah. And smaller big, how to tell a story, and that's sort of what I learned from him. Okay. So let's take a real life use case. Okay. How do you go about, what's your process? Company hires Scorpion to come in and help them develop and produce and direct a video shoot. And let's say, let's take Mr. Sparky, right, because they're a brand that we've worked with owned by Authority Brands, electricians. So how did you approach a project like that? Well, how I approach every single project, whether it is a big franchise like Mr. Sparky or a single lawyer in Des Moines, Iowa or something like that, is just finding out who they are and getting to know them and getting to know what makes them unique and what is their unique selling proposition and how to tell their story and digging into that and then sort of figuring out what is the most impactful way to tell that and working with them on that. And then the execution is the execution, but it's all the planning and all that sort of foreground that needs to be done to tell that story and how to weave that together. So safe to say then part of the process is just kind of a typical discovery where you're asking questions, trying to get to understand who their customer is. Are they a fun brand, are they serious? What types of maybe brand assets that they got in the past that they want to continue to leverage, maybe what are they looking to do something new around imagine is kind of part of the process. And then of course, I don't want to downplay the execution, like the actual shooting of and directing of the video, but seems like there's a lot that happens before then, right? For sure. Ideating the idea, I mean, how do you go about that process? Is that you and guys on the team like Tyler and aj, how do you guys go about, let's come up knowing what know about the brand through this interview process. How do we put together concepts to pitch to them? How do you do that? Well, I. Think. My brain doesn't operate that way, way. So I am genuinely curious. To your point that discovery is very important and illuminates a lot for us because we can tell whether they want to be funnier, they want to be a little bit more serious, they want to be a little bit more conservative, or they want to push a boundary and that sort of thing. And what they're trying to do with it, is it a brand awareness play or is it something later down the funnel or whatever. So that's definitely the most impactful way to get us into it. And then from there, we just get in a room and typically, let's take Mr. Sparky for example. They wanted to be memorable and big awareness play and hit certain points of their business and what they're trying to do, but they wanted to do it in a likable, funny kind of way. Great. That's definitely my wheelhouse. And Tyler's wheelhouse, we love playing in that sandbox and it's just getting in a room and throwing spaghetti at a wall and trying to make each other laugh. And that's sort of our process. Everybody process is different. So with Sparky, and they wanted to use those assets both for offline TV ads and then also for both some short form and longer form YouTube content. So we put together, I think on the first go round with them, we did six different commercials that are 30 plus for social, A 30, hard 30 and a hard 15 for traditional media, and then a six also for social. And then formats of all those that could be used for social in both a standard 16 by nine and a four by five. So giving them probably for each commercial, I don't know, 20 or 30 assets per commercial and giving them so much content that they can go out into the marketplace for and get in front of people and put it on Facebook and put it on Hulu and OTT and put it on a traditional and give it to their franchisees to do local traditional. And that's sort of the play is just to get it as many places as possible so that more people know about you and more people like you. And more people go when I do have some sort of electrical problem in my house, I'm going to call Mr. Sparky because I saw the commercial and I like the one and I like the way that they talk to me and I like the way that they entertain me or whatever. How did YouTube and connected TV and things like that Do you have any idea there? Yeah, I mean YouTube, they specifically ran YouTube connected tv and that was a big part of their play. Got it. And they saw phenomenal results. Of that. Yeah, another website traffic and stuff. And even leads. I mean, I think that's one thing that's like you mentioned top of the funnel awareness, bottom of the funnel. I mean, I think that the one thing that most businesses think about video is, well, I can't get any leads from video. No one's going to just see my video and then call me. And that's probably true because they may not an issue or a challenge at that moment. But one thing that video that we all think we all know and appreciate is that if you do a really good job through that content, that when you do have a need that triggers your memory, it's like, oh, I remember seeing that. Let me call this business. And that was to the point Mr. Sparky's asked is be memorable. You. Okay Bob? Yep. Fully charged. He likes to do it all himself, huh? Yep, exactly. And I think another always, when I'm talking to brands about when they ask should we or should we not do video? The answer's almost always Yes. And so how do we measure it? One way you can measure is buy an uplift in brand searches. So the idea is if you're Mr. Sparky and you're investing a bunch of money in developing this video asset, but then running advertising, be it on TV or on connected TV and Hulu and YouTube and social, and if you watch the next three to six months after that, if you start seeing searches for your brand onto your website go up, well then it's pretty obvious that the reason one of the drivers for that is that someone saw your TV. Ad, especially if you're not really changing any other metrics in your. Marketing. Play. