Video has now become an essential channel for marketers. Over 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube daily, videos garner more shares than text and images combined, and videos on landing pages increase conversion. Video helps you break through the clutter provides the ability to engage with your client deeply.

Consumers love video because it is easily digested and often more engaging and entertaining than the written word. Many people (65%) are visual learners, not to mention consumers can be lazy. This makes video the perfect way to tell your story. If you’re not using video as part of your marketing mix, you are missing out. 

So, here are our 5 tips to improve your video marketing today.

What Makes Great Video Marketing?

A great marketing video tells a concise and cohesive story. Create an arc when telling a story that takes your audience on a journey from the first frame to the last frame. A great video needs to bring value to the viewer. Focus on your customer and what your product does for him. A video that is focused purely on sales or branding will fall flat. There is too much noise out there for this to resonate. If you are not entertaining, educating, or otherwise engaging your audience, you may need to reevaluate your content. 

Tell a Story to Improve Your Video Marketing

Videos have emotive capabilities, which is what makes the medium so powerful. Make maximum use of that speaking to your customer’s needs and wants. 

Think about making the client say, “Hey, that’s me. I need that.”

A too overtly sales-focused video will fall flat, while if you focus on the value, you provide to your customers, that is much more likely to resonate. Put a call to action at the end of the video and a URL to capture the leads, but you must first engage them.

Everyone loves a good story. Find a way to tell yours in a way that is interesting and relevant. Talk about how you impact customers, how you make a difference, or the people behind your product. Pull back the curtain. This is a great chance to show your personality and show your company culture. Let your audience know what sets you apart and why they need you. 

Don’t be boring! You don’t need to be a master comic, but humor does work if you can find a way to do it effectively and consistently with your brand. People want to laugh and to feel enlightened. Don’t feel constrained from using humor, and don’t try to emulate what others have already done. 

Hook Them in the First 10 Seconds

Attention spans are short these days. It is said the average attention span is just 8.5 seconds. That means with all the content out there competing with your video; you have only a few seconds to convince your audience that your video is for them. Your story has to come alive very quickly so you can avoid the scroll. The viewer must understand very quickly what the video is about and that it is worth their precious time to watch it. Creating a hook is a great way to do this. 

Try piquing the viewer’s interest by asking a question. Your video must demonstrate its value to the viewer and tell them why they should watch it. It can make them laugh, address a problem they have, teach them something new, or inspire them to act. 

Target the Right Audience

Facebook is an excellent platform for distributing your content. It stands out because of the ability to be hyper-targetted in your audience. Be sure you understand who your perfect customer is before creating a video or doing any marketing! Know your basics like age, gender, and location. Then dig deeper. You can choose up to 16 “interests” to hone in on your client. 

Remember that videos autoplay on Facebook in]unless the phone is on silent mode. This means you should be mindful of telling your story in a way that works with and without sound. Some tips are to use great visuals, text descriptions, and subtitles. 

Don’t Fear Pre-Generated Content

Social proof can be compelling. Showing your happy customers who look like your viewers or share their problems using your solution is a very compelling way to build a strong video. And guess what? People love to see themselves in videos and are happy to star in your video and be your brand evangelist. Find ways to get your customers to create videos of them using your product or service or talking about how it solved their problems, and you have a home run. The bonus is they will share and share with friends, family, and on their channels. 

Optimize Your Videos for SEO

Creating a killer video that is engaging and tells your story compellingly and entertainingly is only half of the battle. You need to be sure your video gets found. There are many tactics to do this. First and foremost, you want to upload the video to your site to host on your own domain before sharing it out on other platforms.

You’ll want to enable embedding on your video to increase the chance of getting inbound links. Create a video sitemap, and be sure your descriptions are strong. This will let Google’s spiders understand what your video is about and the content. Spend the time to get this right. Be sure your video is correctly tagged with relevant keywords and that your video is explained with full descriptions and titles that are unique. All of this will help you rank. 

Facebook and YouTube both let you upload a thumbnail to sit alongside your video. This is an effective way to grab attention and prep them for the video before it starts playing. Your thumbnail should begin to tell your story while telling the viewer what to expect. Facebook is a great platform, but be sure to take advantage of their targeting to get to your perfect audience. 

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, so it is the obvious channel to share your video. Some tips are to add a great thumbnail. This could make or break the success of your video. Think of it as your book cover! This is what will attract people and get them to click. Your thumbnail should match up with the first 10 seconds of your video-, which should be your best content anyhow. Create a killer headline that is searchable and promises a solution. Don’t forget to tag!

 Optimize your content by using a CTA. It does not have to be a sale or sign up. Alternate CTA’s that may be more in keeping with your goals for the video and the video’s content might be to subscribe, follow or like, share, comment, or check out other content. 

More and more scuba divers are finding that they can create vibrant and beautiful underwater video with GoPro. GoPros are small, affordable, and simple to use. When we think of good underwater filming, we have images of expensive equipment and highly skilled videographers.

The truth is that a good diver can produce amazing underwater videos with some basic skills, a little practice, and a GoPro. Our guide reviews the basics of stabilization, settings, filters, angles, and shots, equipment, and lighting. And we’ll share some pro tips for taking your video up to epic levels.

The basics of GoPro underwater filming

GoPros have become very popular with divers, and you’ll find they set up their cameras in many ways to capture those quick and fleeting moments under the sea. Divers use pole cams, selfie poles, handles, dome ports, spear gun mounts, and other accessories to help them capture those special moments for sharing later. 

• Your GoPro

It’s easy to use your GoPro right out of the box. Just charge it up. But you should start every dive with a fully charged battery and may want to consider bringing extras. The last thing you want is to miss that epic moment as our battery dies. Keep your screen at 100% brightness at all times and set the “Auto Off” and “Screensaver” to never so your LCD screen does not go dark after 1 minute. 

 Your memory card is going to fill up quickly with high resolutions and frame rates so use a minimum of 32Gb to 64Gb memory card. This should last you for a couple of dives. On longer dives, download your files each day. 

Be sure that you understand the properties of your GoPro. Models vary in terms of waterproofing, image quality, image stabilization, settings, lighting, and more. The Hero5, Hero6, and Hero7 are all waterproof up to 33 feet, while the older models are not.

If you are using other models or exceeding 33 feet, you’ll need to use a dive housing. You may want to keep your camera in the housing even above the surface to protect it from accidents on the boat or dock.

• Resolution and Frames per second

Those just starting out should use the default settings of 1080 resolution (HD), 60 frames per second (FPS), and a wide field of view. This is easier to edit and postable on social media. You can experiment with higher resolutions as you get more experience. 

Frames per second (FPS) is the number of frames you are creating per second. The more FPS you are creating, the smoother the video and the better the result. You should be using 60 FPS for underwater. A high FPS like 120 or 240 works for fast action events like a fish feeding. Just remember that higher frame rates fill up your memory card quickly. 

• Filters

Some GoPro models do not require filters. Filters are used to bring red lighting to the film, making for better contrast and color. Red filters are used in blue water and magenta filters in green water. Avoid filters in shallow water and rely upon the natural sunlight. 

• Lighting

Low lighting can lead to dull, blue, and colorless videos. The proper lighting will bring out those vibrant colors you want to capture. Water absorbs light, starting with red, then orange, and then yellow. After passing through 15 feet of water, light loses lots of colors.

Underwater video lights will bring you the results you want in rendering your subject in vibrant colors and are highly recommended. White light from video light adds back the missing wavelengths that are absorbed by the water. 

There is a vast range of lighting options available across many price points and levels of sophistication. The key is to practice, practice, practice. Underwater lights are good for about 5 to 6 feet, depending on water visibility.

Higher lumens on lights mean better lighting. You’ll have the best result when your subject is close to the light. Experiment with different angles with your light as it will produce different results, such as more shadow, less shadow, or softer or harder light. 

• Tips for using your GoPro underwater

Your GoPro will sink fast! They are small and hard to find on the bottom of the ocean. Consider adding some type of float to avoid losing your camera and possibly your precious footage. Options are a floaty grip, floating wrist straps, or floaty casings. The simple option is to use a wrist strap without any flotation. It will still sink if it comes loose, but there is less chance of that with a strap.

When you’re swimming, the camera won’t be staying level and the right way up. Lock the orientation to avoid automatic rotation is enabled. Also, lock your screen. Even though your touch screen will not work underwater, it will work when you surface, and water or something else drops on it. Try to set up your shooting options before you get in the water. 

• Experienced divers have the edge

The best tip to getting great underwater photography is to be an experienced diver. You’ll need to have full control of your buoyancy and be able to move slowly and smoothly to get excellent footage. 

• Use a stabilizing tray

The first sign of a rooky underwater photographer is shaky footage. Remember, you are fighting buoyancy, currents and tides, and depth. It can be tough to remain stable. A useful tool is a double-handled stabilizing tray. It helps produce smooth underwater footage and gives you a point to attach lighting or arm options.

• Avoid dirty housing and lenses

Obvious, but not! Be sure to keep your camera squeaky clean. Avoid water smears and salt stains by thoroughly cleaning inside and outside of your lenses and housing after each use. Cleaning will also extend the life of your equipment.

• Shoot in the shallows

You already know that light and color disappear in the water as you go deeper. When you’re shooting with a strobeless GoPro, stay above 16 feet to retain vibrant colors. You should also strive to keep the sun at your back to help light your subject unless you are going for a silhouette.

This does not mean you should stay close to the surface. If you want to go deeper, invest in some basic lighting. One light will help when shooting close-ups, but two are better, especially for wide-angle stuff where you need to position the lights further back. 

• Try a split shot

Merge the wonder of the land and sea by capturing them in a single frame. You’ll need a dome port that will move the water away from the lens to increase the field of view if you want to create over/under imagery.

Pro Tip: Don’t get your dome wet, as it can be tough to remove a water droplet on the lens. Add to the separation by having a focal point in the foreground underwater. This can create stunning imagery and footage. 

• Capturing that epic footage

Capturing those fantastic underwater experiences will help memorialize some of your best dives. Composition, perspective, framing, and the overall subject and lighting are critical elements of any good photography. Shorten your learning curve by watching and appreciating what other leading underwater photographers are doing.

Look for all of those elements, study what they are using for settings, and then look at your videos in the same critical way. Keep a log of your shoots, capturing locations, subjects, and any techniques or settings you experimented with. Keep your distance and respect the underwater life, and try to capture the subjects and the action that make you love being underwater with your camera. 

Video is critical to your marketing efforts. It is possible to create a great professional video representing your brand well on a budget by doing it yourself or working with an agency.

If you hire a professional, you will obviously get a better result and a great representation for your brand; they will have a range of equipment that will give you more flexibility and create special effects. If you are on your own, you can still get a great result and a video that works for you if you are super clear on your audience and your message and build your video based on that. You may need to accept some compromises, but you can produce a high-quality video with some planning and practice.

Production Basics

If you’re ready to try your skill at producing a video or working with an agency to create your video, there are a few basics to consider. Nothing says “amateur” like low audio quality and poor lighting. Try to balance your vision for your video with what you are willing to spend. Sometimes less is more, and it’s better to go for crystal clear sound, great lighting, and clear imagery than to blow the budget on special effects, expensive actresses, or exotic locations.

Put quality over quantity. Keep it simple and clean, and focus on your message and your target audience. Don’t get too technical, and practice makes perfect. Remember, your video is about storytelling, so concentrate on polishing your message and your script until it’s pitch-perfect.

Affordable Equipment

You don’t need to purchase lots of pricey equipment to create a quality video. One alternative is to rent out equipment rather than buy it. This can be a significant saving and will let you test out various lenses and equipment. Camera equipment can be pricey.

Camera: Newer smartphones have excellent cameras. If you have an iPhone 6 (or similar Samsung) or later, that should be fine for producing your video. If you have the money to spend on equipment, you can get a good full-frame camera for under $1000 or a good DSLR for around $600. If you are doing action filming, a GoPro HERO is under $300.

Lighting: is critical. Poor lighting in your video is the hallmark of an amateur. You should be well lit, and don’t put the light behind you. There are several options for lighting. Let’s start with free. Natural lighting is always the best option, and the sun is free! Try to use as much natural lighting as possible. You can add more light with a table lamp or other light but be careful. If it is not fluorescent, it can cast an unnatural yellow tint on your video.

When you are recording, always face the light source, so it casts your face in the light. Lighting behind you will put you in silhouette. If you have some budget, you can get a lighting kit for a little as $29, and it can make a huge difference. Good lighting can make anyone look good! If you have a larger budget, invest in a ring light and light stand.

Sound: Many filmmakers say that poor sound automatically means a poor film. They’re not wrong! You may not notice good sound in a video, but you certainly will notice the poor sound. It will ruin your video and represent your brand poorly, so this is a place you may want to invest. A good microphone is well worth the investment. The audio in your smartphone should be fine if you are filming in a quiet room when there’s no chance of background noise or wind. Always run a soundcheck to pick up on any background noise you may not notice with the naked ear.

Most desktops or laptops don’t have good enough sound but check it out. If you have a small budget, you can get a lavalier microphone for your phone for around $79.00. They work great, especially if you are filming outdoors or are a few feet from the phone. You can also purchase a splitter so you can have two microphones for doing interviews. Avoid putting the microphone too close to your head. They pick up everything! Remember to take “room tone” no matter what sound equipment you use. Simply put, this means recording about a minute of background sound in whatever location you’re at. Trust us; you’ll thank us later when you’re editing everything together.

Tripod: Unless you’re going for a hand-held look, make sure to have a steady hand, or better yet, use a tripod when setting up shots. If you can’t get a tripod, place your camera on a block or stack of books to stabilize it. Tripods start as low as $10.00. A more expensive model will support more weight, like a DSLR or iPad, while the cheaper ones are designed for phones.

Tips for Looking Professional on a Budget

• If you’re not using a tripod, zoom out wide and hold it steady as possible. The wider the shot, the less obvious any movement will be. As an alternative, have your presenter up close to the camera.
• Frame it up! It’s a rookie mistake to position your head center frame. Your head should be positioned at the top of the frame. This will better fill out the screen.
• Try not to use a wall as the background. Look for something that adds depth. Try to find something that adds to the story and has layers. It’s perfectly fine to use items from your home or office as your backdrop.
• Set up a branded background to make a professional-looking video. You can use seamless backdrop paper in our brand colors to reinforce your brand.

Considering Costs

It is impossible to determine what a professional video would cost. A live-action video could range from $15,000 to 100,000, while animated videos can be more affordable. If you plan on working with a full-service video agency, you’ll need to provide them with a budget as a starting point. Get involved from the start in pre-production to help save money.

Remember, time is money. So limit the number of revisions you make by staying involved in the pre-production stage, so there are no surprises. The video company will be able to help identify opportunities to reduce the budget. A good video can be a substantial investment, but it should last long, represent your brand well, and convert better than a poor video.

Underwater filming is an art of its own. The best photographers are also going to be scuba divers and will have a love for underwater species. The light is very different underwater, and the equipment is different from still and topside and can be pricey. But for those who enjoy life under the sea, the opportunities for killer photography are many, and the rewards of seeing beautiful sea life perfectly rendered are amazing.

One of the most critical skills for shooting underwater is to be a very competent and stable diver. Control is everything. It takes experience to remain steady underwater and not scare away the fish you are trying to shoot or stir up the sand in sediment by touching it. Buoyancy control is critical and can even allow you to shoot upside down if that makes a better shot. 

Knowing What and Where to Shoot

Some species are very tough to film. None are particularly easy! So bring your patience. Great places to shoot are in national parks, wildlife preserves, or marine preserves. Beware as they are often protected areas and will require a permit to shoot. You’ll also need insurance for some of these areas. 

There are many subjects to shoot in nature in Caribbean waters. Get a boat, or hook up with a commercial dive operator. Remember that some species’ behavior is seasonal, like shark mating or whale migration, so do your homework. 

Special Challenges of Underwater Filming

Shooting above the water is very different from shooting underwater. Forget what you know when you go below the waterline! Think carefully about your ISO. Never assume it will be dark. Telephoto lenses will not work in underwater filming. You’ll be shooting through the thick medium of water and have light absorption, color absorption, and color diffusion. This means that most shots will require artificial light, and often even two light sources. It’s helpful to get close to your subject since the light will not travel well. 

An excellent underwater shooter will stay very close and shoot from a few inches to even 1-3 feet from your subject. This will result in the best light and color and provide the best background. 

Think of shooting underwater as shooting under a vast blue filter. Use the daylight setting to apply your white balance. The water’s clarity will vary and will impact how sharp your images might be. 

Your subject will bring unique challenges too. If you are trying to capture a school of fish, they often move quickly and will scatter. The larger species are more likely to glide. Fast shutter speeds are tough to master underwater, so that it will take practice. Keep your shutter speed as slow as you can.

Be Steady!

One of the most significant challenges of underwater filming is to hold still. As with all videos, you want to avoid shakiness in your shots. It may sound easy, but it is not! Any wobbles will be very distracting to your viewer. Holding the camera as close to your body as possible will help. 

Alternately, you may be able to use an underwater tripod. Various styles and prices will depend upon your diving and filming style. A tripod can be handy when shooting wide-angle. It’s also cool to keep the camera on your subject and sim away. This is less intimidating to the fish and can produce some great images. 

Stay on your subject longer than you think you need to. Hold for a count of 10 once your subject is in the frame, and don’t adjust your zoom. Remember, you will have some shakes and moves, so you need to get excess footage to allow for any unusable footage. You may be surprised to see that 60 seconds of footage may yield only a few usable seconds. 

Change it up

Any video is more interesting if it includes a variety of shots. Mix it up with some nice steady shots, and then some taken moving. You can pan the camera by twisting at the waist as far as you can to one side. Hit record and slowly turn your body back all the way to the other side. Don’t move your entire body with your fins, as that will cause shakiness. Each kick will cause some wobble, so try to frog-kick as you pan to get a nice long shot. 

The best way to follow a moving subject’s action is to keep it in frame with lots of headroom, so it looks like your subject has plenty of space to move. When you have caught enough of the action, stay still and let the subject swim out of the frame for a great end to the shot. 

When you are in edit, you’ll appreciate having a great variety of shots to work with. Try to get wide, medium, and closeup shots of any subject if possible. Shoot your subjects from various angles and with different lighting. A pro tip is to take images that will help weave the story together. Think about getting shots of the divers putting on gear or entering and exiting the water, some nice wide shots of the site, lots of blue water site and diver bubbles are always great. 

Shooting a wide-angle shot (scenic): Start by zooming all the way out. Keep our elbows locked and to your sides, and try to stay neutrally buoyant. Try to hold your breath to minimize shaking. If you pan a scene, do it very slowly and shoot multiple takes. 

Shooting medium shots (fish pictures): First, zoom to compose your shot. Get as close to your subject as possible. If you can, set the camera on a solid object or place your elbows in the sand to steady the camera. Hold your breath to minimize shaking if you are on the ground. Press record once the camera is steady.

Shooting closeup or macro shots: Here, you will need to have lights and will want to hide from the sun. The closer you get, the stiller your camera has to be. A tiny shake can ruin your shot.

Pro Tip: Always be sure to check your footage on a larger screen if possible. You would hate to find dust in your lens obscuring your entire shoot when you view it. 

Lighting is Key

Practice getting USD to your camera’s white balance function. With luck, you can leave it on “auto” but experiment.

Some lighting basics:

• A wide-angle at 45 feet or less requires a red filter and ambient light with manual light balance.
• For a wide-angle deeper than 45 feet, use lights and remove the red filter.
• For macro filming, lights on and no red filter. Always experiment for the best result as many things such as the water clarity and subject can change the results. 

