Digital Horizons
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Digital Horizons
Unlocking Edutainment: Transforming Boring Topics into Engaging Stories
What happens when entertainment meets education in a seamless dance? You'll find out as we unravel the magic of edutainment, a realm where even the driest subjects transform into engaging stories. We kick things off with a deeply personal tale of overcoming confidence hurdles and how mastering the art of presentation can be a game-changer in content creation. From personal trainers making waves on TikTok with engaging nutrition tips to the innovative ways educational content is reshaping digital marketing and accounting, we explore the limitless possibilities of marrying fun with learning.
Join us as we spotlight TikTok's Adam Sullivan, a creator who brilliantly fuses humor with fitness advice, proving that education doesn't have to be boring. With the help of tools like ChatGPT, we unlock creative strategies to keep audiences hooked, including series formats, quick cuts, and interactive segments. Consistency is key, and we share how maintaining a distinct content style can build anticipation and loyalty among followers. Whether you're in law, fitness, or any field that could use a spark, this episode is packed with practical tips to elevate your content strategy and captivate your audience.
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director WHD
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
It's just getting so much more reach because people were interested in that brand and then getting fed out content within their feeds.
Speaker 2:It allows us to find something that's topical but relevant to what we're talking about, and to get it out quickly while it's newsworthy, all right. Welcome back to Digital Horizons version for 2025. Welcome, james.
Speaker 1:Thanks, it has been a bit of a break. You know, we were supposed to kick this off last week and I called Brian that morning and said I can't do it. And I told him there was a bunch of reasons. But the real reason was I broke my shaving thing and it slipped and took a huge gash out of my, out of my beard, and so I had to go clean shaven last week for the first time since.
Speaker 2:I can recall and I was like I'm not getting on camera to do this, like I can't do this, just didn't have the confidence to follow that through to your first recording of the year.
Speaker 1:I wasn't going to do it Like I was already a bit out of, I guess, rhythm from doing it and I was like plus have been. I looked in the mirror and I hated my face.
Speaker 2:So I was like I can't do this.
Speaker 1:Well, that makes so. We're Digital Horizons. It's the channel for business owners, entrepreneurs, e-com and Pretty much anyone else who just wants to learn how to be better at digital marketing, that's right, and I guess, marketing in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we like to test out strategies and talk about what's working for us as agency owners and what we do with our clients.
Speaker 1:So just a quick background, I guess for people who haven't watched our episode recently, is that I run a digital marketing performance agency called WHD and Brian is also the managing director of a branding agency called Nowse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So we've been doing this job of running two different agencies for many, many years now, and we like to come together and talk about what we've learned and what's working for our clients. Today, though, Edutainment. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I thought you'd stuffed your words up when you actually suggested this topic, but it comes to be an actual thing and, from doing more research, it's stuff that we already do. We just hadn't put a term to it.
Speaker 2:In researching this, I saw so many videos where people are like have you been living under a rock? Well, you don't know about edutainment, then you shouldn't be making content. I'm like shit, I must have missed the terminology, but it is what we suggest or do anyway in content creation. Potentially, we could do a lot more of it in our content creation for Digital Horizons, but effectively, in the most simplest terms, it's making educational content entertaining and just blending those two things together. We're going to talk about the way, but effectively, in the most simplest terms, it's making educational content entertaining and just blending those two things together. We're going to talk about the ways in which it works, how you can do it, why you should do it, and take you through some examples of people who are doing it well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I guess the main point of it is I guess when I'm on YouTube or if I'm on even TikTok, I'm there for a lot of time to learn. I'm not there as much for entertainment. If I'm on even TikTok, I'm there for a lot of time to learn. I'm not there as much for entertainment, I'm there to learn. But if it can be delivered in an entertaining way, it's going to make it much more engaging and I'm much more likely to continue watching those videos. So I think, when you're thinking about the why to do it, it's to increase your engagement rate of your content, because sometimes, like if we're working with, say, an accounting firm or a law firm or something, some of that content is not really the most entertaining or most exciting stuff. But if you can format it in a way that people will find entertaining, it's going to have much better engagement, it's going to get much better reach within the social platforms, absolutely.
Speaker 2:We'll get into examples later, but one space I see this delivered a lot is in PTs and nutrition-based video content, specifically on TikTok and Instagram Reels, where quite boring and repetitive statements around calorie intake and sugar and whatnot is being delivered by various PTs in really exciting and engaging ways so that you stick with them or you follow them, because you like the way that piece of information managed to break through your really, really low attention span. Yeah, and it helped you not only come to terms with the piece of information they're trying to impart on you, but you enjoyed it. You feel like, yeah, not only learned something, but it was fun or it was funny or it just enabled me to get to the end of the video. Yeah, sometimes that's a challenge. I'm like ready to scroll at a moment's notice.