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's one of the things that we did ask them to do when they were going to go run that stuff is don't change anything else, just run. Just insert this. Just. Add this. Okay, got it. That's smart. So another question I have, and again, just because fascinated, because again, my brain doesn't really work around this idea of I'm not a creative, that's not my strong suit typically, but it's got to feel pretty cool whenever you pitch a concept to someone and there's that moment of probably silence of you're waiting for a reaction and then you get the, oh my God, we love this. Yeah. So that's got to feel good, huh? Yeah. I feel like Chris Farley with Paul. Hey, remember that time? Yeah, that was pretty cool. Yeah. But no, seriously, that's got to feel good. It does feel good and it feels good because you know that you're doing the right thing for them and that this is the right to play and that it hit the right harmony for them and that they recognize it. And it's one of those things where when you both recognize it, then it's like, oh, this is just the play. We just need to do this. And everybody sort of knows it. And we were talking earlier, just along that line, we were talking earlier about a different concept. We were talking about the Benjamin Franklin commercial with Tyler with the running water, running toilet. Yeah, the running toilet. And you had mentioned that you guys had put together all these concepts and pitched them to that group, and then it was just kind of met. Those were met with kind of like, okay, it's lukewarm. And then this last one was the one that you almost didn't want to do it because you thought it was too goofy. Is that. Yeah, the initial conversations that we had with them and the onset seems a little bit more conservative, so we were like, okay, let's play our sort of creative, a little bit more conservative to fit what her brand's needs are and what she feels her brand's needs are. And pinch some softball kind of ads that were sweet. One was that was a little bit charming and this little bit traditional, especially for the space. And then there was just this curve ball oddball one that we threw in at the end that was like, who knows, this could be a hail Mary that gets caught or not. And she was like, forget everything else. Just do that funny one. And we were like, oh, okay, great. They get it. So you picture the goofy idea again. Now I know with this, I've seen this before, but people watching this right now don't know what we're talking about. So you have the running water, just kind of walk through the theme and help everybody get a. Visualization. It was sort of one of those lightning bolts to the brain kind of thing and going through their material and going through what their brief was and going through their brand collateral that they had already had and sort of looking at information about them on their website. And. So typical plumbing problems. Learning more about plumbing. I'm not a plumber, I don't know anything about plumbing. And so me doing my research and digging into, well, how do we talk about this and how are other people talking about it and how can I do it differently? And that sort of thing. And finding out that running toilets, they waste water. And then that sort of sparked of like, oh, that would be funny to do. Literally have a toilet running. An anthropomorphized toilet running in a marathon and wasting water. And that's that sort of brain burst that happens. And then I threw it away initially and then had met with aj, my boss, and just sort of softball pitched it to him and he was like, oh my goodness, that's great. Let's throw it in at the end is just a maybe kind of thing. And the rest was sort of history. And I mean, we can watch the spot. Yeah. Let's let everybody watch the running toilet spot. Running toilets, waste water. Did you know the average running toilet wastes around 70,000 gallons every year? We can help visit Benjamin Franklin plumbing.com to request an appointment. Back in my day, we used to call toilets. The pretty. Okay, so there's that one. That was awesome. But then you kind of played with that theme, right? You had. Yeah. Well, we had contracted six spots for them. We like, okay, I got to make five more of these things. Okay, good. Let me find out more plumbing problems and how to key those up and make them funny or make them problematic and that sort of thing. So you have one of my favorites is the lady doing yoga in her house and in the background you. Dripping faucets are annoying. Yes. Because they are, I mean, it's chirping and you're like, ah, I got to fix that someday. And then there's the cloggers. Yeah, well the C clogged drain, it's like clogged drains, interrupt your day because you got to get unclogged and that sort of thing. There's a literal clog drain. A drain wearing CLOs and dancing around dancing and all that kind of stuff. That's great. So I think one of the things that's really interesting about going back to the Mr. Sparky and the Benjamin Franklin Plumbing all part of the same family of brands, and again, just talking about the power of video, not just from a branding and oh, it's not really attributable to any lift in revenue. When we launched those videos, I think the year after, I think Sparky had their best year of revenue ever, from what I recall. Ever in the brand's history. I think they've been around for 25 years and they were like, our revenue, gross revenue was the highest it's ever been. That's awesome. Up by I think year over year was like 20% or something like that. But is it difficult knowing. That 28%, it was 28% that. First year at you look at. You the next year was 20% on top of that. Okay. Alright. And is it difficult though, because most of these things, you're running them for a season for a year maybe, and I know that a lot of these brands, they think about TV and they think about video at different points in the season just based on their media plan. Is it difficult though coming back year after year and coming up with a new concept and making sure that it still fits within the brand, but it's also got to be new and fresh? Is there a lot of pressure there? I wouldn't say it's difficult. It's a challenge and it's a problem to solve, but that's the fun part is trying to find the right sort of key to go in the lock kind of a thing and figure it out. And that's what Tyler and I love to do is to figure that stuff out. And it's one of those things where once you hit that sort of right stride, then you just know it and the client knows it and they need to just run with it. And it's great. So we talked about some brands on their kind of consumer marketing, obviously trying to get more customers to buy their service and product. Another place that you guys spend a lot of time with our customers