Shooting underwater video does not have to be intimidating. It’s usually easier than shooting still images. You can let your camera run and wait for the action to happen. The keys are to keep it in focus and steady. Your post-production is also much easier and more forgiving than with still images. Underwater video is a great way to tell your story. Have a big underwater project and need an experienced team by your side? Give us a shout; we’d be happy to help.

Instagram reportedly has over a billion active users per month and 500 million daily Instagram stories. There are 130 million Instagram users in the US, and the average browsing time for a visitor is 53 minutes per day. Instagram is second to Facebook in terms of users, and there are now more than 25 billion business accounts on the platform. If you’re not using Instagram, you may be missing a significant opportunity to grow your brand, your audience and increase sales. Here we will explore some tips for creating memorable Instagram ads and campaigns. 

Will Instagram work for my business?

Instagram is an essential platform for any sized business. An active Instagram presence and consistent posting can help build your brand awareness. Instagram also now provides for e-commerce sales via their “Shop” tab on the Instagram home dock. Customers can purchase directly from you or your shoppable posts, which let you add tags to the products shown in your photos that link to the description, pricing, and a “shop now” button that links to your online store. It is reported that 72% of Instagram users have purchased products on the platform. Whether your goal is brand building, audience building, or sales, Instagram is a platform that can work for you. 

• Stories are a great way to show your audience who you are. Live stories can show behind-the-scenes peeks at your company and people, helping to build rapport and make you relatable.
• Partnering with the right influencer can give your brand a significant boost, and Instagram ads are a key to extend your reach and find new customers. You can target a lookalike audience and collect data that will help you collect data that will be usable on other platforms. 

Create a Killer Instagram Campaign

The key to a killer campaign on any platform is to be very clear on your marketing goal and who your target audience is. There are several types of goals that can be met on Instagram. Every element of your campaign must be aligned and focused on a single specific and measurable goals. Your strategy may be the longer-term purpose of being on Instagram, and a campaign is a sprint that is shorter and more intense. Here are some types of Instagram marketing campaigns. There are several broad categories of campaigns that can be optimized for different goals and tactics. 

•  Awareness campaign – Instagram is an excellent platform for increasing your brand’s visibility with new audiences. Think about using it to showcase new products and show what is exciting and different about your brand. 
• Sale or promotion – Instagram can be a powerful place to run sales or promotions with special discounts or offers for your followers. Provide a unique discount code just for your followers. Holidays and certain times of year are a great time are an excellent opportunity to run flash sales-driving pre-sales before a launch or to move seasonal inventory.
• Drive engagement – There are many ways to run contests that will support your goals. For example, if your goal is to expand your reach, the contest would ask users to tag a friend, and asking them to enter through a form will grow your email list. 
• Product launch – If you’re launching a new product, create camping to build anticipation and excitement. You can show off the benefits and value of the product. 
• User-Generated Content – User-generated content provides social proof that can make your product soar. You can have them showing how your product is used and what it meant to them. Create a unique hashtag to tie the campaign together. Use compelling content in other campaigns, as users love to see their content used by a brand. 

Top Instagram Tips

Here are some tips to help you optimize your use of Instagram. 

• Use the tools created for business users: The tools are much like those on Facebook. Insights will let you view impressions, engagement data, and a breakdown of user demographics like age, gender, location, or active hours. Use this data to perfect your Instagram campaigns and to help you target other platforms. This provides the best view of how users are interacting with your content. 
• Create sponsored ads: Ads have become quite prevalent on Instagram. You can promote just one ad or multiple ads using the carousel format. You can promote beyond your audience to a similar audience to increase the reach of your ads. Use ads that are engaging to your target or use your best posts in the form of an ad. There are several forms of sponsored ads, including photos, video, carousel or dynamic ads, Stories or Stories Canvas. 
• Use Instagram Stories: Instagram Stories can be very useful in lead generation. They come in a slideshow format that shows for 24 hours. A user clicks on it to view. They are displayed at the top of a user’s timeline, where a user will look first. Experiment with various formats like photo, video, live video, or Boomerangs. Use a Boomerang that plays on a loop. You can have unlimited Stories at any time. 
• Develop an interactive, branded hashtag: Interactive hashtags are a great way to encourage engagement. Customers can use that tag to post their own user-generated content. Users can then search through all posts relating to your brand. Hashtags are free, and every time it is used, your brand is being exposed. Consider using your slogan or tagline if you have one. 
• Think about when you are posting: Over-posting can turn off your audience and can make them unfollow you. You must post consistently so you can stay in their newsfeed. Try to post only on peak days and times. You can find this info in your analysis. Typically, Mondays and Thursdays are the best days, and Wednesdays and Sundays are the worst but check your brand’s data. Mornings from 8-9 are typically a great time to post. Use a scheduling tool to set these post times up.
• Track the metrics that matter to your brand and goals: You can only improve your campaigns when you understand their performance. Measurable results will tell you what is working and what isn’t. There are three key metrics that you should analyze. The number of followers is often considered a vanity metric. It is, but the growth rate is important. That growth rate will tell you if the content you are posting and your time you’re posting at is right for you. Next, average engagement is important. Look t the average engagement percentage of total followers and average engagement of each post to see how your page performs. Finally, look at your CTR, which will tell you how many people are clicking through to your site. The average CTR on Instagram is .94%. Work on improving this critical metric. 
• Cross-promote your posts to build synergy: To get a good start on building your Instagram followers. If you are engaging through Twitter, Facebook, or even email, encourage your followers to check out your Instagram content. You can share some of your Instagram posts on the other platforms as well. Facebook owns Instagram, so Instagram, so cross-posts to Facebook do well. 
•  Honor and express your brand consistently: As on any social media platform, have a strategy and a brand personality. Avoid random posts. Try to show a personality that resonates with your audience. Use images, colors, and fonts tied to your brand, and avoid anything that is off-brand. You want your followers to associate certain characteristics with your brand. 

Instagram is the place to go for image sharing, and you should do what you can to capture some of that vast marketing opportunity. Take advantage of the free tools, use the platform’s features, and be consistent in using Instagram to grow your audience and make sales. Not sure where you want to start with your social platforms? C&I has the expertise to get you the viewership you’re seeking. Give us a holler and let’s make you a social superstar.

Shooting underwater video is the perfect way to share your underwater world with your friends and social community. If you follow a few basics, you can bring the peace and calm and vibrant, and colorful life of the underwater world to those who will never venture underwater.

Make your underwater video engaging and entertaining by keeping it short and interesting. Your friends won’t want to watch your entire dive, trust us!. But they will love seeing the highlights and a well-edited look at the wonder of down under. For social media, a 30 to the 90-second video can be the maximum of your audience’s attention span, so keep it concise and focused and your shots well chosen and edited. 

A prerequisite for good underwater filming is that you are a strong and experienced diver. Remember, you’ll be fighting with buoyancy, currents, tides, and other factors before you even begin to shoot. Maintaining stability is always one of the biggest challenges, and you’ll need some scuba skills to manage them and create a smooth and flowing video. Bring a tripod for additional stability for those macro shots. 

You’ll need to bring all of your fundamental photography skills to your dive. Composition, framing, perspective, lighting, and subject all must converge to help you share your underwater experience compellingly and entertainingly. Don’t be overwhelmed trying to think about all the things! Like any new skill, underwater photography takes discipline and practice. 

Learn from the best

Study other great underwater videos that appeal to you. Look at their technique and how they frame up subjects similar to the ones you’ll be shooting. If they share settings and other techniques, read them carefully and read any accompanying notes or articles. Watch the Discovery Channel and other nature shows, and watch YouTube videos in that space. 

Search for underwater organizations like Mare Group, Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, and others dedicated to marine life preservation. These organizations will help you understand and appreciate what you are shooting and may change your perspective about life under the waterline. 

Preparation

Before you head out, be sure your batteries are charged and that you have plenty of memory space- bring an extra.

Give some thought to what kind of story you’ll want to tell before you hit the water. You may want to follow one animal or a couple of species of the same order or tell the story of your dive. Try to get some close shots, try to shoot upwards, and go for a little bit of movement and various images. Try panning horizontally and vertically, or flyovers of your subject. Mix up wide, medium angle, and close-ups. And keep it steady. You will get movement, so shoot extra footage to net out with the usable footage you need. 

Filming

Pro-tip #1 – Always shoot more video than you think you’ll need. Memory space is cheap, and this will help you catch those unexpected and serendipitous moments and provide lots to work within the editing room. Shoot some transitional shots, too, like divers entering the water or preparing for the dive, to help bring our audience along. This pre-roll and post-roll will be super helpful.

When you are shooting the action, don’t rush. Let the fish exit the frame on their own time. Let that camera run and see what happens. Move slowly, and hold your shots as the marine life moves around you. Resist the urge to chase the action. 

Try to get various shots and angles to create a video that maintains interest and adds drama. Go for long and slow shots to bring your audience in on the tranquility and flow of underwater life. Pull in close to subjects that are incredibly vivid in color. Take wide shots to establish some context for the video.

You must understand how light behaves underwater. The water absorbs color and light with distance, and you must use lighting to account for that. Using the correct filters will help bring all the colors you’re seeing to life on your video and adjust for the blue or green water. Shallow water shooting can bring plenty of natural light. Just be sure you try to keep the sun at our back unless you are going for a silhouette shot, which can also be interesting. 

Lighting

Since much of the good stuff happens in deep water, you’ll need proper lighting to overcome visibility issues. Good quality wide-angle video lights will do wonders for your video. 

The Sea Life

It’s a privilege to share the zen-like calm of the underwater world with its inhabitants. The more you know about your subjects and their habits, the more compelling your underwater stories will be.

 Here are some favorite sea creatures of underwater filmmakers. Your subjects will, of course, depend upon your location and the time of year.

Seahorses are great sea creatures to film underwater. They live in shallow waters amidst weeds and algae, so they can be hard to spot. These little guys move by beating their dorsal fin 30 to 70 times per second.

Reef fish are a photographer’s favorite. You’ll find a great variety of these amidst the reefs and can often catch many in one frame or shot. They are a great representation of the diversity of a reef ecosystem. Keep an eye out for butterflyfish, damselfish, triggerfish, angelfish, gobies, scorpionfish, and frogfish. Reef fish are the stuff those amazing aquariums are made of. 

Crab can be fun to film. You may even find them in tidal pools. The larger ones are exciting subjects in underwater videos. They can have an enormous leg span and are the largest crustaceans in the world.

An incredible dive adventure is swimming with the sea turtles. They live in the open ocean, and some of them are surprisingly fast. Be responsible when filming turtles as most species are endangered and research them before you go, so you know their habits. 

Whale sharks are not as scary as they sound. They are incredibly docile and great diving partners. They look slow but are actually very fast and make for fantastic video footage. Try slowing it down in edit and adding some calm music. 

Octopi like to hide from you behind the rocks but are extremely photogenic for your underwater video. They are graceful and mesmerizing, but take care- some are poisonous.

Editing

In post-production, edit carefully. Try to stitch together a story. Group together with the shots you want to keep and start building your story. Keep it concise with smooth transitions, some context establishing wide shots, some macro detail, and some cutaways to end the story. Let the marine life set its pace and make its exit from the frames. Don’t forget some sots of empty blue water or diver bubbles. They work great in the credits section!

Don’t forget to take advantage of effects like music, titles, and fade-ins and fade-outs. They will all bring professionalism and interest to your video. If you’re stuck for music, check out YouTube’s audio library for free downloads. 

Creating underwater videos can be fascinating and rewarding. Take your time and practice. Learn from the best. And start sharing your underwater adventures with your friends and community.

Running a Successful Connected TV (CTV) Campaign

If you have not integrated connected TV (or CTV) into your marketing mix, you are behind the power curve. Connected TV is taken over the digital advertising world and shows no signs of slowing up. It is expected that by 2022 over 204.1 million viewers will be watching connected TV programming.

CTV is any TV that can be connected to the internet and can stream digital content at the viewer’s convenience. CTV can be viewed as a subset of over-the-top (OTT), which includes applications and services that don’t require subscriptions to traditional pay-TV or cable services. 

TV advertising is great for telling a longer story more visually. Think of CTV as an extension of that, in that you are showing the ad to a highly targeted audience group. And, format matters. They see your message on a full-size screen in a comfortable and familiar environment. Why would you not use CTV?

• Why you need CTV in your marketing mix nowHere are our top reasons that you should!

Affordability

Connected TV is the screen where the most digital impressions are shown- even surpassing mobile. A CTV ad can be purchased at a much more reasonable price per CPM, and as you take advantage of targeting insight, it becomes more and more efficient. 

Exceptional Targeting Capabilities

Extraordinary targeting abilities provide better audience efficiency and reduce media waster and the worry of reaching irrelevant viewers and households. Some examples of targeting capabilities:

• 1-st party audiences such as visitors to your home page or past purchasers.
• Lookalike audiences to target households that look just like your most valuable customers.
• Segments to target households on traits like age, gender income, kids, vacationers, or shopping intent.

Retargeting

In addition to great targeting for your prospecting campaigns, you can step it up a notch. CTV allows for high;y relevant retargeting campaigns. A viewer sees your CTV ad on TV at home. You can then retarget them across their other devices, such as laptops, to present a tremendous cross-device approach that follows and facilitates the buyer journey.

Real-time measurement

How many times have you seen the analysis of a campaign only after it is completed? You may wait weeks or months- when there is nothing to be done about the results. CTV allows you to track and measure digital metrics, video completion rates, and offline impact like store traffic. This will enable you to adjust and optimize as you go.

Holistic Campaigns

CTV can be very effective on outs own, but you can take it to a new level when you integrate it into a full media mix. To capture your audience wherever they are online, leverage your native display and video with your CTV for a homerun. IT is reported that over 70% of adults browse their phone or tablet while watching TV.

Catching them in this second screen behavior is meeting them where they are. Remember, the TV screen is non-click. Let’s move them over to an actionable device. 

Brand Building

You may not be at Super Bowl level of ad spend, but you can get that brand enhancement by making yourself present in the viewing experience. Get your highly viewable, non-skippable ads in from of your engaged audience, and you’ll see the best ad performance of your life. 

Best practices to take your CTV advertising up a notch.

CTV continues to evolve and grow, and many agencies and pros are struggling to create the next best strategy. Here are three strategies that we are seeing on the net and seem to be irrefutable. 

• We live in sensory overload. There is no doubt. The minute a show ends, the viewer is scanning his phone or laptop. Our goal as advertisers to get our message heard. This calls for a blended CTV/ Connected TV approach with other supporting ad channels in a carefully thought out way. We best do this by leveraging multiple platforms and devices but avoiding the heavy-handedness of being too intrusive. The timing must be perfect, and the messaging must be nuanced and remain relevant to the buyer’s journey. We want to be subtle and seem fluid, like a sequential story being told. Being spammy or too repetitive will not yield the success we want. 
• Be studied about the timing and pacing of your campaign. Again, start at the beginning. What metric are we chasing, and what do we want to spend to get there? For this, we test, test, and test some more. We use intuition and common sense to think about dinner time, drive time, etc. Use what you know about your customers and their behaviors. Equally important as the time of day is pacing. Make it smooth, and space it out to avoid breaking the back only a few days into the campaign. Start slowly and only increase your spending when you have the data to convince you to do so. Set some intermediary points to evaluate the campaign, the spend, and the timing. 
• Don’t overlook the value of a lookalike audience. We all know what declining attention spans mean. Even the hottest and stickiest ad will fatigue when running against the same audience. Use the data you’ve gleaned from your campaign’s success and construct a lookalike campaign to replicate your success with the first group and expand your reach. 

Turning viewers into customers

IF you are ready to get real measurable ROI from your TV ads, you need CTV. Marketers can focus their ads on audiences they know will connect with their messaging. They can track site visits, conversions, and other critical metrics directly back to CTV the campaign. 

CTV campaigns are perfect for driving site visits and conversions. The combination of ads across various channels makes the message stick and feel authentic. Your message is kept top of mind across and multiple devices, platforms. A winning combination of CTV and display ads will drive the brand familiarity and trust that translates into conversions. 

Measurement of CTV

Proper measurement of your CTV campaign will quickly show its value over linear TV when done correctly. 

Here are some do’s and don’t for beginners.

• Start by remembering that you can not measure CTV in the same way linear TV is measured. Linear TV measurement is abstract and does not provide statistical modeling. We are working with best guesses. 
• CTV functions as a simple digital programmatic ad but with a commercial vs. a banner ad. It uses a digital measure that offers precise details. 
• Finally, the expectations must be to view the whole customer journey, track conversions and activity in 3rd part analytics solutions. 

Correct CTV measurement releases a leave of insight that is not available with linear TV. You’ll know how many people saw the ads, how many watched the complete ad, and how many dropped out before the ad finished. 

More tracking kicks in after the ad runs. We then can drill into other channels, paid search, social performance other devices visited. Ongoing monitoring of the site reveals visitors originating from the campaign and follows through with actual performance and sales activity. Attribution is key and a big part of the puzzle when understanding the powerhouse that CTV is part of your total marketing mix. 

3 Keys to Successful CTV Advertising

Executing a successful CTV campaign has many more moving parts than a traditional TV, but the rewards are many! Day parts sell traditional or linear TV. In contrast, OTT or CTV is usually sold on an addressable basis, meaning you’re buying specific factors like demos, interest, or previous purchase behavior.

• That decision of what you want your audience to look like is critical. Before making any decisions, you’ll need to drill down on the goals for this specific campaign. Are you building the brand, introducing a new product, or targeting an increase in sales or site visits. You must define this very clearly. 
• The next step is to evaluate the digital platforms available to you. You will probably build your audience platform by platform as each has strengths in various places of the customer journey. Give though also to incremental reach or viewers that your current ad spend is not getting to.
• Finally, context matters. Make sure your ads are running around programming that is high quality and relevant to your audience. 

By the end of 2020, more than 30% of households in the United States were streaming video content through Connected TV or CTV. That figure exceeds the number of cable TV subscribers by several million. According to a Nielsen report, total streaming TV time has increased 74 % among viewers since last year.

The study also revealed that 25 % of adults have subscriptions to multiple video streaming services. Current projections show that this trend is expected to continue with no end in sight as the number of video streaming services increases. As a result, media buyers are now allocating ad dollars once intended for linear television to CTV; the latest delivery vehicle in the realm of digital advertising.

 Making The Marketing Spend Economical and Effective

Digital marketers are following their example, with more and more of them reconfiguring budgets to accommodate more CTV channel advertising than other digital platforms. To stay relevant to consumers, brands are rapidly adapting to this new shift in the media landscape.

The need to remain flexible to maximize this latest form of advertising, is motivating advertisers to readjust their marketing strategies completely. Savvy marketers who have seen new media outlets emerge, realize that it’s only a matter of time before CTV becomes the dominant platform on which to advertise as we move further into a digital world.

Marketers across all product categories are incorporating CTV into their marketing plans due to its hyper-targeting ability, A/B testing capability, the potential for personalization, and the same measurability of metrics as found on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

Connected TV: Smart TVs And Smarter Target Audiences

The surge in CTV digital advertising results from the rising ubiquity of smart televisions with internet connectivity in American homes. While this trend was already clearly visible as smart televisions quickly became more and more affordable, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting quarantines forced the entire country to rely on their televisions or computers for entertainment.

Consequently, the number of smart TVs purchased and subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video has skyrocketed. Marketers have seen the writing on the wall and realize that CTV advertising is not only here to stay but will most likely become one of the dominant methods of marketing and promotion.

 The growing popularity of CTV advertising can be attributed to several factors. First, media buyers love the bang for the ad buck they can get due to CTV being a fraction of the cost of buying time on broadcast and even cable TV.

CTV advertising becomes even more appealing from a marketing budget standpoint because pre-existing creative assets used on other platforms can be repurposed. Spending becomes more strategic and less of a gamble than linear television and traditional cable.