Speaker 1:An example of that that I've been seeing that's coming up on my feed quite a bit in that health and fitness space is you get guys walking through the, say, woolworths or the shopping center, the supermarket, and they're picking up things and go, hey, did you know that you can get this? And then it shows comparative of all right. Well, there's this option or this option. This option has way less calories, more protein, whatever, and sort of just doing that as an ongoing series.
Speaker 1:So it'd be like all right, let's go into the freezer section. These are the kinds of things you can get just to have a better option in terms of your normal selection that you would get in the supermarket and stuff like that. Like it's educational, but it's also quite entertaining because it's stuff that you can relate to and it's something that you see in your article. I'm probably going to buy that now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's one channel specifically I see on TikTok. I believe his name is Adam Sullivan Adam Sullivan, and he just started introducing these over-the-top back-spinning kicks where he knocks like a piece of food out of someone's hand and pretends to be all the other PTs on the app saying you can't eat that if you're going to lose weight. And I'll go shut up, yes, and then just get into a bit of the detail. But he just structures his videos. They're usually just him at home in his kitchen talking about food and diet His $14 million kitchen he just bought the house down in Burley at the moment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's incredible. And he just sort of moses around his amazing house doing spin kicks, calling people cunnies and I just really gelled with his don't overthink it, don't overcomplicate it approach. But it was the introduction of those little gags or skits that really brought people along for the journey. Yeah, it'd be great to have him on the show at one point and see how he did it and how he introduced it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so I guess, in terms of the why I mean, we know that you want to get content that's going to be engaging and reach more people and hold their attention as well. So I think that's the reason why. So the how part, this is the part where you know now it's so much easier to do it than previously because you've got tools out there like ChatGPT, where you can put some input, some prompts, and it's probably going to give you some good ideas. But how would you go about say, if you feel, hey, I'm just in a boring industry, no one really gives a shit about what I've got to say? How would you go about trying to think of something creative that is going to capture people's attention in an education, entertainment style, edutainment style format?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can seem quite daunting thinking all of a sudden I have to create like a funny skit show as well as being on camera. I think pulling it back to some bare essentials to make your educational content a little bit more thrilling and engaging. To make your educational content a little bit more thrilling and engaging, you've done a list on ChatGPT of well, what are some things you can introduce to your videos to do this. Some that I've seen that we could start introducing or that have gotten people a lot of success is fake interview style skits where you just interview yourself as two different characters fast or engaging cuts, engaging backgrounds or sound effects or motion to your videos. One thing we do on Digital Horizons that is edutainment is taking our longer format videos and cutting them into five to seven short format 40 to 90-second videos with lots of overlays, lots of sound effects and a few more fast cuts to make those the most engaging hooks to pull people in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, definitely. So I think it's the format of how you're going to edit out your video is going to keep people engaged. And then, I guess, the types of content, and I think by doing series as well, people start getting familiar with that type of thing, so they're looking for, all right, what's the next one? And I did a quick and we're going to share some of the prompts that we use to generate some of these responses, because, I mean, it's just made it so easy to be able to come up with some really good ideas and, from doing this exercise, even for our own research, found stuff that we're going to actually implement ourself on our own digital marketing strategies. So, for example, I, for example, and one great example that's come up here of an idea is would you click series? So doing mock-ups of some pretty out there or average or really badly designed ads and having people vote on whether they would click on the ad or not and then having questions as to why.
Speaker 1:Stuff like that is such a simple idea, but that, to me, is something that, from our industry and also, potentially, people who are looking to engage our services, would be something that they would find entertaining and educational, absolutely. Another one that's come up here and this is in the accounting side is having a would you claim it series. So we know that accountants are always going to be given a whole bunch of random stuff that is maybe borderline, not okay to claim.
Speaker 1:So having a list of things that they're getting sent through in terms of receipts and stuff that maybe they could share, and go, hey look, is this something you'd claim or not? And then going through the explanation as to if it was or wasn't, because I'm sure there's also going to be some things in there that people have no idea that they couldn't claim or that they could be claiming that they currently aren't, and so having a would you claim it series, I think for myself as a business owner very educational, but also it could be entertaining as well if it was done correctly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially if I'm already imagining a big green stamp of claimed or a big red stamp of rejected or something after each one 100% and just, I guess.