in franchising is helping them with franchise sales oriented video content. So obviously franchise. Development. Exactly, exactly. Trying to sell a franchise to a new owner. And to me, I mean I think that that's clearly where the power of story really shines, right? Sure. Because when someone's thinking about making an investment and buying a business, that's not a, that's taken very lightly. It's a big business. It's a big. Investment. Yeah, it's a lifestyle change. I mean there's all sorts of, so I think the video component of a brand actually leveraging that medium to get down to the emotional heart of why they started the business, the value proposition of the business, how it can be or how it has changed other franchisees lives. I mean, we get asked about 'em all the time and IFA right now where we're shooting this, I mean we have lots of brands that come by the booth or want to have a conversation about because they saw something that or they saw something that we did for Authority brands and I was mentioning this and then you kind of caught on and ran with it too. I mean, again, people that are buying a franchise, that's a really big decision. That's like a multi-month, sometimes longer decision and where you start in your information gathering relative to where you end up to, Hey, I'm about to write a check and sign my life away. Not literally, but you're signing a big check in a lot of ways and you're committing to being a business owner here. That's. Your nest egg. Exactly. Exactly. So that path of videos to help move people down that funnel and give them the information that they need that's relevant to them at different points along that journey, that's actually really a really smart and critical thing that I think most brands should be doing if they're not doing it today. It's. Also in that way, sort of a good vetting process for the franchise development manager because then they don't also have to field somebody who's maybe not right or not fit or get further down the funnel, but then they're like, this business is not for me and they've sort of wasted time on that individual or whatever. And it sort of gives a good picture and scope of what this particular franchise business and the business model is all about and that sort of thing, and it'll flesh out sort of the weeds there. Okay, so I'm going to put you on the spot. Are you. Ready? I'm never good on the spot. Oh, well you're going to be good. You're going to hit this one out of the park. I can tell you already. Let's talk about one brand. Just pick one in the franchise development, franchise sales capacity. There's a brand, we'll beep it if we need to, but waxing the city. Oh yeah, of. Course. We did stuff with them a few years ago and they came to us needing some help in that arena and put together a suite of assets and we went out and filmed some testimonials. We filmed a lot of B-roll, we filmed a lot of footage that we'd come back and make a bunch of different types of assets to hit that full funnel and they had a pretty good success out of that from what we gleaned from. Franchise. Yeah, I remember them having a conversation with, I think it was like Linda's team on franchise development, just talking about how many units that they sold. I mean they set out at the beginning of the year going for, okay, our target for this whole year was 40 signups for franchise signups. We hit about June and we were working with them on another one of their brands and just checked in with them, how's it going, this and that. We had delivered a bunch of the assets. We have wax in the city, they've got Anytime Fitness, they've got several brands within the family base camp as well. Yeah, base campus. And. By I think June or July they had already hit 90. Wow. And they had set out to get 40. And we're like. Okay, okay. So they were like, yeah, we're definitely doubling down and we're going to come back to you with all of our brands and do this with everything. Is that one, could you mention this earlier, but is that one where one of the video assets you did do is kind of like the business information? You mentioned the FDD and video form. Yeah, we had split that up into five different business information videos. One you're talking about the real estate aspect of it, a real estate, they have a plot of land and then they have a storefront and stuff retail space. And then talking about just the business overview and talking about the finances and talking about all the different aspects of their business model and what makes them unique and what makes them likable and what makes them this and that. Yeah, we did a whole suite for them. And. Did you find at the time, because I'm just thinking about this because a lot of times, and this is a sales guy and me talking because obviously spent most of my career has been in sales, a lot of times the sales person in you wants to control that conversation like, no, no, no, we're going to talk about real estate. I want to talk about real estate. They're going to have questions. They're going to look at this and get intimidated that they got to buy a piece of property or they got to lease a piece of property. Did you find that, was there any consternation or nervousness about putting that level of information and video and not being able to actually have a conversation about it? It's just like, Hey, I'm going to send you this video that walks you through these different levels. Was there a nervousness about. That? I mean, not for us and definitely not for the franchise development manager that we were working with. It was actually sort of a blessing because, and for that whole team, because then they were not fielding questions that they. Goes back to the qualification piece. If somebody's not comfortable with those things, then. They move on to the next thing. They can go buy a different sort of franchise brand, but it sort of handled a lot of those sort of questions and then they could have an educated conversation with the person and go, okay, now let's talk about next steps or let's talk about the next phase of this thing or whatever it is. It would move people through that funnel a lot faster and a lot less conversation, a lot less back and forth needed between a salesperson and somebody who's a prospect. Yeah. Now these types of things, how much creative control do you prefer to have in these processes, right? I mean, I would