 Next, the ability to target specific audiences and, to a certain extent, personalize ads means brands can create digital video advertising messages that are more likely to resonate and leave an impression on viewers.

 Finally, the testing and precise measuring capabilities of CTV advertising allow marketers to track results in real-time as consumers move through the marketing funnel.

 Anyone who streams their visual content from the internet can be targeted according to several criteria. Brands can target consumers based on their demographics, location, interests, in-market cues, or buying behaviors. With first-party data, brands can target current customers to increase loyalty or attract new customers.

It doesn’t matter which streaming service they use, which platform, which device they’re using, or when. As with other digital media platforms, by strategically applying data, advertisers can connect with the consumers they wish to target whenever and wherever they are watching.

 With the data-driven targeting of CTV, personalization of messaging to the consumer and tracking their customer journey has never been easier. This applies to repeat customers, first-time buyers, or prospects considering whether or not to transact.

 Any marketing plan which includes CTV, like all digital channels, is sure to provide invaluable data and unique, actionable insights into customer behavior along with measurable results. CTV allows for data collection across the entire funnel since it offers the targeting and measurement capabilities identical or, in some cases, superior to comparable media channels.

 Advertisers have quickly recognized that CTV advertising offers the unique benefits previously mentioned, plus the ability to identify someone who has viewed their ad on other platforms.

This allows for the retargeting of those customers across multiple devices. Different ways to measure the impressions generated by CTV include: using QR codes, foot traffic studies, brand life studies, and search demand lift studies, to name a few.

CTV enables brands to adjust their marketing strategy during the campaign using real-time creative performance measurement data. When integrated into a cross-channel marketing plan, CTV, with its audience-first angle, is a powerful complement to campaigns on other media delivery platforms. 

 Since CTV advertising seamlessly integrates with other digital programs, including social media efforts, it can supply an advertiser with data to define a brand’s entire media mix. CTV can be woven into a brand’s social campaign using the same creative across multiple devices.

This type of cross-device targeting is rapidly becoming standard practice as consumers now own numerous connected devices in addition to their smartphones and connected televisions. With access to key insights like the video completion rate and ad exposures that lead to transactions, CTV advertising can provide brands with user intelligence more definitively and precisely than linear TV ever could.

CTV viewing is expected to increase with additional content providers delivering their programming via streaming platform services based upon current trends. Furthermore, traditional TV advertising is on the wane as consumers continue to cut the cord in favor of streaming their entertainment.

As the technology develops and SMART TVs become even more sophisticated and video advertising becomes more personalized, the shift to CTV devices as the sole source of viewing content will accelerate. Marketing agencies have been waiting for the chance to focus their strategy while staying agile enough to capitalize on new opportunities among their target audience.

Much to their delight (and that of their advertiser clients), it has finally arrived as video streaming platforms become the next step in the evolution of digital video entertainment.

There has been a significant change in the past ten years in how we consume TV and entertainment. Millions of households have abandoned traditional TV watching due to the wide use of internet-powered television, or Smart TV. The programing continues to expand and improve, giving the consumer tons of affordable options to choose the type of content they prefer and when and how they want to watch it. They can stream on the big set in the living room or watch it privately on their tablet or over their phone. The options are many!

This means smart marketers have to adapt and transition to being where the viewers are. Connected TV video ads or CTV ads are a part of just about any good marketing mix today. It is challenging for traditional ads to keep pace with streaming technology, and OTT is beginning to outperform the conventional. 

What are CTV or connected TV Video Ads?

Connected TVs (or CTVs) are simply televisions that have access to the internet and can load or stream digital content. A Smart TV has an internet connection built-in, and standard TVs can be connected using smart devices like Roku, Xbox, or Playstation. The content that streams are usually video streaming via apps that have been downloaded. The content may also come from Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, or Chromecast. 

What is OTT (Over the top)?

Over the top (or OTT) is the video content shared, while CTV is the internet-connected TV. OTT stands for “over the top,” meaning the top of the “box.” It refers to video content that is accessed via the internet and not via traditional cable or satellite. Some examples of OTT providers would be Netflix, Disney+, or Peacock. 

OTT (Over the top) vs. CTV (Connected TV) – What’s the difference?

Many people use these terms interchangeably, but CTV is the method for delivering the content, or the device, while OTT is the actual content being viewed via CTV. Most OTT content is viewed via CTV. 

What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the use of software to buy distal advertising. It used artificial intelligence and algorithms to purchase display space. An advertiser would not be able to efficiently choose each channel, site, and app for ad placement. So space is bought through DSPs or Demand Side Platforms that have partnerships across many sites. They use automation and artificial intelligence to bid, buy and place media efficiently. Google display ads work similarly. Google reached up to 70% of all sites out there through their network. 

OTT advertising vs. traditional cable or satellite advertising- what’ the difference?

Every marketer struggles with where their ad spends will work best for them. Video consumption is steeply rising, and we want to get our ads in front of those viewers, right? But how do we best achieve that? Marketers have relied on TV for many years, but with the shift in viewership to online-connected devices, programmatic OTT ads are now taking over. 

Traditional TV can be thought of as more of a shotgun approach. The stations have spots, and the advertisers buy and fill them, getting in front of whoever is watching and then hoping for the best. 

OTT ads have emerged as an option that is more efficient and focused and a much more measurable way to get in front of your audience. OTT ads offer lots more controls to ensure the messaging is airing at the optimum times for your ideal customer. Data collection provides detailed demographics, info on relevant audience segments, are in specific consumer interest categories. The ads can even be placed based on real-time bidding to get to the target audience at the right time. 

All of this technology means the brand can better control targeting, spend, timing and performance. Remember, traditional TV is shown to anyone who flips on the TV. Targeting is limited to gender, location, and age. With programmatic OTT advertising, every impression is served up to relevant audience segments. We are talking about a laser-focused campaign.  

CTV viewers are more engaged in the content they view and usually can’t fast forward through the ads. That’s a good thing. But also, it is a responsibility to produce appropriate and engaging advertising. From a cost perspective, CTV advertising helps reach audiences efficiently and at a much lower cost than traditional advertising. 

CTV ads are viewed all the way through, with an average completion rate of 98%. They run full screen, meaning no “below the fold ” issues that other digital opportunities may present. You can also retarget your OTT and CTV viewers across multiple devices, including laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. This keeps your message top of mind through the decision-making process. 

How does OTT targeting work? Personalization comes from “listening” to cues and sending messages to our segment, income range, zip code, ethnicity, and education level. They will also target interest categories, which is enormous for a marketer. They can target our ideal “avatar” or “persona,” bringing a level and targeting and efficiency previously unknown. 

Tracking Capabilities

Every marketer knows that tracker is everything. This sort of campaign “post-mortem” will ensure your future targeting and campaigns continue to build on learning and improvement. Some of the key metrics measured are video completion rate, the device’s performance, how consumers interact, and ad placement performance across various platforms. 

Sales or online engagement is an opportunity to drill down on the tracking to see what influenced the action taken and what calls-to-action were most effective. 

Some core metrics:

• Video completion rate
• Clicks from ad to the website
• Ad delivery by device
• Performance by the time of day
• Performance by specific days
• Ad viewer demographics. 

Content

OTT advertising is consumer-focused so that when a viewer logs into their favorite service, it is more intentional. They have chosen that platform at that time and will be more receptive to an ad. And the ads are not skippable. (This puts the burden on the marketer to make it good!) Your content must be designed for the consumer you’ve targeted, meet their personal needs, and give them an experience that feels personal and tailored for them. A random traditional TV ad can never approach this level of focus and targeting.

What is the future of traditional ad serving?

OTT subscriptions and CTV ownership continue to grow exponentially, creating a huge opportunity for marketers to reach ultra-targeted audiences across multiple devices. 

Some people have even given up traditional TV watching for all internet TV. 

In 2020, 80% of homes (or about 96 million Americans) had at least one connected TV. Americans are reported to spend more than an hour daily engaged with OTT content. 

Many believe we will see the “sunset” of traditional TV advertising in the coming years. CTV is the future of video advertising, and like Netflix, Amazon, and the other big guys produce more popular shows, more and more people are opting for the convenience of CTV. Millennials love CTV, and it is getting hard to target them on traditional TV or elsewhere. 

While conventional TV may have the ability to deliver enormous reach, CTV ads seem to be delivering the targeting and the performance. There is no doubt that OTT advertising belongs in the mix of every serious marketer. 

Leaders in the digital marketing field are building their cross-device marketing capabilities to take your audience targeting to a new level. Their focus is on intelligently connecting brands with their target audiences via connected TV (CTV) and other devices. This cross-device marketing enhances brands’ ability to reach their customers across desktop, tablet, mobile, and CTV devices. 

Cross-device marketing takes advantage of the many methods of device identification per person available and allows for real-time analytics and targeting that lets brands optimize their ad spend and target the right viewers on the right devices. This gives the viewer a holistic experience and increases the impact across multiple devices. Retargeting across different devices for a viewer can lead to more conversions. 

Clients seeing CTV ads and getting to your site on different devices

CTV advertising is at the center of cross-device marketing. According to a Facebook study, 94% of TV-watchers have their smartphone in hand as they watch TV! The power to drive the first impression through a connected TV, then retargeting the user via a separate device, is enormous. Traditional TV advertising has the goal of getting in front of as many eyeballs as possible and hoping for results. It’s almost impossible to measure results and adjust in real-time. Your campaign is often completed before changes can be made. 

CTV, along with retargeting is far more interactive, real-time, and A/B testable. You can follow the customer’s user journey with cross-device tracking, perhaps moving from CTV to laptop to a mobile device. You are meeting them where they are on their journey. A 2020 survey reports that an average American has access to more than ten connected devices in their household. Accurate, real-time cross-device marketing is vital! 

What data points are used for cross-device marketing?

Remember, buyers are not able to convert on your TV. So tracking them from when they see your ad to when they convert on your site is critical. The two main strategies for collecting data across multiple devices and tying them to an individual are probabilistic data and deterministic data.

Probabilistic data uses anonymous data points ranging from page visits to time of day and operating system used. This is complex but scalable. Deterministic data is collected based on login info for IDs, websites, and apps that link various devices. This would include logins for Hulu, Gmail, Netflix, Spotify, and more! So can we get the right message to the right person at the right time on the right device? Yes. Connected TV is at the heart of the strategy. Someone watching your CTV ads can be retarte4ed right after on one of their other devices. This takes the viewer from an unactionable CTV ad to relevant messaging on another device. You are now driving a curated experience that is moving the view along the customer journey. 

The point of advertising is to get your potential buyer interested and engaged, and then encourage them to take the action you are promoting- buy, fill out a survey, visit a site, etc. The best way to promote this is by meeting your buyer where he is on the journey. Track and target specific behaviors across devices. 

Cross-device tracking bridges the gap between CTV advertising and the retargeting that happens on another device. The tracking only retargets those who fully engaged with the TV ad, making it super-efficient. 

Cross-device tracking allows us to see a person who cycles miles per week because they log it on their smartphone. Geographic info comes into play for the local businesses. Demographics and technographic-like internet speed all come into play. And now you have a hyper-targeted campaign.  

Using data to increase sales

CTV ads are not clickable, but the ads are designed to create interest. Then cross-device marketing takes over to get your viewer to click, purchase, or take other action that you want him to take. You encourage this action by meeting him where he is on the customer journey. You are now serving up a curated and guided customer experience. 

Optimum targeting with CTV ads

People don’t like to feel targeted, so your cross-device marketing should be subtle and not heavy-handed. Nuance is everything. CTV allows for a “smart” approach to targeting and provides the platform for optimizing your campaign. Total viewing time on connected TV jumped 81% last year, with millions of shoppers in front of streaming TV at any time. Ad-supported TV is getting a big piece of that viewership. Research says that 73% of streaming viewers watch ad-supported CTV content and 45% of streaming viewers watch ad-supported CTV the most. CTV allows for direct-response performance and tying specific goals to the ad spend. 

Connected TV is excellent for putting your brand before new audiences and reconnecting with site visitors. Target your non-purchasers with a more aggressive offer to lure them back. Although viewers can watch CTV on mobile or desktop devices, the majority watch it on TV. Close to 90% use a second device while watching TV, making a solution that targets the TV screen important. 

Serving CTV ads to screens on networks like Hulu or ESPN makes sure you deliver a great experience. 

Most agencies track site visits following a completed ad view in a defined window of time. This is integrated into Google Analytics, letting you measure all the key metrics.

Example:

• Your viewer watched an ad on CTV.
• The user visits your site on his laptop within our defined window.
• The user converts on the laptop. 
• You now know that sales can be attributed to the ad and can manage your campaigns accordingly. 

Tracking and attribution

Tracking conversions driven by your advertising is essential. This means following the customer journey across devices and acquiring accurate, cross-device measurements. User visits from CTV campaigns are integrated into third-party solutions like Google Analytics. 

Cross-device marketing will facilitate “smart” marketing and help you optimize your spending. You can reach a broad audience through CTV advertising and yet, still have control over your advertising by purchasing by impression, which is targeted and personalized. You can set frequency caps, which limit the number of times a viewer sees your message to reduce waste and get you more out of every CTV dollar. 

You are also moving the customer along the buyer journey as you home the messaging and move him from a non-actionable platform to a purchase or action on a clickable device.

Cross-screen marketing can be a more significant investment than traditional, but the quality of the data is usually good enough to by far outweigh the cost. The real-time monitoring and post-campaign analysis provide valuable customer insights and a level of engagement that traditional advertising will never approach. 

Get ready to immerse and engage your audience and bring your conversions to a new high. CTV and cross-device marketing is here to stay and should be included in your marketing mix. 

Website design and SEO strategy go together and can seamlessly drive more of the right traffic back to your website. We will talk about your website’s basic requirements and share some pro tips for maximizing your organic and paid traffic and driving your content to a higher ranking in the SERPs. SEO alone won’t accomplish this if your website is not well designed. You want to avoid losing your hard-earned organic traffic due to poor web design, and driving your paid traffic to a site that is not optimized is wasting your time and money. 

Some design elements can even interfere with your SEO efforts. When designing a website with SEO in mind, a designer must think about the back-end – architecture, navigation issues, search engine direction, and the front end. The front end is what we see and the general usability of the site. Both aspects are equally important. The days of the designer taking the lead to create an aesthetically pleasing design without regard for SEO and usability are long gone. A good web designer will take a more complete approach and understand both design and SEO. 

What are the basic SEO requirements for your website?

Some basics are mandatory for an SEO friendly website. Your design must provide excellent customer experience with an easy-to-read design. Here are some top considerations:

• Sitemap: If you want to optimize how search engines crawl your site, give them a roadmap by supplying a sitemap. A sitemap guides them through the site and content and tells them what pages are most important. They also contain metadata about your pages to help them rank. 
• Mobile-Friendly: The importance of a website that is mobile-friendly can not be overstated. It has been a huge factor to Google for years now and introduced mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in 2017. Desktop visitors have been declining for years while mobile visitors continue to grow. Check your metrics now if you haven’t. Over half of today’s web traffic is from mobile devices, either phones or tablets. If your site does not load quickly and correctly and quickly on mobile, your bounce rate will soar, which can cause your ranking to drop. 
• Readability: Your site’s design can have a significant impact on your content and how you present it. Google rewards meaty and longer content. If your font is difficult to read, or you show long blocks of content without breaks and visuals, the user will abandon you. Too many hyperlinks can also be damaging. Remember, they came to you for the answers. Think about the color of your text and your background. If you have an older audience, increase your font size, and keep it simple. Think about line length and spacing. This all will contribute to overall usability. 
• Website speed: If your site loads too slowly, you will lose visitors. Period. Page speed is also a ranking signal, so be sure you are optimizing your images, monitoring plug-ins that slow you down, caching, and watching your metrics. If your website is not loading in two seconds, it is too slow. Page speed matters to your users and Google. Google will crawl fewer pages on a slow site, so you will have fewer pages indexed. And don’t forget about website security and using “HTTPS” encryption.
• Trust: User trust is everything, and it takes time to build. Your user wants to come to a clean and modern site that is simple to navigate, and that provides the information, product, or services they are looking for. Don’t make a bad impression with a sloppy or poorly designed site. 

How do search engines rank webpages and deliver SERPs?

Learning SEO at a professional level can take years, but you should not move ahead without basic knowledge of how search engines rank pages. It is a combination of classifying a query, determining the context, and which signals matter most. 

Search engines rank pages to make the web as usable as possible for the user. Work with the assumption that you are trying to satisfy the search engine’s user, and we must establish the trust that we can answer the queries sent to us. If you fail the search engine, that will impact your ranking moving forward.

The steps to ranking a page is a basic process that every query goes through. They will first classify the query in buckets like local, unseen, adult, question, or YMYL. There are numerous classifications. They will then apply some kind of content to the query to determine what factors come into play to help determine relevant factors. They look at what signals are most important. The algorithms are doing the work! They will also look at the layouts and choose what to include on the SERP. 

What can metrics and data tell us?

If you genuinely want to improve your SERPs ranking and drive increased traffic, you need to understand your website’s data, and your campaigns can tell you. Study where your site visitors are coming from and what happened when they got there. This is your best roadmap for improvement. Pay attention to your metrics, monitor them regularly, and learn from them, making adjustments to your site as you go.

A bounce rate that is too is high is sending you a message. Some potential answered could be that your content does not deliver on the intent of your keywords, or maybe a landing page could better warm your traffic up. 

Is your referral traffic spiking? Drill down on your analytics to see where it is coming from. What are the demos of people coming to your website? These metrics will help you better target your campaigns moving forward. 

What is your most popular content? Does it drive repeat visits? An understanding of what content resonates with will tell you a lot about your target audience and maybe show you the assumptions you’ve made about them are incorrect. 

Watch your data for insights, and watch your data for trends over time. Algorithms change over time, as well. Stay up to date on those and look there for significant or abrupt changes in your traffic. 

What are some web design elements that work against your SEO strategy?

Some web design elements disrupt SEO. They may work against crawlability, readability, navigation, or usability. A good marketer will learn to spot and correct these conflicts. Listen to your clients and listen to the data. In general, these flaws are the result of site redesigns without studying your analytics. 

Here are some design techniques to avoid:

• Navigation: Navigation that is not intuitive is a big one. Some outdated strategies are mega menus, using search to build categories instead of filters, dropdown navigation that doesn’t link to the main category and force a sub-category selection. 
• Design: Some design elements don’t help push the user through the experience and can frustrate the user and make them go off the site. Some elements to avoid include the infinite scroll, huge images at the top of the page, failing to use the alt text option for image uploads, or sliders down the side of the page since all images must load first. 

How do you avoid having a website that works against your SEO strategy rather than supporting it? Study your analytics. Work with a professional that understands SEO. The more SEO they know, the better your result will be. Discuss your analytics, your target audience, and your goals for the site. Build with scalability in mind, and remember that your site is an investment, so don’t make your decisions on price alone. Study your metrics, test, and adjust as you learn.

The words you’ll hear in advertising circles, again and again, are OTT and Connected TV (or CTV). So what exactly are they? These words are often used interchangeably, but that is incorrect. To keep it simple, OTT is the delivery mechanism for TV content online, usually streaming or video on demand, “over the top” of traditional providers. CTV is the actual divide used to watch TV content online, such as a smart TV, Roku, or gaming console. 

OTT subscriptions and CTV ownership are skyrocketing and are the next best opportunity for marketers. It is an opportunity to reach viewers in a highly targeted way and touch them across multiple devices. This gives them a chance to nuance the messaging across devices and along the journey and moves customers from the no-touch device of a TV to an actionable device. 

What is linear TV, and what is the difference?

Linear TV is the traditional way of watching TV, and wherein a viewer watches a program on the channel, it is presented at a scheduled time. You watch “The Voice” at its scheduled time each week. This is linear TV. 