Speaker 1:another example, final one which again from this very quick prompt that I put through into ChatGPT, was one around spot the error. And so having a challenge around spot the error and putting up, say, a profit and loss statement or an invoice and some common errors that the accountants are seeing within their client's basis profit and loss and invoices Because as a potential customer, they might say, hey, look, that's something that's currently on my invoice. That's a mistake, I should be getting that shit fixed up.
Speaker 2:And so it's still again educating people and entertaining in the same space those series can help you set something in place that you don't have to think about a new approach every single week when you're producing content. Our brand news section it's entertaining. We enjoy it because we get to research something, we get a hot take or a fast take on something that's happening in the advertising or media landscape, and overlays of the content or the detail can be put up on screen to make sure we get to the point sooner.
Speaker 1:And they just get so much more reach than our normal content, mostly because it's aligning with other brands, right? So we'll do a segment on, say, adidas' AI video or rebrand of Jaguar and those videos because of the brand in the content. It's just getting so much more reach because people were interested in that brand and then getting fed our content within their feeds.
Speaker 2:It allows us to find something that's topical but relevant to what we're talking about and to get it out quickly while it's newsworthy, yes. The other thing I guess tip to add to that is, if you're doing educational content and you're trying to keep it fast paced and but still have people absorb these things, use data visualizations overlaid to support the information being spoken about. So if I'm talking about a graph or I'm talking about a study, have them pop up on screen to support the conversation rather than having to stop and talk through every little bit. You know, in 1999, it went from 10% to 20% to Just showing that on screen, so you can just get through the content and keep the video entertaining and exciting, can support in those moments, especially in the would you claim it or not, you can just sort of put overlays of the tax rules on top rather than stopping and reading it out.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 1:So what we've done is we've put a very quick prompt into ChatGPT, which has given us a bunch of really good ideas, which you know as well.
Speaker 1:Some of them I'd use from the start, but then also you can delve deeper into it because, firstly, it's giving us different types in terms of by headings, so it's giving interactive content ideas, educational posts with a twist, long form content ideas, trending content, adaptations so it's breaking it down by different styles, but then given a bunch of different ideas within each of those different ones, and then you could then ask it, prompt it, to then provide more ones in the format that you really like. So we will put this in the caption, but I guess, just for an example as to what we've put on here, give me an edutainment content idea for a digital marketing agency that specializes in performance marketing for e-commerce, so very specific. So we're talking about who we are, our current client base that we're trying to target, and also our services or what it is that we do for them, so that way, it can then work out what the content is that needs to be put together that's going to fit for that audience.
Speaker 2:I would like to have a crack right now at doing a little skit where I interview myself for 10 seconds and jump between the seats to see if this is even easier to do. You reckon we could do that? I'm just willing to watch it.
Speaker 1:It's my own entertainment, really, All right let's give it a go.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do the one I see on punters' politics, which always keeps me entertained. Okay, I'll keep it short and maybe it could be the intro, and only in one take as well.
Speaker 1:So we're only going to let this happen for one take so we'll see how this goes, and we will play whatever comes out of this.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to need your seat too, so I'm going to jump between seats Okay.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't want to record any videos because no one likes them and they're really, really boring and I've got a lot to say and it's really important. Why don't you just use edutainment? It's way more engaging. People love it, they'll get to the end of your videos and it's not that hard to do. Edutainment what's that? Edutainment to me sounds like a made up word. Well, it's not. Most advertisers or content producers are using edutainment to cut through and retain their audiences. Use this to make your boring educational content way more entertaining, and we've got heaps of tips and really exciting ways that you can introduce it to your content marketing. Now, whoa, thanks other guy in the skit. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, that was definitely a first for Visceral Horizons.
Speaker 2:It's going to be interesting to see how that turns out. Yeah, this might just hit the cutting room floor.
Speaker 1:It didn't feel very I love that you were like, knowing that it was going to be edited.
Speaker 2:You ran from your seat like people were going to be waiting.
Speaker 1:I wish we had the full thing of just watching you run back and forth from seats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I'm sure we'll see some of that edited in as well. Yeah, all it in as well, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, that's good. Thanks for joining us today. For Digital Horizons, we've been really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. And for 2025. We've got a whole bunch of new content lined up. For this year, we are going to be focusing a lot more on bringing, I guess, some more industry expert guests outside of the two of us to also add different opinions and different, I guess, perspectives to the digital marketing industry and also for what's upcoming in sort of AI tech tools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this year. We've got a lot of exciting things on the horizon and it's going to enrich the stuff that's working really well at the moment. So you'll see more brand news tests, more tool reviews. We'll try to take that forward further and really implement them and give feedback on what worked and get great guests on the show that really, you know, enrich what we're talking about and really enrich the content of the day. Well, thanks for watching. That's Digital Horizons.