imagine you've got probably some businesses that you've done work with that they want to kind of control the messaging, they want to control the production. You've probably got others that are like, Hey, you guys are the experts. You take it, you do it. What do you prefer? It's definitely a balance. Okay. Right. And your business better than I. Know your business don't be proper, what do you prefer? No. I mean it is a balance because there's some things that I want you to take care of and I don't want to have to deal with that thing or you are better suited for that. What. Are some of those things. Like reaching out to franchisees that have stories you are better suited to go reach out to and who those franchisees are, what those stories are and that sort of thing versus me, I'm nobody. To them I would be cold calling them saying, Hey, tell me about your story and tell me about this and tell me about that. A lot of that legwork and stuff that's already known within the brand can be done on the franchisee franchises side. And I get to do the fun stuff, which is planning and putting the stories together and then figuring out how to tell those stories and what it looks like and what's best for your brand and are we going to shoot in your office? Are we going to shoot on location and that sort of thing. And traveling to Minnesota or traveling to Phoenix or wherever we are and shooting that stuff. And we do a mix of all of it. And some of the stuff now on the friend dev video side is we'll come to your place for half of it and we'll shoot the rest of it at our studio so we don't need to worry about cramming it all in two days. We can sort of split it up and do that sort of thing. So it's a good balance that we've got sort of right now. I want to put you on the spot again. Again, I think for brands out there that are thinking about, man, I'd really like to do more video content, but it's just such a big investment, how do I think about that? How do I justify that? How do you talk to customers when you're going through that part of the proposal or the value prop of like, Hey, this is the investment that's going to take to get X, Y, and Z. How do you get them comfortable with and seeing the payoff and the value there? Well, I think to the term that you just used, it's an investment. You want to expand, you want to grow your business and do that through a franchise or even on the brand awareness side, same thing. It's an investment into yourself as a business. And a lot of the assets that we're going to create for you are going to be around for the next two to five years, and you can use 'em for the next two to five years before you need a refresh. And if you take whatever that cost is of that investment of building out this suite of assets and you amortize that over two to five years, it's not that much money. You know what I mean? And so it's a bigger investment for you to go do it and then make a ton more money than to not do it and maybe cheap out on it or not do it at all. And now you've sort of lost out on that potential that you could have. Created. Yeah, I mean, I know one thing, again, just the majority of my time is more on the digital side of what we do, but even if you look at our website, our customers of our websites that have video on their websites versus the ones that don't, the traffic converts to leads at a way higher clip. I mean easily 10, 12% more than a website that doesn't have any video assets on it at all. For sure. And that's some industry or vertical agnostic too. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer or you're a plumber or you're a med spa or you're a. Gem, right? Look, if you're going to go to a website, do you want to read a wall of text? Me personally? No. No, I don't. I mean, I know some people that would say, yeah, I do, but yeah, I'm totally watching a video. If. The majority of people don't want to just read a novel on your website. Especially being the majority of the places that we spend time just as consumers today, I will say this, I mean I probably spend more time listening to or watching podcasts on YouTube or on Spotify than I do consuming any type of other content, be reading news sites or whatever. So the more video I consume in that part of my life when I'm actually investigating a business need that I've got or a service need that I've got, yeah, I prefer to just watch and engage a video about it versus like you said, reading a wall of text for sure. For whatever reason too. And this is beside the point, but when you said the wall of text, for whatever reason, I thought of Pink Floyd's the wall. There you go. I dunno why. And you went there. I did go there. I did go there. In my mind, I went. There. Did you trip out a little bit? No, but maybe later on we'll see. We'll see if that flash bracket hits. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Okay, so we talk about the investment if you're talking to a new brand and they've never done video, before. We move on, something you said also made me realize, wait. Is this my call? Is this my conversation or yours? My conversation. I'm taking it over. I like this. Okay. Alright. I'm the new host of the franchise. Love. Okay, great. Great, great. The other fun thing that we like to do because we're there shooting with you anyway, is shoot photographs. We like to squeeze as much out of that shoot day as possible and get as much content that we can. And that's sort of the biggest investment in as far as a line item goes in what you're investing in and those assets that you're going to buy is your shoot day. And so it's like. Get as you get people there, you got to bring equipment there. Sometimes you got to hire actors and actresses. Yep, yep. Right. And so stuff like photography that we can also put on your website and we can use on social media and that sort of thing and display ads, all that sort of stuff that we can filter out and get more out of that day. That's a great call because one thing that I constantly preach to businesses and we talk, our sales team talks a lot about it to the customers that we're talking with about coming to work with Scorpion, is the importance of your own photography for your digital, for your website, Don. Stock. Yeah, stock. It's a no brainer. I mean there's no comparison. Websites that have unique custom photography that's unique to the business always outperform those that just use