Linear advertising refers to a schedule in which ads are scheduled for a specific time, so viewers must tune in to a particular show to see the ads. By comparison, non-linear advertising means creating demand and preference for your product by participating in the consumer’s life by following his habits. 

Another term you will hear is Advanced TV. This is all non-traditional TV and the umbrella term for OTT/ connected TV and Addressable TV.

CTV in advertising is skippable online advertising targeted to relevant programming and audience groups. CTV refers to any TV connected to the interest and access content beyond what is available by the regular cable providers. 

Why are so many viewers moving from traditional TV to CTV?

The growth in CTV viewing is exponential and continues to grow. Consumers are flocking to CTV after being tired of paying for channels they don’t watch, lack of choice in programming, and cable’s escalating costs. OTT content is served on the viewer’s schedule, which is very appealing and also offers a wide variety in programming, subscription costs, and on the whole, is more affordable. 

As more and more viewers convert to OTT, advertisers invest more and more of their budgets to these platforms. They are quite simple, following the audience. 

Connected TV Advertising Basics to get you started today

Connected TV is here to stay. So it’s time to learn your Roku from your remote. This is a whole new world letting advertisers take advantage of precise targeting and tracking. So we know CTV is television content streamed over the internet vs. by satellite cable network or device. 

CTV advertising is purchasing ads that display over these internet-powered streaming devices and apps. The precise targeting it brings along with cross-device marketing makes it very popular.

Devices that can serve CTV content include your laptop, cell phone, Smart TV, Roku boxes, and Amazon Frie sticks. Even many game consoles can deliver d CTV content and ads. 

CTV ads are sold through automated software that maintains and tracks data while sending out the ad. Think about the algorithms that Facebook uses when sending content to you. You define your audience and choose whether to work with a tech company or buy your own. The ad is produced and shown per those specs.

Metrics include numerous data points like frequency of viewing, reach, the percentage of your target audience that sees it, CPP, or cost per point, which shows the cost using the gross rating point GRP).

With the big players /like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu producing great scripted content, CTV is exploding. Add to its popularity with millennials, with 67 percent in a house relying solely on CTV for their TV entertainment. 

Ad quality and quantity on CTV are advantageous to advertisers because they’re getting better content and more relevant experiences. They also experiment with formats like animated or interactive ads. All of this leads up to an excellent completion rate for CTV ads. 

The metrics that advertisers can garner also help measure campaigns’ effectiveness beyond what was ever previously possible in TV, based on clicks, views, and conversions. And when the viewer logs into a mother device through google or Facebook, advertisers can target more precisely based on demographics, location, interests, and online behavior. 

With broader reach, all of this targeting can be more efficient than traditional TV campaigns, And the waste is significantly reduced. 

What are some limitations of advertising with OTT and CTV?

OTT advertising is not without challenges. The multitude of platforms and potential audience overlap makes it difficult for media buyers to make strategic decisions. The metrics and attribution of conversions across multiple devices can be very overwhelming. So the learning curve can be steep and costly. A good agency will have the necessary tools and understanding to launch you into CTV.

Why you must bring CTV advertising into your marketing mix now

In 2020, the nationwide lockdown during COVID-19 created a massive surge in OTT and CTV viewing. CTV viewing has risen from 2.7B hours during pre-pandemic to 3.9B hours within just a few weeks. That is an increase of 81% year over year. Liner TV has dropped while CTV remains stable. 

What is the future of video advertising?

You don’t need a crystal ball to understand that for now, OTT and CTV are the way of the future. The technology and tracking area still being played out, but it will continue to grow and morph and become more complex and targeted. Video advertising has come a long way since the three choices of ABC, NBS, and CBS of years ago. 

All signs point to the growth continuing, and any savvy marketer will want to jump in with both feet now. The time is now for brands to jump in to take advantage of the many new targeting options and engage with their new targeting options and expand that audience. 

Hulu self-service ad platform offers targeting by gender, age, location, interests, and show genre

Advertising is only as effective as its capability to get the branding or retail message in front of the right audience. Once a consumer is aware of a brand, the next step for an advertiser is to get them sufficiently interested to respond to a call to action. It is a fact that video ads constantly outperform static ads on every platform. For years, businesses have been able to buy ads using the self-service model on the dominant digital advertising platforms like Google and Facebook.

Recently, however, relative newcomers including streaming service Hulu are offering their own self-service ad management tools, which are being enthusiastically received, especially by smaller, local brick and mortar establishments who depend on consumers within a certain geographic area or DMA. A self-service tool like Hulu’s Ad Manager provides a powerful suite of advanced advertising solutions with which a marketer can deliver an enhanced viewer experience.

Since making its debut last year, Hulu’s self-service advertising solution has become a huge hit with small to medium-sized businesses who, thanks to this platform, are now able to place their ads in the same streaming media space normally reserved for only the largest brands.

Hulu describes their Self-Service Ad Manager as a self-service advertising solution that enables an advertiser of any size to target specific audiences, upload video ads and then measure the analytics in real-time. Advertisers can now customize their ad budgets according to their means with a minimum campaign spend of $500 per campaign. 

In addition, they can forego broader scattershot strategies like geotargeting in favor of zeroing in on true potential customers by ZIP code, interests, and show genres. Finally, this service allows for easy tracking of the status of the campaign including ad-spend and impressions on a user-friendly dashboard. With its budgetary flexibility and ease of use, Hulu’s Ad Manager lets advertisers monitor up-to-date campaign status, budget, and impressions on one user-friendly dashboard.

Businesses can oversee every aspect of their campaigns from beginning to end, with the option to stop, pause, or cancel them at any time. In short, Hulu Ad Manager is an easy-to-use self-service solution that allows businesses of all sizes to stream their ads on some of the most popular shows in the world.

Add in the fact that it costs nothing to sign up, there are no additional fees, plus the minimum ad spend is only $500 and it’s no wonder that both digital marketing agencies and business owners are diverting increasing amounts of their advertising budgets to the Hulu streaming platform.

For smaller businesses who don’t have the bottomless advertising budgets of the giant corporations, a platform like Hulu’s Ad Manager is a gift that came at a particularly opportune time as it became available in March of 2020 just as the country was becoming aware of the severity of the pandemic. With quarantines forcing the vast majority of the population to stay home, subscriptions to streaming services and the consumption of streaming content skyrocketed, making CTV and OTT advertising an essential part of any marketing strategy.

The main reason agencies and businesses are so enthusiastic about Hulu’s Ad Manager is that it allows advertisers to target audiences through streaming TV advertising by gender, age, location, interests, and show genre with a super-affordable buying minimum of $500. However, the self-service ad placement platform comes with a wide variety of other benefits. Hulu’s Ad Manager also allows selection by state, DMA, city, and ZIP code.

Finally, when utilizing Hulu’s Ad Manager, users can purchase and place their ads without a sales team. However, they do have access to a dedicated customer support center. The platform will also benefit advertisers by providing a framework that exposes viewers to a wider variety of ads as well as a more relevant ad experience.

To run an Ad on Hulu, users must create campaigns that outline the who, what, when, where and, why of the brand. At the center of the campaign is the creation and uploading of the video ad. As of now, Hulu Ad Manager supports video ads between 15-30 seconds in length. After ads are uploaded they are screened through both automated and human-review processes. 

Social media advertising indicates the number of views but not whether they are views by people who are within a business’s target demographic. Advertising on Hulu provides an option for smaller-sized businesses to circumvent this problem and maximize the value of every ad dollar.

People are familiar with the Hulu brand and because of the programming, they are aware of the extent of its reach. Businesses also see an advantage with advertising on an established platform like Hulu because it implies a connection that adds to the legitimacy of the business. Furthermore, on Hulu, viewers cannot click through and skip ads. That combined with Hulu’s high level of viewer engagement means that people in targeted areas will undoubtedly see ads and learn about the brand.

Hulu has been a household name for quite some time, with a massive audience and instant brand recognition. This has significantly contributed to the popularity of Hulu’s Ad Manager. The high-quality content on Hulu attracts a certain kind of audience which is conducive to audience targeting.

Since in most cases, businesses have already established a precise audience profile and now want to reach that audience on a larger scale, Hulu’s Ad Manager provides a golden opportunity to do so. Since its inception, user feedback has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about all the products available in Hulu’s self-service advertising solution.

Customers rave about the platform’s ease of use especially when it comes to ad creation and placement.  With broadcast television, the broad audience makes advertising cost-prohibitive for smaller local businesses. The Hulu Ad Manager geo-targeting capabilities and affordability provide a way for advertisers with limited budgets to be both efficient and effective with their ad dollars.

Streaming TV platforms like Hulu have become the go-to infotainment option for an ever-expanding and actively engaged audience known as “Generation Stream.” Advertising on Streaming TV presents an opportunity for businesses to put their brands in front of these targeted viewers and deliver the advertising message in an extremely effective way.

Whereas advertising on TV used to be reserved exclusively for the biggest advertisers and their million-dollar budgets, Hulu’s self-service Ad Manager has made advertising on streaming TV an effective and affordable method for smaller businesses to expand their reach and stand beside their larger competitors. Hulu’s self-service Ad Manager is one of the latest ways technology has leveled the playing field so that everyone can compete. 

How To Create Personalized Video Content To Connect With Your Target Audience

Streaming television content is on the rise. Connected TV (CTV) was expected to take off last year even before the arrival of the coronavirus. However with the pandemic forcing the public to remain at home for extended periods of time streaming consumption levels rose beyond all projections.

The average time spent viewing CTV increased 81% since last year. Today 80% of households in the US have at least one CTV device and 75% have at least one CTV service.

Due to the pandemic, eCommerce, which has already irrevocably altered the retail landscape, has increased to unforeseen levels as people were forced to order almost everything online as opposed to visiting physical retail locations. Now it seems there’s no turning back as consumers are expected to spend an all-time high of over $700 billion via eCommerce in 2021.

Since a typical viewer watches CTV content while in possession of their mobile devices, OTT/CTV has become an increasingly attractive method to generate eComm traffic.

CTV Marketing Basics

Consumer behavior and attitudes evolve, advertisers must adapt their ad strategies to keep pace. As a result of these shifts in consumer behavior, media buyers have already begun reallocating their ad dollars towards CTV in order to benefit from its hyper-targeting capability. This also necessitates a change in the creative process so as to develop interactive experiences and personalization at scale.

With any new medium comes a new set of best practices as advertising is no longer a one size fits all game. To take full advantage of the opportunities CTV brings, there are certain case-specific creative considerations for producing CTV/OTT video ads. A great deal of effort goes into using data to identify and connect with target audiences.

However, in most cases, advertisers are using the same commercial message with all consumers across all platforms. That kind of standardization no longer applies as CTV and streaming become an integral part of the media landscape. It is now necessary to put just as much effort into the creative side in order to communicate a story that every targeted user will find engaging.

Successful dynamic creative optimization depends on three critical components: data, content, and the ability to incorporate them into a cohesive marketing strategy.

With the technology currently available, it is possible to create a highly relevant customer experience and then modify it to form alternate versions based on a variety of real-time metrics.

LEVERAGING CTV TARGETING CAPABILITIES TO A/B TEST

Like many other digital marketing channels offers enhanced targeting and testing capability. However, the hyper-targeting and personalization capabilities of CTV give brands a singular opportunity to place especially relevant content in front of target audiences. 

Another consideration is the opportunity to conduct A/B testing for specific audiences in order to learn what is effective. The best way to take advantage of CTV advertising is to fully utilize its targeting and testing capabilities to run several versions of the creative.

While the prospect of generating multiple creatives for the purposes of A/B testing may seem prohibitively expensive, it is actually possible to do it in a cost-effective way. With a minimal amount of extra effort during the pre-production phase, it’s entirely feasible to produce multiple versions of video creative tailored for select viewing audiences.

Adjusting elements like talent, music, graphics, and messaging allows advertisers to generate hyper-relevant creatives for the audience they are targeting. It should also be noted that cost-effective solutions can be found in existing videos that can be shortened and repurposed to create a multi-purpose inventory of ads for CTV.

Live-Action vs. In-Studio Production: Which is better for CTV?

When it comes to CTV creative production, advertisers have two main options. Each has its own advantages and drawbacks. The first option is an original production with a live-action shoot. While you can get exactly what you want visually, this method is usually more expensive as it requires a studio or shooting on location, talent, props, lighting, sound recording, etc.

The second option is to produce creativity in the studio using pre-existing assets and a wide variety of post-production tools like AfterFX, Cinema4D, and Adobe Premiere. While this solution does have a few limitations as compared to a live-action shoot, the in-studio technology does allow for a large amount of creativity at a significantly lower cost.

In the ideation phase, consider if live-action or in-studio animation will be the best fit for your brand and your target audience. Connected Television advertising is an effective platform for both in terms of delivering a relevant story.

10 Tips For Creative CTV Production

• Be authentic and stay true to your brand identity. 
• Regardless of whether your goal is acquisition, awareness, or conversion, it’s important to always introduce yourself as you are putting your message in front of potential new customers.
• Remain mindful of the story you’re telling and make sure the narrative is consistent in all versions of the creative.
• Highlight core values and unique selling propositions. 
• Even a simple storyboard can get the entire production team on the same page.
• Grab attention with unusual or eye-catching visuals. Use humor if appropriate.
• Keeping the logo and URL on-screen for the duration of the ad and include a clear call to action. CTV advertising is not clickable but studies have shown that most people watch streaming content with a digital device in hand or nearby. 
• Leave space for customization. Consider having your talent recording multiple script options or record variations on your voiceover.
• Gather all of the footage you may need in a single shoot and then craft iterative versions of your creative(s) through post-production editing. 
• If relying on pre-existing assets, use motion graphics and animation to keep the content dynamic in order to heighten engagement. 

As the presence of connected TVs and the consumption of streaming content increase in US households on a daily basis, brands have a unique opportunity to change the TV advertising game.

Data-driven creativity creates more engagement with consumers, making campaigns more effective. Studies reveal that a majority of consumers are comfortable with ads that are customized and are increasingly expecting tailored experiences.

In addition to making their spots more effective based upon the data collected, brands can now obtain valuable insights regarding which offers are popular with different consumer groups.

Now more than ever, it is vital for brands to be able to quickly adapt their marketing strategies so that their messages address consumers directly and intuitively in order to establish a connection and build a relationship.

Digital video is the current undisputed champion of the digital marketing world. Any content strategy and email marketing campaigns should focus on video. Among digital trends, marketing budgets for 2021 reflect video’s supremacy and will continue throughout the foreseeable future.

The statistics do not lie, and they are too numerous to list in full. Here are just twenty reasons why digital video advertising is the present and futures:

1. 86% of businesses use video marketing. (Wyzowl)
2. Over 75% of digital video marketers report an increase in sales tied to video campaigns.
3. Advertisers will spend up to $37 billion on digital video advertising in 2021 and $45 billion by 2025. (Statista)
4. In 2021, individuals will spend 100 minutes a day watching online video content. (Marketingcharts.com)
5. 80% of U.S. consumers pay for streaming services.
6. In 2020, 78% of people watched online videos every week, and 55% said they watch them daily. (Social Media Week)
7. By 2024, U.S. video ad spending may increase to $12.66 billion. (Statista)
8. 95% of viewers retain more of a content’s message when watched in a video. (Wordstream)
9. By 2027, digital video advertising is forecast to reach $34.6, a growth rate of 12% from 2021 to 2027.
10. Video click-through rates in email marketing content increase 200%-300%. (Forbes)
11. 98% of people like watching new product or service videos more than other methods of communication. (Wyzowl)
12. 97% of people say Explainer Videos lead to a better understanding of a business, product, or process. (Dubb)
13. 90% of people prefer to watch video content on their mobile devices. (Wyzowl)
14. 90% of consumers buy products that include promotional videos. (Dubb)
15. 84% of people buy a product or service after seeing relevant content in a brand’s video (Wyzowl)
16. Conversion rates increase 80% with a marketing campaign or website homepage that includes video. (Dubb)
17. 64% of business owners believe explainer videos help increase sales. (The Draw Shop)
18. Video content increases brand awareness by 52%. (Thomson Reuters)
19. Engagement per post is higher with video content.
20. In 2021, YouTube, the largest video streaming platform, has 2.3 billion active users worldwide.

The message is clear. Digital video, and its innovative companion features, are the definitive medium for a brand’s digital marketing strategy. Its supremacy will continue to grow as high-speed internet reaches more communities and mobile networks upgrade to faster standards like 5G. A company should instruct its marketing team to focus its marketing efforts on video content.

2021’s Top Five Digital Video Advertising Trends

A brand should not base its advertising strategy on a content marketing trend,  a video trend, or any trend that does not demonstrably increase the percent of people who engage with its product or service. Digital marketing trends become standards, and these are the top innovations that should keep you busy in 2021.

1. Mobile
2. Vertical Video Ads
3. User-Generated Content
4. Instructional Videos
5. Interactive Videos

Mobile

Smartphones continue to have a profound impact on human behavior worldwide. The devices themselves continue to improve the smartphone user experience.

The cellular networks that allow content to flow to the furthest corners of the Earth continue to get faster and more reliable, all Goldilocks conditions for mobile digital advertising, and mobile video advertising in particular.

On average, U.S. adults spend almost four hours a day on their smartphones and nearly half of that time watching videos.

The number of mobile users may swell as high as 295 million by 2023, so it’s no wonder that by 2024 global mobile ad spending is projected to reach $8.92 billion. Mobile searches that include video results have also increased, and users click on the video before anything else.

But it’s not just the eyes on the screens. People interact with their mobile devices in a different way than their desktop computers or tablets. Advertising is most effective when the brand reaches its target audience.

Still, a brand’s message and values can be even more memorable when delivered seamlessly with the platform on which it runs. Digital marketers should customize advertising campaigns to target mobile users.

Vertical Video Ads

Vertical video advertising is a trend that leverages the rise in mobile use and social media networks. “Vertical video” refers to the ad’s format. In mobile parlance, vertical videos are in Portrait view.

Standard video formats are seen best in Landscape view. Most people prefer the Landscape view, but they use their phones in Portrait view when navigating the web, or their social media feeds on their phones.

Social media marketing should adapt to accommodate mobile user viewer habits. Social media trends toward increased connectivity, and a higher percent of consumers on social channels engage with content when seen most conveniently.

Instructional/Explainer Videos

America is a DIY nation. Over 85% of Americans use YouTube to learn how to do something, and YouTube is just one indicator of the collective drive to acquire new skills. People seek out many types of instructional (or explainer) videos on different websites and streaming platforms.

A great example is a recipe. Take the consumer journey. Someone searches for a fish taco recipe. The results include many sites with mouthwatering recipes, but some sites have a recipe and a video that show the viewer how to prep and cook the recipe.

More often than not, users choose the option with the instructional video. In this example, a business can use targeted branded content advertising on these instructional videos or produce the instructional video itself.

Brands have the opportunity to move into the instructional video digital space and establish authority in their field. Beyond purchasing ad space to run a digital video ad or advertising in someone else’s instructional video that targets your brand’s demographic, instructional videos produced “in-house” allow the brand to show its customers how to use its product and live the lifestyle associate with it.

User-Generated Content

Online content generated by the end-users (UGC) already has a significant impact on businesses – ask anyone with a review on Yelp, CitySearch, social media channels, blog posts, or any other industry-specific review site. What people say matters to a business’s reputation and its bottom line.

A hundred positive user-generated reviews of a company or product may not be enough to offset one negative review. Since many people believe UGC over even the best-branded content, positive UGC leads to sales, and negative UGC leads to potential customers taking their business elsewhere

However, UGC must be authentic. You can’t package UGC. Brands must create the digital space for users to create positive social media posts for their product and have a strategy to push that marketing message across digital (and traditional) media channels.

A great example of UGC is Instagram Stories (or Facebook Stories),  Instagram Reels, and Instagram Live. The user generates video content, and ad content is a companion to the internet user’s personal experience. Through video, users can create a virtual event about a product in a much more effective way than the brand itself. Think of your average testimonial.

In traditional print or digital channels, testimonials come across as scripted false praise with a random name attached. Put a natural person in an actual video talking about their genuine experience with a brand’s product, and the potential reach and ROI are limitless.

Interactive Videos

The biggest video marketing tool is interactive and should be a part of any content marketing strategy. Marketers work overtime to figure out new ways to engage their target audience with its product or service. A video ad can send the viewer through layers of companion ads that ultimately prompt action that increases the likelihood of a sale.

Interactive video can be the ultimate customer journey. For example, a brand reaches a potential customer through video content created or promoted through influencer marketing. Establish the customer relationship on a personal level that increases the likelihood of further engagement.

Conclusion

Digital video marketing trends are just that – trends – but a brand with an online presence and intelligent video marketing strategy can turn active users into loyal customers with customer engagement, high-quality content, personalized content, and other forms of content.

Ad networks like Facebook Ads, Google Business, Google Ads, Google My Business, and other B2B marketers report that video content has the highest engagement rates.

Whether your business is focused on conversion rate optimization, SEO strategy, or promoting valuable content across channels, your brand can enhance its customer base’s digital experiences (and mobile experiences!) by incorporating video ads.

Digital video ads are a vital part of any digital marketing mix. Video has spectacular ROI, a broad reach, and considerable savings over traditional television advertising.

Video views trump static images. Digital video engages viewers and prompts them to action at a greater rate than other forms of content.

This proven success has made digital video advertising very competitive, leading to innovative ways to leverage the unique topography of the ever-evolving digital world.

Streaming content continues to increase among web and mobile users, and the number of online marketing channels that support video advertising, such as mobile devices, continues to multiply.

Since digital video marketing is popular and effective (e.g., increases conversion rate) in comparison with other forms of advertising, has a lower advertising cost vs. traditional television commercials, and has deep market penetration as a multi-channel advertising platform, an intelligent digital advertising strategy requires that marketers understand the common types of digital video ads.

Linear vs. Non-Linear

All digital ads are linear or nonlinear, which is the video ad format.

Linear video ads play before, during, or after the main video content. Linear ads are the most common type of ad and the format to which most viewers are familiar. Television commercials run in this format.

Linear video ads also mimic television ads by running in the same video player as the main content. Typical spots are 15 to 30 seconds long. Linear ads are part of the program. In most cases, the viewer does not have a choice.

Nonlinear video ads play at the same time as the main video content. Nonlinear ads lure the viewer away by opening and running the entire ad in a new video player or click through to a business website.

When clicked, nonlinear ads will stop the main video content and play instead. Many nonlinear ads include a close button (x) and automatically size down to give the viewer an uninterrupted stream of the main video content. The choice is with the viewer.

Types of Linear Ads

Linear ads are called “in-stream” video ads and are divided into before, during, and after.

Pre-roll: The digital video ad plays before the main content “rolls.” For digital marketers, the pre-roll is prime time. Viewers must sit through the ad to watch the main content they’ve sought out. In some cases, a viewer must watch a full 30-second spot before the main content starts (non-skippable), but in other ads, viewers must only watch 5 seconds before choosing whether or not to continue (skippable).

Mid-roll: The digital video ad plays during the main content, sometimes more than once. When these ads play, the main content stops “mid-roll,” the advertisement plays, and then the main content resumes “rolling.” Like pre-roll ads, mid-roll ads can be skippable or non-skippable. Mid-roll ads are intrusive and stop the main content’s action but receive the most views because viewers typically wait until the (non-skippable) ad is over and the main video resumes.

Post-roll: The digital video ad plays after the main content concludes. As you can imagine, this post-roll is the opposite of prime time. Think of the moment a movie ends and the end credits scroll up the screen. The theater empties – fast. That digital video equivalent of that moment is the post-roll. However, if played right, a business can still push its brand and engage potential customers.

Each time a viewer watches a video on YouTube or On-Demand, regardless of platform, you will encounter in-stream linear ads. When done right, a brand’s video ad will be heard as well as seen, so the in-stream video becomes in-stream audio on audio streaming services such as Spotify or Pandora.

Types of Nonlinear Ads

Nonlinear video ads have an added layer of complexity because they can be “in-stream” or “out-stream.” Each category has its subtypes of ads.

Nonlinear: In-Stream

Like linear ads, nonlinear ads are “in-stream” but compete with the video’s main content for the viewer’s attention using a variety of devices, the main two of which are “overlay ads” and “non-overlay” ads.

Overlay Ads

An overlay ad is as it sounds – the ad lays over a part of the video content, typically the bottom quarter of the player.

Non-Overlay Ads

Non-overlay ads run at the same time as the video.

Nonlinear: Out-Stream

Out-stream digital video ads are stand-alone branded content that run “out-stream” or outside of the video player. Out-stream videos can be placed anywhere and remain non-intrusive and effectively communicate a brand’s message directly to the consumer.

On the page, the viewer can launch the ad or navigate away from the ad if they do not want to see it. Other nonlinear features, like overlay ads, can also be used out-stream.

Types of Out-Stream Ads

Out-stream ads are based on placement, or where they appear and run on a typical web page/ad network, and can auto-play or require action by the viewer to play.

In-page: Ad networks like Google Ads and Facebook Ad sell multi-sized placements of stand-alone video players for the sole purpose of running a digital video ad.

In-banner: Banner ads are the billboards of the internet and typically play in a static web banner or mobile app, except in the virtual world, you can manipulate their size by automatically collapsing or expanding them or allowing the viewer to do so. When a banner expands, it takes up the page, and digital marketers can pile on overlay ads, branded video players, and various other features to increase brand awareness and drive online sales.

In-text: Auto-play video ads placed inside an article, blog post, or user-generated content. The video player is visible to the viewer as he or she scrolls through the text, auto-plays once 50% of the player is visible, and auto-stops when the user scrolls past it.

In-feed: Digital video ads for social media marketing. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked In, Snapchat, and other social platforms have a content feed that includes social media ads. For example, if a viewer on Instagram is watching Instagram Stories story ads auto-play between content. Social networks that have story features usually have stories ads.

Interstitial: Ads that run between two content pages.

Nonlinear: Interactive

The most effective nonlinear digital video ads for audience engagement are in-stream interactive. Like other nonlinear ads, interactive ads compete for the viewer’s attention and stop the main content from running.

Suppose the viewer chooses to follow the ad. In that case, everything in the marketer’s arsenal – video, animation, graphics, buttons, tag lines, and other visual content – can become interactive elements to prompt customers to click a link that goes to a business website, enter contact information to receive a discount, or whichever angle to promote brand awareness and increase sales.

The Future of Digital Marketing is Video

The online world is fluid and changes at a rapid pace. Digital marketers must be one step ahead of consumer trends and technological features, like expandable ads, to unlock the internet’s full advertising potential.

Video advertising dominates the current landscape. Video has an economy of scale unrivaled by traditional advertising and other forms of digital advertising.

The digital video player is the new battlefield in the old war. Studies consistently show that digital video’s demonstrable ROI is unmatched, and its use by consumers and marketers alike will only increase.

If done right, a brand’s digital marketing strategy that combines business objectives, campaign objectives, advertising goals, creative elements (e.g., captivating images, organic posts) with the power of video will delight customers and exceed advertising objectives.

A brand’s investment in online content such as an Explainer Video or social media platform pays off in reaching its target audience. It creates a permanent library of digital assets that are accessible by active users well in the future.

Understanding the basics of digital video ads is the start of mastering advertising’s most advanced brand-building tool in history.

Branded content is the next phase in video marketing

Content strategy and management platform, Semrush defines Branded Content as “…content that speaks the values and the vision of your company…”, that “generates a conversation and an emotional response.” “Branded content is an experience… that relies on storytelling tools and techniques.” Branded content is beyond the sale. It seeks a deeper connection with the customer.

Video content is a proven foundational tool of any brand’s digital marketing strategy. It has developed into a standard with its complexities, advantages, and challenges – all worth mastering as the data supports video’s dominance as digital marketing over other types of content. High-quality video content optimized for online and social media platforms increases brand awareness and conversion rates, reduces bounces, boosts search engine optimization on Google (mainly if you use Google-owned video platforms such as YouTube), drives organic traffic to your website, is mobile-friendly (no more skewed margins!), and has a demonstrable positive effect on customer retention (that means repeat sales).

Now it’s incumbent on marketing teams to take their video content marketing strategy to the next level. Brand awareness and the package of advantages noted above, which already have a proven, groundbreaking ROI, are now the stepping stone to leveraging video’s unique storytelling powers to engage customers on an emotional level that make them connect with your brand’s values.

5 Ways Branded Video Content Can Grow Your Business

1. The Return On Investment (ROI) is spectacular.
2. Video is a storyteller’s medium.
3. DIY approach is cost-effective and scalable.
4. There is a video content category for every business.
5. Creates and nurtures community.

1. The ROI is spectacular

As is, video is a proven winner. The numbers do not lie. Here are just a few.

200%-300% – increase in click-through rates with video in marketing emails. (Forbes)
98% – people who like watching new product or service videos more than other methods of communication. (Wyzowl)
97% – people who say explainer videos lead to a better understanding of a business, product, or process. (Dubb)
95% – people who retain the message of a video more than other methods of communication. (Wordstream)
90% – people who prefer video streaming on their mobile devices. (Wyzowl)
90% – target audience who buy products that include promotional videos. (Dubb)
84% – people who buy a product or service after seeing a  brand’s video (Wyzowl)
80% – increase in conversion rates with a marketing campaign or website homepage that includes video. (Dubb)
64% – business owners who believe explainer videos help increase sales. (The Draw Shop)
52% – increased brand awareness with video content. (Thomson Reuters)

It’s not a contest. Video content rules the digital marketing toolbox. Branded content appeals to potential customers in a different, more personal way, and video is the most effective type of content to inject a brand’s values into a customer’s experience.

2. Video is a storyteller’s medium

Branded content is a story that creates an emotional response, and there is no better medium to achieve that end than video. Whether it’s a 15-30 second video on TikTok, influencer video marketing on Instagram Live, or a long-form video on YouTube, the brands (and influencers) that tell the best, most authentic story that aligns with its vision and values will rise to the top. For example, consider the simple online search for a recipe. The journey most likely ends with the searcher following an instructional video to whip up his or her next culinary masterpiece. Yet, these types of videos barely harness the true storytelling power of the medium in the way branded video marketing strategy can achieve.

3. A DIY approach is cost-effective and scalable

Professional video production is low cost and is forever. A brand’s values told through a compelling video will resonate with a wider audience long after its debut. An effective way for a company to spread its values and create growth is to put its own social media channels and other platforms through strategic paid campaigns. A short, inexpensive but meaningful video pushed through as many online and mobile channels as necessary will yield instant, measurable results. A YouTube channel, Video On Demand, a Video Ad, an animated video, influencer marketing, are all a type of video that can drive a wide range of customer interactions and engagement.

4. There is a video content category for every business

From the traditional commercial “spot” to the highly effective “explainer” videos, there are types of videos that fit every business. A retail business may use video for customer testimonials or a start-up company for a product demonstration. An iconic venue can connect with its community with a behind-the-scenes video, or a Fortune 500 company can stand out with a company culture video. Branded content takes this already personalized strategy one step further. A How-To Video is an opportunity to build a customer base and reach a larger audience. Regardless of the type, types, videos, and used, branded content can transform the ordinary into a memorable, relationship-building experience.

5. Creates and nurtures community

The difference between a sale and an experience is a sense of community. For the most part, people patronize local, regular businesses – from restaurants to dry cleaners. These places are in the customer’s immediate area and build loyalty through repeat business characterized by familiarity, authenticity, and a feeling of being connected to the fates of the people who work there. Brands that create branded online video content using traditional storytelling techniques can recreate the close and special relationship people have with the businesses in their communities.

Grow Your Business with Branded Video Content

Video’s visceral connection with customers generates buzz and engagement that can help any business grow its brand in an organic way that achieves long-lasting loyalty based on its culture, values, and mission. Video with branded content can drive a customer’s long-term relationship with a brand and drive future growth.

Programmatic Display Advertising, or Programmatic Advertising, is not some new digital marketing trend or advertising technology, but a slow-rolling earthquake that’s shaken everything up.

The future of digital marketing has been Programmatic for so long it’s hard to determine when the future became the present, but what can be said with certainty is that a Programmatic Advertising Strategy is the most dominant force in digital marketing. Statista projects that 2021’s programmatic ad buys may hit $127 billion, which is $35 billion more than predictions made just several years ago, driven by the ever-increasing use of social media platforms, mobile platforms, and multimedia content such as video. Other recent reports from industry trackers state that revenue from programmatic ad buys now 80% of all digital display advertising revenues. 

What is Digital Programmatic Display Advertising?

Programmatic Display Advertising is everything a digital marketer needs to grow its brand and reach its audience – targeted, multi-channeled, and automated. Programmatic Display Advertising uses technology to purchase and manage digital ad spaces like over the top (OTT), social networks, mobile, digital video, and display and gives the brand an advanced level of control and increased levels of security. As digital ad spaces multiply, governing large digital marketing campaigns becomes more complex and laborious. Leveraging technology to automate complex functions, programmatic campaigns give marketers the tools to gain visibility and actionable insight into their target audience and the freedom to unleash their digital strategies.

 How does Digital Programmatic Display Advertising work?

While Programmatic Display Advertising may seem complex, the process is simple and straightforward. 

1.  You buy ad space through an ad exchange (e.g., Google Ad Exchange, AdSense, or Microsoft Advertising).

2. Using real-time bidding software (RTB), you bid for digital ad spaces against other marketers. Just like any other auction, the highest bidder wins. If you want to automate bidding over multiple channels, demand-side provider software (DSP) can be employed. 

3. Each time the ad is displayed, you pay.

These are the top five reasons advertising agencies are making programmatic ad buying a significant part of their media mix.

#1: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is the driving force behind Programmatic Advertising’s remarkable features and what makes it such a digital marketing success story. Companies can more cost-effectively leverage their consumer data and connect with an audience that is ready to buy their product. Multi-channel, real-time reporting, granular targeting options, and budget and spend optimization are all built into an AI system that is constantly improving itself to meet the business objectives the company sets. Better reporting, ad fraud protection, and brand safety are just several areas in programmatic advertising’s AI-centered capabilities that have resulted in major systemic improvements over traditional media buys.  For example, programmatic advertising software can block fraudulent bots, prevent your ad from running next to undesirable content that may be hurtful to your brand, and return real-time reporting data on campaign effectiveness that can be optimized to increase your reach, connect with more customers, and grow your business.

#2: Targeting

By far, the most significant characteristic of Programmatic Display Advertising is its ability to break down the barriers that traditionally separate a marketing team from its target audience. Instead of casting a wide net and pulling up plastic bottles, tires, and coat hangers with your prize lobsters, you’re sending out millions of fishing lines at once, each with its own unique “smart lure” custom made to hone in on one individual customer. Targeting methods allow marketers to reach the exact audiences they want to reach at a fraction of the price and at a scale previously unimaginable. Layers can be location, demographics, metadata, interests, education, or gender, or any other relevant identifier. With this increased insight and smart strategic planning, targeted ads can be more relevant, contextual, and organic. Ads that are disruptive to the user’s regular behavior (e.g., auto-play ads) or infringe on user privacy leave a negative impression, impair the user experience and may dilute attempts to build a strong brand. With increased, more personalized targeting, there is less wasteful advertising and more control over to whom your ad is displayed.  Brands executing their digital marketing strategy with programmatic campaigns have more demonstrable success reaching who they want, how they want when they want. 

#3: Multichannel Automation

Automating your digital advertising campaigns across multiple digital channels benefits the management of online marketing in so many obvious ways. It reduces human error, eliminates manual time-consuming processes, and boosts online visibility. Programmatic Buying far surpasses the reach of traditional online advertising channels such as AdWords and Bing as they only display your ads on their network of sites. For example, when you run a programmatic advertising campaign on AdWords, your ads will only be seen on websites that are part of the Google Display Network. Programmatic Buying pushes your high-quality content across Google, Facebook Advertising, social media channels, Smart TV, and any other programmatic advertising platforms that align with your digital marketing efforts. Another power of the programmatic ad campaign is the sheer scope of its scalability to increase your online presence. The power of programmatic allows you to reach, or even retarget, a vast number of internet users wherever they may go. 

#4: Real-Time Flexibility

One of the most powerful tools of Programmatic Display Advertising is its real-time functionality – whether it’s real-time bidding on advertising space during a real-time auction, reporting that gives valuable insights into user interests, projections, spending trends, measuring a campaign’s performance, or making adjustments as ads run, the real-time abilities of programmatic platforms give marketers a competitive edge. They can proactively build and improve their online presence and marketing efforts instead of waiting until the end to see what worked. Gone are after-action reports. Now real-time optimization is the standard. This added freedom comes with an extra degree of complexity, but managing a suite of mission objectives in real-time empowers brands to be nimble and adaptive to a rapidly changing marketplace.

#5. ROI

For the above reasons and more, Programmatic Display Advertising maximizes conversion rates and ROI. An automated, multi-channel, AI-driven ad run with real-time flexibility eliminates a bloated layer of intermediaries and human negotiations (up to 60% of a digital marketing budget), thereby reducing unnecessary overhead, allowing marketing dollars to be spent in a more intelligent and effective manner. This means an impressive return on investment. Programmatic marketing is so cost-efficient in comparison to traditional marketing; even a modest budget can produce exemplary results. There is little wonder why Digital Agencies are committing more and more of their overall digital marketing budget to Programmatic Advertising Campaigns. With its endless feedback loop of real-time rich customer data and optimization recommendations, ad runs can be tested, measured, and refined while producing greater returns. With cost transparency, ad campaigns can be designed to target impressions to the most actionable people, and savings can be reinvested into the marketing plan.

There is always some form of advertising that small businesses can use to boost brand awareness and sales

Most businesses, large and small, start as a proposal to investors or banks. There is always a marketing section because promotion leads to sales. A well-conceived advertising strategy planned long before doors open or anything goes live may be the difference between success and failure to attract significant capital.

Large businesses have the resources and staff to make significant investments in advertising. Many small businesses do not, especially when building brand awareness is the most needed. Once up and running, many small businesses do not know how to run effective advertising campaigns or decide not to invest in that area.

Small businesses also encounter other barriers to advertising. They must navigate the new complexities of an increasingly diverse landscape of marketing channels, each with their language and metrics for success, which can seem intimidating or cost-prohibitive with no apparent link to a tangible return. However, no business can grow in a vacuum. There is always some form of advertising that small businesses can use to boost brand awareness and sales.

Advertising is your business making a first impression

Through advertising, you can communicate everything about your small business – location, phone number, website, products, services, and industry-specific information like menus. All the different advertising options, from a local newspaper to a social media post with an international reach, options old and new may benefit small businesses the most if applied in a strategic way that reaches the business’s target customers.

More than that, advertising is the first impression your business makes on the world. Whether it’s a tote bag you hand out to strangers or a TV commercial, you will build customer loyalty if you create a memorable experience associated with your brand. It is true that modern marketing is complex and best managed by educated and trained professionals, but for a small business that may not know where to start, here are some marketing basics.