stock images. So that's a great call out. So when you guys are out shooting in. The home services space there, there's not a lot of great stock photography out there. Yeah, I know. And we've done our due diligence and looked and stuff like that and tried to lean on some of that stuff, but there's just not a lot out there, so we're just like, you kind of just have to go make it yourself and have it be your art. Yeah. So that's like value add that you're delivering whenever you're out shooting these videos is you're actually taking the time to capture still images as well that they can use for social assets for their website, for their LinkedIn profiles and things of that nature. That makes a lot of sense. Good call out. I'm glad that you interrupted and took over the interview on that one. Well done. I had to. Anything else that I think that you find to be interesting about being there, shooting video and then being able to shoot the photography there? Any other kind of value adds that come out of that besides the ones we just talked about? Yeah, I mean look, you're going through the effort and the investment and that sort of thing to get a bunch of assets made. Let's say they're commercials or whatever, and you might as well get photography of that. And that way when somebody sees your ad on TV or they see your ad on a YouTube pre-roll or they see it on OTT or whatever that is, and then they also go searching for something on the internet and a display ad with that sort of same imagery, that same character, that same. Sort. Of vibe is sort of following them everywhere. Yes, you're taking, if you hiring actors or whatever actresses to shoot a commercial, making sure that you're getting the steel frame shots that can be found through social ads or through display or even direct mail if they wanted to send direct mail piece out. Right. Yeah. It's that sort of constant reminder kind of a thing and sort as reminder of like, oh yeah, those guys. Oh yeah, those. Guys. That makes. Sense. That makes sense. And another plug, but wait. There's more. We also do radio. Terrestrial radio we found is not dead by a lung shot. And then also things like Pandora. I'm glad Spotify you mentioned that because if there's one kind of industry that I hear more on, I'm a serious guy, so I listen to ESPN radio and Sirius XM in the morning a lot and constantly hear franchise development radio spots on Sport clips. I hear all the time lots of different, so I'm glad you mentioned radio. So yeah, tell me about the stuff that you guys have worked on in that capacity. Well, to go back to Sparky for a second, we had started working with Sparky right before the pandemic and then the pandemic hit and everything sort of shut down, especially in our industry, everything shut down, it was a gate kind of thing. And they are a business that still needs to market and especially a business that is an essential business, right, electricians. That's right. And they still need to market, so they still need to get out there, but we couldn't go shoot any commercials. We're literally shut down by the government to do that. let's work on some radio ads for you. Let's create some radio ads for you so that you can still be marketing. And so that's what we did. We made a whole suite of radio ads for them and delivered those and then they could go run stuff and get that going, and that definitely held them until we could go shoot something. Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing that I hear on radio ads is getting, just good tidbit if you're watching or listening is you can drop promo codes and you can drop special URLs and things of that nature just to get some level of attribution of you hear this radio ad, go to this website, it's unique, URL. The only way that people get there is if they hear the radio ad because they can't find it on a search engine. Code, blah, blah, blah. Exactly, exactly. It makes a lot of sense. So you've got the personalized URLs or the promo codes that you can use on these radio spots. Again, going back to the conversation I was having, we were talking about a moment ago, I listen to a ton of podcasts either listening to them on Spotify or on Apple, or I'm watching them on YouTube. And I think another benefit of these types of audio spots that you do for radio, you should also be leveraging as opportunities to sponsor that nature. For sure. For sure. Do you find that the same type of asset that works for radio is easily transferable to podcasts? Or do you recommend shooting different types of spots for one versus the other? Well, radio is a little bit different, obviously, and in some cases, depending on the story, depending on the concept, we can sort of even just translate and lift out the audio portion of whatever video commercial that we're doing and create an ad out of that. From a podcast standpoint. I guess sometimes the podcaster reads the line so you don't have as much control over the actual delivery of the audio. Although there's some, I mean I find that some actually lay in or layer in the actual, it's almost like a radio ad for a brand, but either way I guess important that if you're a brand, you should be thinking about not just traditional radio terrestrial or satellite, but also hey, how can I leverage a podcast audience that may have similarities to my audience that I want to reach? For sure, for sure. Alright, so you got radio, you got podcast audio. Another thing that I, since we're talking, see you're derailing us a few minutes ago, is just got my mind. I'm coming out with all this other new stuff that I want to talk. About now. I mean, we got a lot to. Offer. I know, man. So the other thing that I love that you guys do are some jingles. My favorite is always on time or you don't pay a dime always on time. I mean, I like to add my own lyrics. It's a little brain worm, it just stuck. In there. It is a brain worm. But that was one that you guys did, was that one hour heating and air that you. Guys did that? That was one hour heating and air. Yeah. So how did that come out? How did that come about? Again, sort of that came always. On time or you don't pay it dime. Roll it always. On time, don't pay dime one more always on time. Don't pay heating air. Air. That again, came out of the onset of the pandemic and we were working on creative with them for video side commercial and couldn't really shoot anything at the