1. Establish an advertising mission objective: Every promotion has the same goal – to boost brand awareness and sales. A business should determine a specific mission objective that guides its marketing plan to achieve targeted and measurable results with favorable ROI. For example, suppose your small business is a restaurant located on a beach boardwalk. In that case, your objective may be to increase sales by a certain margin during summertime when the area is ripe with tourists and develop a different campaign during the “off-season” to draw in locals. Each approach requires a customized approach using both common and unique channels to leverage the various medium’s marketing reach.
2. Create a budget: Decide what your overall investment in advertising will be. Do your research. See where and how competitors in your market advertise to get a general idea of what head-to-head ads will cost. As you work your way through the advertising basics, you will identify the traditional or digital mediums that will optimize your results. It may be many inexpensive ads or two bank-busting ones. It does not matter as long as the advertising has the intended effect defined in your advertising mission objective.
3. If possible, hire professionals: An investment in an advertising agency specializing in the recommendations that comprise the rest of this list may be the best way to manage your marketing efforts. Experts will know advertising law, advertising costs, Bureau of Consumer Protection regulations, consumer protection principles, email marketing strategy, social media strategy, SEO marketing, digital marketing strategies, PPC advertising, Co-Op advertising, and other specialized marketing activities limitless potential best realized by professional advertisers.
4. Determine your target audience: Until you know who you want to reach, you won’t determine the most effective and cost-effective ways to reach them. Allocate dollars after due diligence, vendor shopping, whatever it takes to maximum effect for the minimum investment. Get the demographic data. Know their habits. Know where they congregate in the natural and virtual world. Imagine going on the customer journey.  The more you know about your existing and potential customers, the more personalized your approach and message can be.
5. Invest time and effort to learn the various advertising channels: Every advertising avenue has its advantages, disadvantages, and cost structures. Get to know the multitude of marketing channels as well as your target audience. Think of yourself as a matchmaker, setting up your advertisement with prospective customers. What is the best avenue that will provide the maximum ROI? One size does not fit all, and a campaign does not need to saturate every possible channel to meet your objectives.
6. Choose your marketing mix: There are so many traditional and digital advertising avenues to consider that it may seem overwhelming. However, once you understand your mission, have a budget, and know your target audience, it will make the process of determining your optimal marketing mix much more straightforward. Here is a list of many of the ways your small business can advertise.

• Business Website
• Word of Mouth
• Television
• Video Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
  • YouTube
  • Facebook/Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Snapchat
• Google AdWords
• Google Ads
• Google My Business
• Online Marketing
• Consumer Reviews
  • Yelp
  • CitySearch
• Pop-up ads and banners
• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Search Engine Optimization
• Mobile Advertising
• Radio
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Direct Mail
• Email Marketing
• Email Newsletters
• Blog Posts
• Trade shows
• Trade publications
• Billboards
• Signage
• Leaflets
• Public transportation
• Movie theater advertising
• Local online and print directories
• Novelty items (e.g., pens, totes)
• Business card
• Coupons

Talk about an all-you-can-eat buffet. Now choose five. That’s not a serious statement, but you get the idea. Your marketing mix may be all or one of the above. An effective marketing strategy matches the medium with the ideal customer and budget, which takes time and effort, but if you get the marketing tools right, your business will benefit.

1. Develop your campaigns: DIY, ad agency, or your girlfriend’s mother. Now that you have a marketing mix, somebody, or some people, must create the mind-blowing ad campaigns that will catapult your business to success. Here is an additional opportunity to consider hiring professionals who specialize in telling a brand’s story through content marketing, digital marketing, or business marketing and have the talent and experience to develop creative ideas into intriguing advertising that will reach a wider audience.
2. Choose your timing: Depending on your business type and its resources, you may not need to advertise year-round or have the money to afford to do so. Determine when an advertising campaign will have the maximum benefit to selling your product or service. It may be seasonal, or a specific holiday, or game day, or Wine Wednesday. Make your ad spend go as far as possible while achieving the maximum results.
3. Monitor and measure your results: Nobody gets everything right all the time. Your advertising strategy should undergo periodic and scheduled reviews to determine which mediums and campaigns have had the most impact on your mission objective – sales. A business should get the data, analyze it, and make informed course corrections to sustain the desired level of exposure. Seek out customer feedback through customer interactions, customer inquiries, and a proactive customer relationship management strategy. Online analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics) are easy to obtain. Plow through those metrics and KPIs and see where the chips fall.
4. Innovate: A campaign that works one year may not work the next. Constantly seek new ways to improve and promote your business that aligns with your mission objectives. Make sure you have relevant content, and your advertising messages are current. Customer retention is an ongoing process, and advertising is

The best way to build a brand and customer loyalty is to provide an excellent guest experience

No amount of clever marketing and advertising dollars will boost your brand and sales if you don’t deliver on the promises you make about your business. Happy customers are repeat customers and act as goodwill ambassadors of your business. High-level customer service creates a memorable and positive customer experience.

The power and influence of TV commercials have waned, but they are still an amazing tool for advertisers.

Television commercials have lost power and effectiveness when compared to other forms of advertising. DVR technology allows end-users to scrub product advertising from their sets, subscription/streaming services, smart devices, and the rise of digital social media advertising. Television’s audience has shrunk, and the amount of time they spend watching commercials is even smaller. A good argument can be made that human attention spans have also diminished.

Television’s waning influence is a monumental shift for an advertising medium that invented “going viral” before the phrase existed. “Where’s the beef?” “Whaaazzzuuup?” “Fly the friendly skies.” “We bring good things to life.” ‘Have a Coke and a smile”. “Just do it.” These are just a few brand slogans that came to life in television commercials and earned iconic status in American popular culture.

A well-conceived and produced commercial can still have that kind of impact and should always be considered an option for the marketing mix, but the pathway is more arduous.

Every year during the Super Bowl, we see the top investments made in this medium in rapid succession in just three hours. There are usually mixed results, indicating that anything less than hitting all the right notes may lead to an underperforming campaign. If you plan to produce a commercial to promote your product and brand, you should follow a roadmap to mitigate some of TV advertising’s challenges and uncertainties.

Step 1: The Big Bold Idea

Get Don Draper on the line! Every successful commercial starts with a big, bold idea with the potential to mesmerize potential customers into action. The idea may be a character like AT&T’s Lily or Progressive Insurance’s cast of oddballs, a tag line like “King of Beers,” a spokesperson, or a character like that ubiquitous Gecko, and nothing beats a beloved celebrity (if you have the connections and cash).

The most amazing ideas are concepts that can play out in a television commercial with dramatic effectiveness while answering the consumer’s question, “Why should I choose you?” For campaigns with larger budgets, a commercial’s message can play out in a series of ads that retain the central brand message.

Insurance companies like Geico, State Farm, Progressive, Liberty Mutual, and Allstate have perfected the latter using every technique – characters, taglines, spokespeople (or animals), and celebrities – and are excellent examples of the progression of an idea from conception to commercial.

Step 2: The Budget

Concept to commercial can represent a significant investment. You will need a lot, and the top line will be the television air time you purchase during which your commercial will run. As for the rest, you must break down your total budget into three: Pre – Production, Production, and Post – Production.

Pre-production includes paying for a script and hiring a production company. Production includes all expenses related to the making of the commercial such as talent, equipment rental, location requirements, and camera crew. Post-production is editing, graphics, music, etc. This step takes some time and research. Once complete, you can proceed to find the best value for each stage of the process.

Step 3: Follow the Formula

Effective television commercials follow a familiar formula.

1. Hook your viewer’s attention in the first five seconds.
2. Tell the fantastic story of your must-have brand and your brand’s values.
3. Give viewers all the reasons why they should choose your brand. Sing your praises.
4. A call to action. Buy and love our product. Remember our brand forever.

An excellent example to consider is a TV commercial for a store with a sale during the holiday season. Each step of this formula has infinite possibilities, but each includes the Big Bold Idea, which ties them all together into a compelling brand message. At its end, the commercial calls the viewers to shop now before the sale is over or miss out on the most miraculous savings in human history.

Unfortunately, you can’t shoot a formula. You can only shoot a script.

Step 4: Write the Script

“If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage” is the universal golden rule of any film production, whether a Hollywood tentpole movie with one hundred-million-dollar budget or a local commercial produced on a shoestring budget. Without a well-written script that translates your Big Bold Idea into the language of film, you will not end up with an effective commercial.

For example, the product and message must come across if the watcher is listening to the commercial or viewing it, so what is said is just as important as what is seen.

The script is the blueprint the builders use to put up the building. If there are structural flaws in the blueprint, the structure will collapse. In commercial television terms, you’re going to buy time that is thirty seconds or two minutes.

Your script must be one of those exact lengths and follow other dramatic rules such as tone, pacing, set-ups, and payoffs. Writing the script is a specialized skill. Find someone with those skills to write your commercial.

Step 5: Hire a Production Company

Once the perfect idea turns into the ideal script, the script must now turn into a shooting script—time to hire a production company. A production company has the right talent to guide the creative process from page to stage. A production company’s roster of creative professionals includes directors, cinematographers, script specialists, lighting specialists, skilled artisans, set designers, and wardrobe, to name a few key players in the commercial shoot.

A production company has the expertise to elevate your Big Bold Idea into a Big Bold Commercial in ways you did not realize you could. For example, you are using a green screen to go places or a steady cam to produce a particular emotional effect.

Step 6: Storyboard

The way shots flow in film or video is called the production design. The script should have established the timing and pacing, and now it is the job of the campaign’s creators to collaborate with the commercial director and director of photography to determine the production design. The most effective and economical way to ensure that all stakeholders have an in-depth understanding of the final product is to storyboard a visual breakdown of each shot.

The shots add up to sequences. The sequences add up to acts. Acts add up to the whole script. To see a pictorial representation of what the viewer will see and hear at each stage of the thirty seconds or two minutes allows for instant changes and experimentation that are cost-prohibitive and time-consuming if you shot them on the fly during production.

Storyboarding the action gives your production team, actors (if applicable), animators (if applicable), and editors a common picture and creates the optimal conditions to create the best quality commercial with the greatest production value.

Step 7: Shoot the Footage

Time to step back and allow television commercial production professionals to do their jobs. It’s all fun and games until you have $500,000 worth of shots that have a boom mic shadow in the middle. Shooting a commercial is a significant expense.

A production must remain on schedule and on budget, which is two different things, but intricately linked. If you don’t stick to your production schedule, you may have cost overruns. Your shooting ratio – the number of takes you shoot per one shot used – should be as high as your budget allows.

It provides more options in the editing room and increases the likelihood that your final cut has the highest possible quality content. Be flexible as sometimes reality gets in the way of getting the exact shot you planned.

Production days are long and stressful, but with the right production company and supporting cast, the tangible material of your concept – the footage – will be a success. Once your production is “in the can,” the production period is over, and post-production begins.

Step 8: Editing

Editing raw footage into a cohesive dramatic structure is an art form that requires technical and creative talent. If you proceed according to this plan, your storyboard guides the editor during the crucial editing process.

However, even with an airtight production design, incredible raw footage, and a detailed storyboard, the editor is in creative control of the final cut. His or her expertise will give form and birth to the actual commercial.

Step 9: Ensure the Highest Possible Production Value

Production values mean your result is professional-grade quality regardless of your budget and resources. The technical aspects must be seamless. It must be thirty seconds or two minutes, or it will cut off when aired.

The audio and video must sync, and the audio and video must match. Syncing means that when somebody talks, the words come out of their mouths without delay. Matching means that what you hear corresponds to what you see.

This rule follows for any words, logos, slogans, etc., that may appear in the commercial. The audio mix must be in balance. Edits must be clean. Graphics and effects should integrate with the overall production design and align with current standards.

Step 10: Run your commercial

Buying time to run a TV commercial is expensive. Maximize a commercial’s effectiveness and impact through proper placement and frequency. A television commercial needs to reach the target audience at key times, ideally as many times as your budget allows.

For example, if the commercial is for a kid’s toy, it should run in the morning opposite a popular cartoon or other child’s program. Running that type of ad opposite “Sixty Minutes” or at midnight isn’t going to result in a favorable ROI.

There are notable exceptions to this rule. Apple’s iconic “1984” ad ran once. That commercial benefited from the ultimate placement, the Super Bowl, and a jaw-dropping budget (even by Super Bowl standards). However, in most cases, placement and frequency work in tandem.

An effective TV commercial does it all.

To conclude, the example of Apple’s “1984” is worth re-visiting because it only ran once. Steve Jobs had a big and bold idea. His concept was written, planned, and executed by professionals. The production value was flawless. In the first second of the commercial, the viewer was drawn in. The creative vision was unique and spellbinding.

The special effects were cutting edge for commercials at the time, while the editing and audio were produced at an advanced level typically reserved for award-winning films. At the end of the commercial, its message was clear, and its groundbreaking messenger, Apple Computer, Inc., was forever branded into the minds of its viewers. Your commercial can be the same.

Video is a popular and effective digital marketing tool to connect a brand with its target audience

Once the sole domain of the trained professional, video went global when the first home video camera was introduced. Overnight, millions of people became amateur filmmakers.

You can indeed create your own video content, and you can do it right from your phone. Social media platforms make it easy to make and post videos of all types and lengths. The popularity of video as a storytelling medium is at an all-time high. Consider video editing and streaming platform Tik Tok. It’s gaining thousands of subscribers per month.

Study after study supports the effectiveness of video as a digital marketing tool. However, just as unique and engaging video content can elevate a brand’s profile and communicate its message and values in a positive, memorable way that no other medium can accomplish, a poorly made video can drag the whole thing down in 30 seconds.

Ten Reasons To Hire A Video Production Agency

1. Taking a brand’s message from marketing campaign concept to shootable script and producing a high-quality professional video that resonates on an emotional level with potential customers is difficult for an experienced team who does it every day. You can’t do it. It is that simple.
2. Only a video production house has the creative and technical expertise required to produce a professional quality video and shepherd it through Pre – Production, Production, and Post – Production. Talented artists and technicians with specialized skills that ensure the final product meets a high creative standard staff each phase. A weak link during any stage, or role, can sink a video project.
3. Production value is the filmmaking term for doing as much as you can with as little as you have. A marketing campaign with a limited budget range can still produce a technically flawless video with dynamic, meaningful content that exceeds expectations. Video production professionals who possess the unique skill sets and experience to create “movie magic” will ensure a successful final product regardless of the resources.
4. The quality of your finished product impacts the overall impression people will have of your brand or business. While there are bound to be exceptions if you do it yourself, the results will most likely be noticeably and egregiously wrong. Do not sacrifice expertise, skill, and quality to save a few dollars. Hire a professional video company instead.
5. Your excellent concept and ideas may be just that – concepts and ideas. To take a concept from its inception and make it into a filmed property is so tricky the people who do it the best are paid millions of dollars. A professional video production company will collaborate with your marketing team to take the incredible ideas everyone is excited to share and bring that vision to life.
6. If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage. This saying is a Hollywood truism. Chances are nobody on your team has experience writing a video script or knows how to take the final script and convert it into a shooting script. How about storyboards? Cold reads? Revisions? Script continuity? This is just the script. Video production companies employ writers with the creative vision to take a brand’s message and make it into a tangible blueprint that will be the foundation of the project’s success.
7. The professional-grade equipment required to go from “page to stage” is different and better than the smartphone. A video shoot requires a wide array of cameras, lighting, audio-visual equipment, and editing equipment, all of which are useless in the hands of amateurs. Only trained people with high levels of technical and creative proficiency can unlock the possibilities of the technology.
8. A video production team does more than provide the creative and technical expertise to guide your project through the video production process. The group brings industry knowledge and networks with them. They know the best sound stages, permit operations, and where to get that camera crane you’re dying to use for half the price – to name a few out of hundreds of essential details that are an integral part of high-quality video production. They bring several marathons worth of legwork that you and your busy team will not have to do.
9. Creative differences: It’s not a term you hear or worry about until you have a room full of storytellers-by-assignment who have no professional training. Immovable positions will form. Conflicts will arise. Personal preferences will drive decisions instead of professional insight. In the end, the work will suffer, and the brand’s message will be underserved. “Gigli” happened, and your big corporate video can be just as big as a disaster if every shot has the shadow of Ken-from-Finance’s head in it.
10. Professional secret: Making a film, any film, is excruciating in its monotony. If it’s not, the finished video will most likely be wrong. Professional pilots spend most of their time going through checklists, not actually “flying” the clear blue skies. Professional filmmaking is a series of lists that one prominent director once described as “getting your arm caught in a threshing machine.” You don’t want to do it.

Grow Your Business With Video Marketing

A business that doesn’t have a video marketing strategy misses the most significant opportunity to develop a relationship with its potential customers. Video’s effectiveness in communicating a brand’s message and values is unrivaled by any other medium and impacts other critical metrics such as conversion rates and customer retention. Leveraging video’s storytelling prowess is best achieved by partnering with professional video production companies.

Whether creating a 15-second Tik-Tok video or a web series, video quality, production value, entertainment value, technical proficiency, and appealing memorable content are the domains of multi-disciplinary skilled artisans. To ensure the success of all the hard work that goes into creating an iconic brand, the best way for a video project to succeed is to hire a video production company with the specialized talent necessary to create high-quality marketing video content.

How To Cast Actors For Marketing Videos

Using the right actors in your marketing videos is essential. Whether you choose an onscreen actor or a voiceover actor, casting the right person is a big decision. Here are our top casting tips.

How do you choose the right voice actor?

Let’s start with voice over artists and what they can do for your video. Choosing the right voiceover artist will give your video the professionalism that will make it work. A professional voiceover artist will understand the creativity and precision required and bring versatility and range to your project. An experienced voice actor will likely have on-camera or on-stage experience. He will be able to take direction and deliver the authenticity that is so important in a marketing video.

The right voice can give your brand a lift and may even become known as the voice of your brand. Something you’ll want to consider when casting a voiceover actor is the importance of tone. A professional will understand how to strike just the right tone and will know exactly where to pause. If the voice is off, it can make your video boring or, even worse, can put your audience off.

A great voiceover will emotionally and credibly communicate the message of your video. Use these tips for picking the right voiceover artist.

• Start by making a list of the emotions that describe our brand. For example, an investment firm would want to convey security and stability. A home product would want to convert friendliness, efficiency, and positivity. You will want to pick an actor that best embodies the emotions of your brand.
• Decide whether you want a male or female voice. Studies show that many find a female voice more soothing and a male voice more authoritative.
• Ultimately, it depends on your brand and your message, and who your ultimate target customer is.
• There are many voice actors, and getting started with picking the right one for your project can be overwhelming. This is why working with a video production company can be so helpful. They will have a stable of actors they have worked with and will have the skill to match your product’s voice. Ask around for recommendations if you have contacts in the agency world.
• Take a look at the previous work of the actors you are considering and look for range and any work in your verticle or targeting your audience.
• Think about your audience! This is perhaps, the most critical consideration. You will not use the same voice for a child’s toy that you would use for a product targeting seniors.
• Try to test your finalists’ voices with people in your target demographic. If you are not your demographic, your choice may be off.
• Think about the pitch of the actors’ voice. A senior audience will do better with a deeper pitch. Think about modulation and whether the actor is creating and holding interest and clearly enunciating the words.
• Be sure to choose the right accent. If you are appealing to a specific region, a regional accent may work. If you are marketing nationally, a neutral accent will serve you best.
• Think ahead! This voice may become the voice of your brand. You don’t want to break the trust and familiarity established with your audience by changing out the voice mid-stream.

Will an Actor or Owner Be Your Video Spokesperson?

Many people choose to be the face of their brand instead of using an actor. There is no easy answer as to which is best. Some people may think seeing an actor in your video is more professional and convincing, while others are turned off by this and want to see the people and story behind your brand. There are authenticity and transparency in having an owner spokesperson.

Here are some pros and cons to both approaches.

• Choosing an actor will give you the experience in front of the camera that will make them look trustworthy and authentic.
• It will be easier to work with an experienced actor and likely require fewer takes to get a good result. They will know how to follow directions and show the emotions you want to convey as long as they understand your brand’s personality and the target audience.
• A disadvantage of hiring an actor is cost. Actors may charge on an hourly or fail rate and sometimes even look for royalties or commissions.
• If you are using the owner or someone associated with the company in your video, there will be an authenticity that is difficult to match. And you will know your brand and product better than anyone. This can bring sincerity and trustworthiness to your video.
• Using a company member also makes it easy to make future videos and maintain continuity from project to project.
• An owner or member of the company may not be able to achieve the level of comfort in front of the camera that is essential. The last thing you want is to make your audience uncomfortable because of a lack of camera presence.
• The ultimate decision should be based on who can best represent your brand professionally and authentically while staying within your budget.

How to Cast the Perfect Actors for Your Video

Here are our top tips for casting the right actor for your video:

• Cast actors that your target audience will relate to. People are more likely to buy a product if they see themselves or what they aspire to look like in your video.
• Cast actors who are attractive but approachable. Don’t make the actor too attractive. Strive for someone attractive but believable as the “person next door.” Try to find actors with something memorable about them.
• Cast actors who will signal to your viewers that you are talking to them and make your audience feel like they can identify with your brand.
• Choose actors who convey trustworthiness and come across as genuine. Do an onscreen test, even if only with your cell phone. Actors can come across very differently on screen than in person.
• When casting, be sure to have the actors read your actual script to be sure they are capturing what you are looking for.
• Think about whether the actor is on-brand for your product. What are the things that define your brand? Is it innovative, high tech, humorous, or maybe youthful? Be sure the actor aligns with these aspects of your brand personality and can deliver those elements authentically.

You will react to actors based on your personality and experience. It is natural to have a gut reaction as you watch a variety of actors. You are looking for a particular “type,” even if only subconsciously. An actor’s type is her physical look and demeanor. You form opinions of people as soon as you see them, and this is natural. Wait for that actor whose performance engages your interest and seems to understand your brand’s essence best and convey what you are trying to say.

When casting a video, a full-service video agency like C&I Studios will know how to find and cast the perfect actors or voice over actors for your video.

We’re doing our part to put South Florida rap and hip hop scene on the international radar. What have you done lately?

Let’s give it up to Nylle Thebes for this dope freestlye on this week’s episode of Freestyle Friday! Be sure to follow Nylle Thebes on Instagram to help get his name out there!

If you possess lyrical skills to compete with the best then hit us up to be featured on the next Freestyle Friday. If you aren’t a lyrical wordsmith but do appreciate artist profiles and spotlights on local talent, then subscribe to our Youtube Channel. We add fresh, original content weekly and just relaunched the ongoing Dailies series with brand new episodes, which now invite you to experience life at C&I Studios.

Putting the South Florida Rap and Hip Hop scene on the map!

We have studio locations all over the world, from Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., London and Fort Lauderdale. Our main headquarters is our Fort Lauderdale office so we have a deep bond with artists in the area. Whenever we aren’t working on projects for our clients, we are doing whatever we can to help other artists build up an audience. Freestyle Friday is one of these intitiatives.

So far, we have worked with some of the best South Florida rappers, like Sam Stan. In fact, Sam Stan was recently a guest on #UNCREATIVERadio talking about the release of his new album, Happy Campers. You should definitely check it out!

Freestyle Friday features the best of South Florida rap music!

Give Marnino Toussaint a hand for turning up on this week’s episode of Freestyle Friday and be sure to follow him on Instagram.

If you possess lyrical skills of your own, hit us up to be featured on the next Freestyle Friday. If you are not a lyrical wordsmith but do appreciate artist profiles and spotlights illuminating local talent, then subscribe to our Youtube Channel. We add fresh, original content weekly and just relaunched the ongoing Dailies series with brand new episodes, which now invite you to experience life at C&I Studios.

Putting the South Florida rap scene on the map!

We are passionate about helping other artists wherever we can. Since our headquarters is in Fort Lauderdale, we focus a lot of our attention on South Florida artists–musicians, models, poets, and creative entrepreneurs (to name a few). Freestyle Friday is our way of giving South Florida rappers a stage to share their talents and establish South Florida rap music as an elite micro-genre.

We feel it’s important to give artists a place to grow their audience; to market themselves beyond the scope of their network. In fact, that is literally what #UNCREATIVE is all about! If you’ve never checked out our blog, you’re missing out. There is a ton of awesome content to inspire your craft.

You should definitely follow our Youtube Channel, too, if you want to see more original content. Oh, and if you are an artist looking to be featured in an upcoming series, don’t hesitate to reach out!

BTS with Sabela

A Live Performance of “Love Jones” at Artwalk

We were the original pioneers of the first Fort Lauderdale artwalk. You know, the one in FATVillage. We established this event because we wanted an outlet where we could show the community what we do when we aren’t working with clients. Every month, we create cool exhibits centered around art, technology, and good friends. Some of the exhibits are designed for the community to participate, like C&I Storm, while others are for their entertainment, like this performance by Sabela.

Most people think we only do client work. But that isn’t the case. Not at all. We are constantly doing our own thing; making cool art to enlightment our generation. There aren’t many agencies creating the type of content we release every week. For instance, we have a series called Dailies, which we release Mon-Fri, that shows exactly what life inside the studio is like. There’s no sugar coating. It’s just us… beautiful, unedited, unscripted Us. If you like this video, you should check it out.

Also, click the button below to see more of Sabela’s work. We created an artist profile that speaks to her many talents.

And be sure to follow Gee Paid on Instagram.

Freestyle Friday Featuring Isthatryxn

And the freestyle continues…

Last week on our debut episode of Freestyle Friday, South Florida rapper Sam Stan called out another local artist to pick up the mic. Well… guess who showed up at the studio today? We’re here on Freestyle Friday featuring Isthatryxn!

Be sure to follow Isthatryxn on Instagram!

h1 Heading Testings

Freestyle Friday Featuring Sam Stan

h1 Testings

Debuting our latest celebration of local talent is South Florida rapper, Sam Stan.

We’ve dubbed this new series Freestyle Friday. While everyone else is out there carefully curating every word they speak, we’re featuring rhetoric in freeform. Let’s not forget that there are still people out there who aren’t afraid to share what first comes to mind.

Isthatryxn, if you’re watching, this listen closely. You’ve been challenged to turn up at the next Freestyle Friday.

Be sure to follow Sam Stan on Instagram!

When we were young…

…we would watch old movies, stare at actors and models in photography magazines, and get lost gazing at iconic billboards. But it wasn’t the talent that we were so attracted to. It was simple for us…how did they make this? How did they make me feel what I feel?

At that moment, for most of us who work at C&I, we knew it was the behind the scenes, the crew, the forgotten ones, that we related to the most. It was where we knew we belonged.

A lot of people know our studio as an agency. It’s pretty incredible to get to work with the range of clients that we do, but when we are dreaming, we often find ourselves thinking about creating inspiring projects to change people’s perspectives.

Filmmaking is one way we do that. Our studio has made a few films in the past, but we wanted to take a big step towards making new, quality, original content. So ambitiously, in November 2017, we decided to create another film, Christmas Eve, written and directed by Joshua Otis Miller.

Christmas Eve is now available on Amazon.

It sounds fun, but it’s really not.

Making things like this, while still doing all the client work that is required of you is very arduous task. The nights were already long and the time was already short, but regardless, our love of creating always beats sleep.

The film was written in November of 2017, and on December 14th, we started production on what we knew would be a huge challenge for us. We knew it would be a challenge because our films up until this point were manageable. Two actors, one location and a good story. Christmas Eve shook everything up. We would shoot in Fort Lauderdale, New York City, and Brooklyn at several locations, with a much larger cast than ever before.

It was last minute—a producer’s nightmare—but we were doing it. In order to keep the budget manageable, we wanted to film some scenes in Fort Lauderdale, making them look like they were shot in New York. This, in itself, was a challenge that made us work so much harder to tell this story.

The one thing we knew we didn’t need to worry about was our talent. Rafael Jordan and Elisabetta Fantone would lead this film and we knew they would be flawless.

We had worked with Rafael on C&I’s first feature film Me, You, and the Road (too embarrassed to link to that film :)). We worked with Elisabetta on our last film before Christmas Eve, The River Cabin. So, it was really awesome to reunite with both of them on our biggest project to date.

To make matters even more difficult, since we were already battling a tough schedule, we wanted to score the film before we shot it. This is of course, completely unorthodox, but we had a great connection with our composer Darren McFate and we knew he would bring something incredible to the film. And instead of grabbing music from this artist or that one, we hired and orchestra, and Darren wrote and hand crafted each note.

We started with filming in Fort Lauderdale, at the Broward Center for Performing Arts, Riverside Market and our own HQ just to name a few locations. After these first few days were done, it was time to take our talents, and our gear, to New York.

If you’re anything like us, you love gear talk, so here is what we used on this film:

• Red Monstro 8k (Camera A)
• Red Epic-W 8k (Camera B)
• Red Dragon 6k (Pick ups, second unit)
• Red Scarlet 5k (Broll, Pics, second unit)
• Red Raven 4.5K (BTS)
• Angenieux Optimo 24-290
• Angenieux Optimo 30-90
• Schoeps Mk41 Sennheiser
• Mk416 Zaxcom Lavs
• Movi Pro\u2028

And of course, everything in our huge grip truck which is called “The Tom Van” named after our DP Tom Van.

Filming in NYC is where the film got really challenging. We had two days and two nights to get through the majority of the film.

Moving all this gear around, along with our favorite character “The Bike”, throughout New York was a huge challenge. Rafael was challenged to bike everywhere, and if you’ve seen the film, his character is generally rushing everywhere. Thankfully, Rafael is super fit and was ready to bike over and over and over again take after take.

One of our favorite scenes is the scene with Yolanda.

Carolyn Johnson is an actress from South Florida that we flew to NYC to do this scene, and from the moment that she stepped on the set we knew this scene would be really special. The way that she delivered the lines “I can see you Michael” really became a keystone moment of the film.

Shooting all day is one thing, shooting at night was another. And the kicker was, we were a crew of Floridians shooting in the freezing cold.

Spending so much time outside, standing on set—and for a small production like ours without trailers and stand-ins—was a big challenge for our talent. We all just pushed through.

On the last day of filming, our backs were up against the wall to get the final eight scenes. That morning, though, we knew we had a problem. When Rafael woke up, he didn’t have a voice. All of the biking, and the cold wind hitting his neck caused him to get sick and lose it. We pushed through for the rest of the day, passing him whiskey and honey to drink, hoping that his voice would return for the all the night scenes we had to do around 2 AM.

But at night, it didn’t get any better. And we had the horrible decision to make; either continue shooting the film and have a lead character without a voice, or stop filming, miss our Christmas Eve deadline and finish it…later.

We chose to stop. And it killed us.

Our excitement just died and it was a very lonely somber flight back to Fort Lauderdale, knowing that what we set out to accomplish… we didn’t.

We wanted to make it work, but our agency work was demanding our attention, and we knew chances were slim to none for all our schedules to line up again in the next few days. We had no choice but to wait a year to complete the film.

An entire year of just being…paused.

It sucked.

Projects went by, our agency work got very busy. We were shooting and editing a lot this year, lots of ad campaigns, television commercials traveling to cities across the country. It was busy. But our producers held us together, and they pushed the entire year to get us back on track. And in November we were back in NYC with more time, thicker jackets, a bigger and better crew, and we finished this film. We still had issues, of course. We got kicked out of locations, rain and snow ruined the first day of the shoot, but we made it all work. And now, finally, December of 2018, we are releasing this labor of love.

If you watch the film, there is a scene of Michael and Eve walking under all of the magical lights….it was slippery and icy as we filmed that scene, but with a few camera tricks and awesome acting, you would never know it. Movie Magic is a real thing.

Filming that last scene was unreal. To be standing there, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, knowing that we were on the last shot—finally.

To us, our cast and crew were absolutely heroic. The ones that believed in this project before it was tangible. The ones that believe in creating meaningful projects with purpose to challenge us, inspire us to be better versions of ourselves. So much has to come together to make a film perfect, and to us, everything does because of one thing.

It’s the crew.

It has always been the crew. Not the gear, or the location…the crew.

So, while most people are looking at the Colin Firths and Meryl Streeps of a film, remember the blood, sweat and sacrifice that the crew put in to make your favorite scenes come to life and the names that you scroll over in the credits embody the same spirit as the people that work in our studio. Our work is often unnoticed and forgotten, but this—this is our love. Telling stories is always about letting the story itself shine, and that requires the storytellers to stay in the background.

True magic isn’t solely made out in front, on display…it’s built upon a foundation of effort in the shadows. It’s built upon individuals choosing to press in, dig deeper, and require more of themselves.

We’ve been asking ourselves… what exactly will it take?

On Friday, the airport we frequent on average more than once a week, made us the most recent city to become a #pray for hashtag.  Five people were killed, six seriously injured, and countless people went through an unthinkably tragic trauma.

We have opinions–strong ones–about gun violence.  We believe that there are ways to mitigate the sheer volume of gun related deaths in our country.  We believe that innocent people should not be senselessly mowed down when waiting for their bags at the carousel.  We believe that some of this can be prevented.

We don’t believe that this is going to go away (evil people will do evil things with whatever resources they have available). We don’t believe that everyone should turn in their guns (It’s called gun control, not gun elimination).  And we don’t believe that it’s easy to change anyone’s minds as it pertains to the second amendment.

But we’d like to talk about it.  We have charts that we’ve studied, we have read the actual second amendment, from “well regulated” to “not be infringed”.  We understand the argument from a federal power vs. states rights viewpoint.  The fact of the matter is that some states make it easier to purchase an AK-47 than it is to own a dog or sell milk.  That seems silly to us.

There are thousands of articles out there like this. Thousands of people spouting off these facts, and displaying these charts, and listing these victims, and pointing towards these petitions, and giving these Congressional email addresses.

But right now, we want to open a discussion.  Because we would rather there be a conversation than a one-sided diatribe.

If you are against strict federal gun control laws: Why do you feel that gun ownership should have a wide window of minimum requirements?  What happens during a firearm purchase in Louisiana is vastly different than what happens in California.

On a personal level, if you own a firearm, why? Do you think it should be easy to own one?

After 9/11, the federal government formed the TSA.  And yeah, it has caused headaches for all of us, but we are all behind it, because we believe it makes us safer.  So… what will it take for us to all get behind more thorough federal regulations of gun ownership?  If tragedy after tragedy in movie theaters, universities, grocery stores, nightclubs, churches don’t do it… If 20 first-graders don’t do it… What is going to do it?

Today, we will elect the next leader of the free world. Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. And no, we can’t elect Barack again, and it’s a bit too late for Michelle to jump in (Michelle 2020!).

Politics is war, and I’m not sure it should be that way or not, but it is.  We have filmed commercials for many political campaigns over the years, and one thing is very true; you really have to pay attention to what the real message is.

Campaign managers are smart, way smarter than you or I.  While they are on TV saying one thing, they are making you feel a completely different thing. It’s an amazing magic trick.  You have to pay attention to the sleight of hand.

Their goal is to paint this picture that the world around you is so bad, that these are two horrible candidates, and, sometimes, that there is no purpose of voting at all.  That your stupid little vote among the millions and millions of people is so worthless.

That is the Magic Trick, and people really do fall for it, all across the country. Many millennials are falling for it.

I hear so many conversations about why people feel like their voices don’t matter, things like:

“Well, I just don’t like her” (You don’t have to–she’s qualified.)

“Well, both candidates are awful” (Stop complaining, and just choose one.)

Here is the reality of the situation: we have a very qualified individual applying for the most important job in the country, and we have one who has not shown the aptitude or character for the job.  You are in the interviewer’s chair, you have their applications on your desk… you can’t get up and walk out of the room, never to return again.  As an American, this is part of your job.  You can’t run away from it, you need to make a choice.

Now, we have already made our choice (yay, early voting!), but this is a group effort, and you need to do your part.  We believe that the most qualified individual should get the job, but this is America, and everyone gets to put in their opinion.

If you don’t vote, then you don’t get to contribute or be a part of any political conversation at all, for the next four years.  Just… shut up.  You don’t get to joke about moving to Europe, or Canada, or talk bad about Obamacare or whatever.  You discredit anything you could possibly say in a conversation by the mere fact that, when you had an opportunity to make a valuable contribution, you didn’t.

I like what my main man Louis CK said (see video below)

“If you vote for Hilary, you’re a grown up;

If you vote for Trump, you’re a sucker;

If you don’t vote, you’re an asshole.”

Today, don’t be an asshole.

We welcome guest blogger, Salma El-Wardany.  Check out her insta.

The death of life and the discontent of a nation

By nation, I mean the whole fucking world. Reality seems to have been suspended, indefinitely, and we’ve accepted a new kind of world, one that is strange and lonely, broken and a little bit empty.

On one side of the pond, Great Britain just kicked themselves out of the EU. America is flirting with the possibility of voting in one of the most ludicrous presidential candidates the free world has ever seen. Right wing sentiment is getting more air-time than it ever has before. The Great Barrier Reef is dead, which literally tells you everything you need to know about climate change. Consumerism is at an all time high, and we’re just so very tired.

We work twelve hour days at tiny desks, while the air conditioning circulates dead dreams and failed ambitions. We don’t like the people we report to and, sometimes, we like our colleagues even less. All the hours we work never seems to amount to hard cash, and we’re still broke. Pensions are a relic of the olden days and retirement is basically a myth. On tired train journeys home we look at BuzzFeed articles with titles like; ‘All the mansions you could afford to live in if you lived anywhere but where you currently live.’ While BuzzFeed is hilarious at times, I could swear its sole purpose is to make you feel shit about your life. It’s a conciliatory place to laugh your troubles away with everyone else who is in an equally bad boat as you. As for love, it’s become so accessible via tiny apps on your phone, that now nobody seems to want it. We’ve saturated the market and no one is buying anymore. We just jump from bed to bed, throwing away relationships as easily as we do our phones the minute the new iPhone hits the market.

Something is terribly wrong. The stench of discontent clings to everything, and I am no longer sure if we’re living, or existing. Can you remember the last time you lived? Like, really lived with a reckless, happy abandon, full of joy and hope for the future? I can’t remember the last time I felt anything but fear for the future. What debt university tuition fees would bring, what job I was going to get in the recession, how I was ever going to get on the property ladder, will I ever find anyone to swipe right to on Tinder, what Brexit means for me, what happens if Trump gets in… and on and on and on.

And it’s easy to sit and grumble about your trials and tribulations. Hell, I could write for days about how shit everything is right now. But no, this isn’t one of those articles that bemoans everything, because let’s be honest, there is enough of them out there.

This is a call to arms. This is an action. A shout. A cry for help and a plea for change. It’s me standing up and saying let’s build the barricades.  Come and stand with me. It’s a hope and a prayer. It’s getting off the carousel and putting my head above the parapet. It’s a dream. A vision. A call to humanity. A stand. A revolution, and it’s long past time we had one. It’s a desire and a want for something more than whatever Instagram is selling us this month. This is the acknowledgement that the way we’re living isn’t right, and it’s time for a change.

It’s easy to see the catastrophic events that are happening around the world in isolation; from wars, to economic crashes, police brutality and dead Syrian babies washed up on empty beaches. But in reality, they are part of a complex structure, intertwined and run by the financiers of this world to create a system of power. A system of discord and uncertainty that keeps us all afraid, guessing and constantly unhappy. Fear, uncertainty and misery are powerful weapons to command.