moment. So we were talking about what else could we do to help leverage your brand out in the marketplace? And one of the things that they said was, our sister brands, they all have an identity and they. Because they're part of Ben Franklin, Mr. Sparky, one hour heating and air, those all kind of make up the clockwork family or brand authority. Yep. Ben Franklin has the jingle. Mr. Sparky has a jingle. We don't have a jingle. Oh, okay. We don't have that sort of sticky identity kind of a thing that we can latch onto and we're like, okay, well let's make you a jingle. And so we put a jingle together for them and I really like it. It really sticks well. Clearly it sticks. This was like a couple years ago and I've still got it in my head, so that's awesome. My. Toddler sings it all the time in the living room and you just start singing it. It's awesome. Are there other jingles you've done? No. Yes, probably. I grew up in an era where jingle sort of was king on radio and TV and stuff. Yeah. We both did. We were around. The same Folgers, all that best. Pot awake. Ine. I drink coffee because of Folgers, probably like subconsciously I drink it a lot, probably because of that. Okay. You want to know interesting tidbit, going back to, you talked about Huey Lewis in the news earlier. Oh yeah. And my affinity for eighties music, the artist Richard Marks. Oh yeah. His dad was a famous jingle writer. Was. He really? Yeah, I think he wrote, he may have written the folders actually. He wrote a bunch of those from the seventies and eighties. Who's his dad? I don't know. His last name was clearly Marx, but yeah. Not Groucho. No, but he wrote a ton of jingles. He was a jingle writer. Wow. I mean, that makes sense. Spit out. Then he also birthed, or his wife birthed Richard Marks, who's arguably one of the best eighties ballad singers in the world. Arguably. Arguably, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So back to jingles. I mean, yeah, Steve Perry is also up there. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, let's not get in. We can film something else talking about who the best eighties musicians were. But another thing about the jingles again that I think is interesting is those are great audio spots, but they can also be layered into your video content and things of that nature. And again, it just reinforces the brand, those brand type. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Makes it sticky, memorable. Did. One hour do that? Did they throw them into the video content? Some as well? Yeah, we wrote several spots around that jingle as. Well. Okay, I remember that. You remember that? Yeah. So they had the jingle that they would just use as radio spots and then they would also layer in the jingle as like you actually did some stuff around video there too. Interesting. Cool. We wrote the spots around that wrap the jingle in it. And that sort of thing. Okay, got it, got it. Yeah. Alright, so we talked about video, we talked about audio, we talked about jingles, we talked about photography. I want to come back to video. I know that's something that you guys are really passionate about and that's where you really cut your teeth. I'm a brand, I've never done video before. Maybe I did, but it was kind of. With your local guy. Yeah, it just wasn't great. But I don't have the luxury of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to spend, but I want something high quality and I want to do, and this is for franchise development, that's the use case. If you had to start somewhere, what types of assets would you typically advise someone? I know ideal situation they're doing with this whole storyboard, but if they had to start somewhere, where do they start? On franchise development. Type? Yeah, franchise development. Yeah. It sort of depends. I'm going to be honest with you because are you an established brand or are you sort of a newer brand and that sort of thing. Because let's. Talk about both. Let's just say you're a newer brand, you're an emerging brand. If you're an emerging brand, I would suggest putting a little bit more emphasis at the start on brand awareness because that's going to be a stronger play to get somebody who would potentially want to buy into getting a franchise to know that you have an established brand. You got an. Identity in the market, and then they go, okay, good. Then once I get into the franchise, then there's going to be a play and a marketing stuff so that I can expand personally. If there's nothing on the brand awareness side, it's going to be difficult to close somebody on buying it. That's true in my estimation. Yeah. I completely. Agree. So that's my first play is like, don't worry about the business information videos and that sort of thing. Focus on getting some brand identity. That makes sense. And that's probably something if you do that the right way, you could leverage that on your B2C, your consumer side too, right? Absolutely. Yeah, that makes sense. And some of the time that that's already being handled on the consumer side anyway, but really helping that foster that, right? Yep. Yep. Second to that, I would say that the most impactful part of it is the emotional play. I mean the business information videos are great because they sort of give the nuts and bolts, that sort of thing. But if you're looking at really key up the lead factor and key up the eyeballs on my business and people reaching for it, the emotional factor is where you're going to draw the people in. That would be like your testimonial, FraNChiS. Testimonial, talking about what it's like to run the business and what it's done to change their life and improve their life. And they get to go see their kids every night now and whereas before they didn't or whatever that story is. And so I think that's your biggest play. And we've had the benefit of working with a bunch of different brands in different sort of capacities and some have a bit more money to invest in that sort of thing. And some have a little less. And so we work with them to go like, okay, based on your budget and where you're at and what you have to spend, what is your best play? And let's do something smaller right now and get you what you need right now. And then in six months, a year when you've sort of grown a little bit, then we can talk again about what the next set of assets is to grow even further. And it doesn't have to be an all or one. And we can definitely, we like to fit with what you need, not off of our shelf buy something off of our shelf kind. Of thing. Yeah. I mean, I can safely say that one thing that is incredible to let y'all's work is it doesn't matter if you're working with a plumbing brand or you're working with an attorney or some type of healthcare hospital system. The work that you guys do is super unique to the brand itself. It's never because. These brand and companies is unique. So tell their story. Don't tell. Exactly. A generic. Story. Exactly. That makes a lot of sense. Alright, so we talked about the ideation part, coming up with the concept and storyboarding and the discovery questions that lead to that process. Let's talk a little bit about the actual execution. Amen. You're on. It's so fun. Okay. Being on set. So fun. First of all, they have Twizzlers. Like the candy. Yeah. Is that your favorite coffee? It's all. Good. What about M and msms? Do they have M and msm? I like a peanut m and m. Oh man, I'm a plain guy. I'm guy. I need a little crunch in there. Okay. All. So they got Twizzlers being on set, but I mean seriously, these are typically really big productions. Yeah, we do it. Typically we have our own internal studios crew, and then when we go big with doing some brand awareness commercials and stuff like that, we go out and hire the right talent in specific roles to fill those roles. Like a director of photography that is right for that story, or an art director that's really going to set the scene and put props there and make it look right. And. So you mentioned actors. Any notable, anybody that I would know? I mean, casting is easily one of my favorite parts. It's an exhaustive process because we go through thousands of submissions, but in some cases you a submission like Eric Roberts who's. Julia Roberts brother. Yeah, he was in the Batman, right? Recently. Yeah, Chris Nolan's Batman. Yeah. Yeah. Mom, can you see us? She's precious. Oh baby. He had, funnily enough, we had worked on several different projects and he had submitted as an actor for it, and I thought it was like something was wrong or he had submitted for the wrong thing and it was a mistake or whatever. So we sort of just glossed over it like this. Wait a second. When you say submitted, so how does that process work? We put out a breakdown to the talent pool in Los Angeles, which is a big talent pool. And there's a lot of great talent and people will submit their tapes to us. So it's just like you're putting out the theme of the commercial. This is, we. Put what the sides are, which are what the dialogue lines are so that they have something to say, try it out. And this is the casting process and we will look at you from a variety of different facets and stuff like that from the look to how you read on camera. To Oh wow, okay. Your. Chemistry and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, it's a lot. I. Do work here, by the way, but I had no idea. That's super cool. The next casting, I'm going to send you a link. I want to check that out. You, you're. Going to see a lot of different variances of the same dialogue, which is a fun process. So you're putting this out and then Eric Roberts responds basically he applies basically. Yeah. Essentially he applies for the job, so to speak, through a performance. And I thought it. Was joke. The guy guy, that's all Batman is like, that's so cool. He's. Such a. Sweetheart. Wait, who is this for? Which. Brand? That was for, Ooh, I think that might've been originally for Ben Franklin. And then we did another one for Sparky. Was this recently? This was 18 months ago or something like that. Okay. And so he submitted again and I was like, God, it's not a joke. He's actually submitting for this. And I asked a producer and cast. Director, is it him doing it or is his agent doing. It? It's him. He's on camera. Submitting. Oh. Wow. We're doing a performance of this thing that we wrote. Still have that. Yeah, for. Sure. I'm going to. Send that to me. I will. Alright. And so I reached out to the casting director and I said, is this for real? Is he actually interested in the role or is he just messing with us? Right, right. And she reached out to his talent manager and they're like, oh yeah, he's interested in if he's right for the part, he wants to do it. And I. Was like, that's so cool. So I reached out to the brand and I was like, Hey listen, so we have the opportunity to get Eric Roberts in our spot. And they're like, what? Is that even possible? We're like, yeah, he wants to be spot. And they're like, yes, let's get Eric Roberts. We hired Eric Roberts and he came and played in our little sandbox for the day and it was. That's so cool. I don't think I've ever seen that one. He's. A gentleman and a sweetheart, and he was just so willing to play with whatever our scene was and act along with us. And I got to direct Eric Roberts, who was also directed by Chris Nolan. And so. Yeah, just Chris Nolan, yeah. Only directed some of the best movies of the last 25, 30 years. But the other cool part about it is our client who hired us, Mr. Bergie, they got to come out for the shoot, obviously in Los Angeles and get to be on set with Eric Roberts and hear his stories of Hollywood. Wait. Was it Sparky or Franklin? That was Sparky. That was Sparky. Yeah. He originally submitted for Franklin, and we were like, this has to be a joke. Oh, okay. So it was different brands he submitted for? Yeah. Oh, wow, okay. Thought he submitted two different pieces for the Wow. Okay. Wow. And then he came back for sparking, and I was like, is this. A joke? What's really happening. Right now? Okay, got it, got it, got it. So they got to be on set with him and hear some really cool Hollywood stories and sort of get that Hollywood magic thing, and that was a lot of fun for them. Is that. Stressful day when you're actually out there shooting? I mean, because look, you're, at the end of the day, it is a creative endeavor, and I'm sure there's a lot of fun for people like you that thrive on that in those environments. But at the same time, you're on a budget, you're on a timeline, you got a product to deliver. Is that stressful? I wouldn't say it's stressful. If I be. Stressed. Little problems come up that get resolved kind of thing throughout it. And some of it's creative problems and some of it's logistical problems. We have a fantastic producer, Kim, just, I don't even have to think about it. She just makes things happen and problems don't even come to me. They're just solved kind of thing. That's awesome. She's fantastic. But you do run into creative problems and you just solve those in the moment. And that's sort of part of the fun of the magic of creating something out of nothing is you get the opportunity to make something that's never been. And some of it comes with it. There's no playbook for something that's never been sometimes, and so you just have to be in the moment and create it. I wouldn't say it's stressful. A lot of the prep work happens before you even show up on set. You know what I mean? A lot of that creative work is already done. And so it's just. People come in and they're just doing their Their dig. Yeah, it's showing up and capturing everything that you've created thus far in the sort of ethereal. Space. Most of these things one day, two day, three day. How does that typically. Work? Depends on how many spots that you want. Got it. Sometimes we can get two spots in a day, two 32nd spots in a day, depending on the creative. Sometimes it's one spot over two days or sometimes it's a variety of things. Yeah. What about, okay, so you've got that process. I mean, still fast that Eric Roberts thing is really cool, but you put out the brief. You get people coming in, applying for the roles. You got to go through the whole kind of pre-production piece. Then you get everybody to get the customer to come out and they're on set. And it's a really cool experience. That part's done. Then there's more work for you and your team afterwards. You got to take all that footage and those reels and you actually have to piece it together and formulate the story That becomes the end product. What's that process like and how long does that typically take? That's a lot of fun. That's a lot of fun as part of the process too, because now you've got all this raw material that you of things with, to be honest. And if you've done your prep work and your creative work, it varies as far as time goes. But typically we have a watch through of all the footage and so that we can sort of calibrate our minds about what we have and what we don't have. And then go through that with the editor. And I like that take, I don't like that take. I like that take, Ooh, I like what he did there. And sort of start to formulate what are those moments that really make it memorable? What are those moments that are really going to heighten that brand awareness and that identity kind of thing. And then the editor goes off and he starts pulling all this stuff together and piecing it all together and we'll put together a rough cut and okay, let's tweak these dials and let's tweak those dials. And that's part of the fun of it is. At what point are you starting to share that with the customer? Do you try to get to a point where it's done, done, or are you giving them peaks along the way, getting feedback? What's that process typically like? Or does it. Then Varies. Varies. It varies, but most of the time I would say that I like to get it to a point where I feel as the person who had the idea created the idea, came up with something out of nothing, I have a good of gauge of what is going to be the thing that's going to be effective communication for that thing. And so let me craft it how I see it, and then let me show it to you. Got it. If you have notes beyond that, that's not right for the brand or this and that, we can have that discussion, but let me get it to a point where I feel happy with it and I'm going to put that in front of you. And most of the time, because of all the creative work that we've done together, that I'm. Feel pretty. Good. Yeah. Then they're pretty good. Oh yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. Tweak this, tweak that. I don't like the way that she said that or whatever, small things, but most of the time we're 95% there. Okay. Got it. That makes sense. That makes. Sense. Yeah. Because of all, again, all that prep work is done. And I guess if they were there on set shooting the day of, they know. Exactly. Exactly. So they're just trusting you to do your thing at that point. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And those notes are made too on set of like, Ooh, we actually can't say that because legally X, Y, and Z. So then we make a note and we have a script supervisor who makes a note. Don't use that take. Don't use that take, use this take kind of a thing. Got. It. Got it. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. That's been a lot of fun. You guys do great work. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's awesome having an asset like you guys on our team. Sometimes I think companies get into a situation where they offer solutions that are too far outside of what they're just naturally good at. Everybody I think knows us primarily for the work that we do in digital, but to have you guys as an asset and the work that you guys do that just makes the digital component, makes it perform even better, but also is a very differentiated solution that, again, I don't think there are many companies out there And you guys just do a phenomenal job, man. So we've. Got a great team of artists and storytellers that are love doing this and this is what we sort of live for it and breathe for. It is like telling stories. And for me personally, to be able to go tell a story of a business and help that business improve and then sort of the ripple effect of that, and their employees do better and you can give them more better salaries and then their families do better and their community does better. And all that ripple effect is what gets me up in the morning. That's powerful. That's powerful. Well, we're going to put links to where you can quickly access the videos that we talked about today and just all the other great work that you guys do. And if people are interested, reach out to us at Scorpion. We'd love to connect you with you and Tyler, connect them with you and Tyler, talk about how we can make an impact for their business with video and through storytelling in that medium. And then also all the other audio things we talked about as well. Photography, don't forget photography. Photography. That's right. Video, audio, photography. We got you covered. Tobin. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. It's been awesome. Yeah.