Fearful people don’t know what to stand for, and when no one is standing, there stands no opposition. A miserable nation constantly buys houses and cars, watches and bags in an attempt to grasp happiness. Our pursuit of happiness happily feeds the economy. An uncertain population does nothing. They sit and continue to read ridiculous articles about how shit their lives are while sharing the latest viral post of ’10 instances of genuine human kindness’. Or something like that. I know you roll your eyes when you see these kind of titles on your Facebook feed, but did you ever stop and wonder why you see so many articles like that? Yes, they’re mostly rubbish, but articles like that go viral because we’re all craving basic human values that we seem to have lost in this new world.

Money is all we aspire to. Love is disposable. Loyalty interchangeable and kindness is weak. That is our world today.

There may be clowns on the street, but Batman isn’t going to sweep in and clean the city up for us. It’s on us. It’s our time to stop accepting this insane world we’re living in and start doing something.

And that sounds terrifying because a revolution means rebels, and rebels die a lot of the time. But no one is asking you to start throwing rocks at tanks or living on the streets. That’s not the revolution we need. We need a human change that revolutionizes the things we hold dear. We need to shift our values onto a better cause than our materialistic possessions. The ‘Top Ten Fall Outfits of 2016’ is absolutely, unequivocally not something worth fucking fighting for.

Instead, what if we started acknowledging that there is a problem. Silence is the most effective way of controlling the masses and by talking about things we normalize behaviour. Let’s start talking about the things that are wrong so it no longer becomes taboo.

What if we realized we didn’t need as much as the brands want us to have.

What if we started valuing time with friends and family, over money earned.

What if we accepted that we didn’t need to own houses, because we can’t take them to our graves anyway.

What if we actually stopped working at 5:30, and left our work phones in the office.

What if we all started telling our managers and bosses that twelve hours was unnecessary and not acceptable.

What if we didn’t spend ten bucks in Starbucks every day, and gave it to a cause instead.

What if we fundamentally changed the makeup of our day with small actions that were based in kindness and love. The kindness to give some of your wealth and time away, and the love to give your friends and family.

What if, every little thing we did, started to change the foundations of our society and we became a country rooted in community and the pursuit of living. Right now our society thrives on ownership and individualism. Everyone is so busy ‘making it on their own’ and trying to be some sort of hero as we accumulate more and more, or at least, die trying.

But here’s the thing that we’re all drastically missing. We weren’t built to be alone, and humans thrive in communities. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, when a beautiful sunset lights up the sky, you still stop and stare in wonder. The money, the cars, how many followers you have on Instagram, it doesn’t fucking matter. None of it matters. What matters are those sunsets and who we share them with.

So it’s time to give the system your middle finger because it’s already taken most of your life. It doesn’t deserve anymore of it. And above all things, you deserve better. We all deserve to live better. Whatever it is that we’re all doing now, it’s not living. It doesn’t even come close.

Laguna Blends Partners with ArDoMi Media Group and C&I Studios to Amplify Market Expansion by Initiating a Media Marketing Campaign

KELOWNA, BC – September 28, 2016 – Laguna Blends Inc. (CSE: LAG) (OTC: LAGBF) (Frankfurt: LB6A.F) (the “Company” or “Laguna”), a network marketing company, announces that it has retained the digital marketing expertise of ArDoMi Media Group and C&I Studios to increase market awareness of the Company’s line of functional beverages made from high-quality hemp protein.  ArDoMi Media Group is collaborating with C&I Studios to launch an initial marketing campaign for Laguna Blends.

C&I Studios has worked with clients such as Polaroid, Nike, P&G, Sony, Universal, ESPN, lululemon, Coca Cola, American Apparel and more.
Los Angeles-based ArDoMi Media Group specializes in digital marketing and branded content, and has successfully developed and launched national and international marketing campaigns for industry-leading clients such as Nike, Adidas, Snickers, Verizon, Spark Communications, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, P&G, Comcast and others.

For Laguna Blends, this caliber of branding and marketing expertise provides the opportunity to increase brand visibility in both targeted and unexplored markets. The initial media campaign’s production shoot date is scheduled for October 7th and 8^th 2016 in California.

“Having been immersed in the plant-based product world for years, I am excited to present Laguna Blends to the marketplace and promote its industry-leading products, bridging my experience that ranges from traditional forms of advertising to social media campaigns. We look forward to introducing Laguna Blends to many more mainstream consumers,” says Herb Dogan, partner and founder of ArDoMi Media Group and I-rey, Inc.

Joshua Miller, Executive Director of C&I Studios said, “We are excited to partner with ArDoMi Media Group for the production of the Laguna Blends Media Campaign. It’s not often that you find such a creative group of individuals to work with as well as such innovative products to rally behind. Producing this shoot in Los Angeles, California is going to be an amazing spring board to already exciting products. This will for sure be a campaign to keep your eyes on.”

“We continue to see increasing awareness and acceptance of the vast health benefits of hemp, and our goal at Laguna Blends is to elevate our marketing strategies to become a leading supplier of hemp and CBD products. We are excited to partner with ArDoMi Media Group and C&I Studios to enhance our business profile and take the Laguna Blends brand to the next level, says Laguna Blends CEO Stuart Gray.”

Ray Grimm, President of Laguna Blends said, “Branding is critical and ArDoMi has the knowledge and expertise in bringing new products into the market through their marketing and social media campaigns.  We are pleased to be partnering with both ArDoMi and C&I Studios, world class Marketing and Media Companies.”

Functional Beverage Products

“Caffe” is an instant, “just add water” hot coffee beverage that is infused with both whey and hemp protein. With 2 grams of protein in every serving, Laguna’s proprietary product packs a powerful protein punch. Caffe, contains Instant coffee, whey protein hydrolysate, hemp protein, natural flavors.

“Pro369” is a single serving, “on-the-go,” plant based, instant, hemp protein that is served cold and comes in 4 delicious flavors. Pro369 is water soluble and can be directly mixed in water, added to milk, almond milk or coconut milk. Pro369 can also be blended in a shake or smoothie. Pro369 is also a source of Omegas, 3, 6 and 9 and contains ginseng.

Laguna Blends has been granted approval from Health Canada for four powdered Pro369 flavours:  Chocolate Banana, Mixed Berry and Vanilla Caramel and Tropical Powder.  Pro369 contains Hemp protein, natural flavors, stevia, and American ginseng.

The Minister of Health from Health Canada has granted Laguna a product license along with a Natural Product Number (“NPN”) for all four of the Pro369 Flavours. They are all listed under the same NPN.

• A source of protein that helps build and repair body tissues.
• Source of amino acids involved in muscle protein synthesis.
• Assists in the building of lean muscle.
• An adaptogen to help maintain a healthy immune system.

Supportive therapy for the promotion of healthy glucose levels.

HempOmega®

HempOmega® is an environmentally sustainable, vegetarian source of Omegas 3 and 6 that boasts a superior nutrient profile. A water soluble, homogenous, powdered ingredient, it can be easily integrated and/or manipulated, with no unpleasant taste or chemical contamination – opening up entirely new product formulation opportunities. Hemp Omega’s greater ability to endure the digestive process delivers unmatched bioavailability, thereby maximizing its potential health benefits.

Hemp has long been recognized by the health and nutrition industry as a super food, cited in many publications as a balanced source of all ingredients required to achieve health and wellness.

CannaCeuticals, CBD Skin Care Products

“CannaCeuticals” Swiss heritage is at the core of Canna’s revolutionary skincare products. It’s pure, cosmeceutical-grade CBD extract hails from the crisp, clean air of Switzerland, but Canna’s heritage goes much further than that. Swiss culture is known for its precision and perfectionism, and CannaCeuticals radiates that same standard in every formula it produces.  Canna’s team of formulators are made up of chemists and product developers that analyze every detail, sourcing ingredients from all ends of the earth to create the most balanced, highly efficacious, anti-aging CBD skincare products in the world.

CannaCeuticals CBD7 anti-aging skincare products incorporate cannabidiol (CBD), a superior antioxidant and a potential anti-inflammatory agent, both of which are significant in anti-aging. Canna’s Swiss heritage influences a sense of unity in its products, and it combines CBD with other essential anti-aging ingredients to create formulas that pack a powerful punch.

Clinical trials were conducted by BioScreen Testing Services, Inc., a third party FDA approved lab located in the USA.  The test subjects that used the Cannaceutical facial serum noticed a 100% overall improvement of the skin appearance within a two-week period.

Laguna has signed a distribution agreement with ISO International, LLC, a transaction under which Laguna has acquired the exclusive right to market, promote and distribute seven CBD skin care products of CannaCeuticals of California, USA (“Canna”)

About C&I Studios

We create media to do our part in changing the world. While we do not have millions of dollars in the bank, trust funds or, wealthy parents, we have cameras, pencil and pens and ideas. We believe that we have a responsibility to use media to change the way people view themselves and the world. C&I Studios has worked with clients such as Polaroid, Nike, P&G, Sony, Universal, ESPN, lululemon, Coca Cola, American Apparel and more https://c-istudios.com/

About ArDoMi Media Group

ArDoMi Media Group is a digital marketing and branded content company based out of Los Angeles, CA that caters to companies and businesses of all scopes. The marketing firm primarily provides quality content for companies looking to increase brand awareness in unexplored markets. ArDoMi Media Group and the I-rey, Inc. team have marketed, produced, planned and executed national and international marketing campaigns for clients such as Nike, Adidas, Snickers, Verizon, Spark Communications, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, P&G, Comcast and many more. 

About Laguna Blends Inc.

Laguna is a network marketing company that generates retail sales through independent affiliates. Affiliates utilize tools and technology that enable them to build an international business from their own home or anywhere else in the world.  This technology replaces the need for expensive travel and hotel meetings.

The Company is currently focused on the nutritional health benefits derived from hemp and CBD’s. The Company currently sells its products through its independent affiliates in the USA and Canada.

HempOmega® is a Trademark owned by Naturally Splendid Enterprises, Ltd. and is used under license by Laguna Blends Inc.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

“Stuart Gray”
Chief Executive Officer

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS:

Howe & Bay
Suite 600 – 535 Howe St.
Vancouver BC
V6C 2Z4
1.604.449.5302

COMPANY:

https://cbdskincream.com/

Join Us On Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/LagunaBlends1/
Twitter: @LagunaBlends

Forward-Looking Information:
This news release contains “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company’s business, products and future the Company’s business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company’s products and plan will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation, and does not intend, to update any forward looking statements or forward-looking information in this news release. The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release.

So what is C&I?

C&I is a combination of fresh, incredible ideas, the perfect team—who fears no project or deadline, and a little bit of magic.

It is tough to describe what C&I means to us, because it’s more than a company. Being able to help business owners and corporations accomplish a marketing goal through storytelling is an incredible feeling, and we are addicted to seeing these campaigns work.

What we do is hard to replicate. You can’t hire an internal marketing team and achieve the same goal. We have the outside view, the outside opinion, the fresh perspective. We are thinking not only about our clients, but how our clients can be successful every single day. What we do at C&I is more than just a job to us. We were made to create, and we bring that passion to every single project that we work on. We package our creativity with compelling research and statistics to accomplish any goal.

The secret sauce of our company is its people. A team of selfless workaholics that aren’t satisfied with just being good. When we step up to the plate with every client, we never want a base hit, we want to throw our bat on the ground and watch the ball fly into the stands. We aren’t the middlemen, either. We are the men, we are the women, and we know how to take an idea straight out of thin air and technically execute it right in front of you.

We aren’t creatives, we are professionals. Creatives need to be inspired to take action. Professionals are so good, that they need to no inspiration to act.

These words have only tried to scratch the surface of what C&I is. Watch this video, and you’ll see what we mean.

Featured Photo: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images
Photos: C&I Studios

We keep on trying to find something meaningful to add to the discourse. Video after video after video. Very violent ones, with blood and screams and terror. It’s easy to want to turn your head and look away, or to see the “Graphic Content” disclosure and scroll past it, but maybe it needs to be watched. Maybe you need to see that weirdly contorted arm with blood gushing out of it. Maybe you need to hear the screams of disbelief. It’s very comfortable where you are right now, perhaps, and seeing a video of a man dying might throw you off for the rest of the day.

Today’s video comes to us from just down the street, and it doesn’t show the bloody part, but it does show the fear part, the disbelief part. From about 50 yards away, a SWAT trained officer, using an rifle, couldn’t distinguish between a toy truck and a weapon. He was told it was a toy truck, but the current explanation is that he was trying to protect the man he shot — by attempting to shoot the autistic man with the toy truck. We won’t delve into the massive list of questions that this raises. (Why was the victim cuffed afterwards? How could three shots miss the supposed gun-wielding autistic guy from such a close range? Why not just listen to the therapist laying on the ground, who is clearly explaining the situation at hand?)

Maybe you’re wondering, what is the deal with this? All of the sudden, so many incidents, it’s an epidemic! No, no. All of the sudden, so many phones that can take video of what has been going on for decades, it’s a chronic disease.

There is a very long and growing list of people, of mostly black men, who have died because they are unfairly targeted by armed men, whether police or citizen cop. If you aren’t black, you probably haven’t had enough of an opportunity to be moved by it, to feel uncomfortable. If you are black, you might say a little prayer when you stick your key in the ignition every day, because the reality is that all it takes is one self-aggrandized officer crossing your path to steal your life away.

There is something in the air right now, and it is going to go beyond the hashtags. What does “to serve and protect” look like? What should it look like? At what point do we, as a nation, join our voices together and say, “Okay, that’s enough. This is a problem that needs to be solved, and now.”? And at what point do you, yourself, step out from behind your binoculars and be a participant rather than an observer?

We never want to post an article without suggesting practical things you can do to be a part of the change. This one is more complicated. Besides protesting, what can practically be done to fix this deeply rooted problem?

Be a part of the change.

Orlando.

By now, everyone has spoken out against the absolute horror that struck a town not too far from our headquarters.  The temporary Facebook profile pics are up, the hashtags are flowing, the gun control debate is raging, the anti-Muslim rhetoric increasing… this is how we do this.  Someone takes a gun into a crowded place, shoots people, and the best we can do is add a profoundly captioned black and white selfie to Instagram, or perhaps a skyline shot.  It’s noise, and we are fooling ourselves if we think it is making a difference.

So, rather than contribute to the noise, we want to suggest real action you can take, to help Orlando and to help society.

TALK TO PEOPLE.

Don’t tweet or post or snap. Look at someone in the eyes and have a real conversation about guns, about hate, about terror and fear.

Incidents like these can be very isolating, and members of the LGBTQ community are already often the victims of exclusion and isolation. So talk to your friends who identify as LGBTQ. A genuine conversation will go a lot further than your hashtag.

WRITE AN EMAIL OR A LETTER.

In America, you can go to a gun show, and buy an assault-style rifle without a background check, and this is legal.  You can go to a dealer, pull out some cash, and pick up a semi-automatic without even producing an ID.  Easier than picking up a 6-pack of some craft brew. If this seems stupid to you, it’s because it is.

Is your Congressman or woman checking out your Twitter? Looking at trending hashtags? No, no they are not. But maybe if enough of us let them know that we’re sick of this, they’ll do something about how ridiculously easy it is to acquire a firearm that can kill hundreds of people in a matter of minutes.  Gun control is just that—gun CONTROL.  Not gun elimination. 

Here’s a quick guide to contacting your Congressman.

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS.

49 people lost their lives Sunday morning. They didn’t go to Pulse that night asking for their eventual victimization to become a talking point in America.  They were real people with friends and families and dogs and cats and jobs and hopes and dreams. Now their families suddenly have to maneuver through funerals and cleaning out apartments and trying to figure out how they are supposed to put one foot in front of the other each day.  Send a couple bucks their way. Here’s a legit GoFundMe that will help those family members.

And learn just a little bit about the victims here.

——

There’s a lot more that we want to say from behind our Macbook screens, but honestly, we are sick of all of the talk.  Let’s actually do something this time.

Photo Credit:ABC 7 Eyewitness News

This is a short clip part of a an initiative we took to film more. The best way to get better at anything is to practice. Since we’re always influenced and inspired by what most might pass of as mundane, we figured we could highlight parts of South Florida’s day-to-day in a mini-series we’re calling Slow-Mo Sundays.

The idea is to revel in activities we would otherwise overlook and really capture the beauty of movement, texture, color, and time. This installment was captured during our shoot in Malibu for The Shop @ C&I. We got our hands on a beautiful vintage Alfa Romeo convertible and drove it to a hidden Airstream in the Malibu mountains in California. The shoot as whole was magical and we thought this clip really captured the essence of the trip

Something incredible seems to be taking over the pliable, yet beautifully stubborn minds of Millennials. It’s as if we all woke up one day and realized we had much more to do than settle into our nine-to-fives and pray that someone will actually want to marry us — eventually. But even those souls who have yet to truly discover exactly what it is they want to do with their lives have something in common with those who figured our their paths at an early age.

We have begun to experience something we weren’t quite able to put our fingers on before; an internal pulling which, at times, causes a lack of interest in ordinary activities such as grabbing drinks at the bar with friends or heading to that same warm spot at the beach that practically has a permanent imprint of your behind.

It is an intense craving that cannot be matched: Wanderlust.

A trip to Guatemala changed the perspective of the C&I crew and inspired something inside each member on the trip. Upon returning home, with dried lava from Pacaya Mountain on every surface of every shoe, they knew there was something different about this particular trip. Instead of leaving their experiences in Guatemala, they decided they had to not only share them with whomever they could, but to inspire others to get packing, as well.

Also, now each team member knows the price of his power, it is worth it to not just buy the package and buy levitra online.

See how other cultures live. See that the world is filled with both breathtaking beauty and immense pain, and know that changing your life for the better begins with something as simple as a plane ticket and an open, curious mind. Discover what exists beyond that safe bubble in which you’ve lived your entire life now, because someday, you might not be able to.

After discovering that only 23% of Americans have a passport, while 66% of Europeans have one, C&I felt a strong urge to encourage everyone they could to give into their wanderlust and see the world. Inspired and ready to create, they printed, “Pack Your Bags,” onto a shirt, and that first shirt would be the start to a new project which would develop into The Shop.

We know that T-shirts and accessories can be bought at any boutique around town or via any online store, but The Shop goes far beyond clever words printed onto fabric and reaches past consumers to aid those in need around the world.

To those who say Millennials are consumers, not the creators, we say that you couldn’t be any more wrong. We are the #Uncreative — the rebels who dispel traditional labels in order to generate our own unique ones.

We are the adventurers.

We are ready for more, and we refuse to wait for the “timing to be right” or for anyone to tell us we can.

For the Love is a true example of what happens when you manifest the hell out of your visions and dreams. C&I Studios and ExposedPR came together for a project that encompassed the love they cultivate for their community in a way that allowed everyone interested the ability to participate.

For the Love was built brick-by-brick and with the help of great and innovative sponsors. Over 30 bands played the festival and the provided Ft Lauderdale with the means to celebrate life, music, and our city; For the Love became a staple moment that was shared with everyone.

The band Kids explain what music means to them  show you what they brought to the table at For the Love Music Festival.

We met up with our long time friends Forlorn Strangers in Nashville to document what music means to their hearts and minds. Forlorn Strangers played the main stage at the For The Love Music Festival on February 7th, 2015.

Kyle Cox is from Fort Lauderdale and moved to Nashville to pursue his musical dreams. He performed on the main stage at For the Love. It was great working with Kyle Cox again for his Live @ C&I Studios spot.

Tennessee based artist Corey James Bost played the main stage at the For The Love music Festival on February 7th, 2015. Corey James Bost explains his approach to music and why its important.

BleuBird is a local rapper from Miami who came to perform for us on the main stage at For the Love.

This is a short clip part of a an initiative we took to film more. The best way to get better at anything is to practice, and since we’re always influenced and inspired by what most might pass of as mundane, we figured we could highlight parts of South Florida’s day-to-day in a mini-series we’re calling Slow-Mo Sundays.

The idea is to revel in activities we would otherwise overlook and really capture the beauty of movement, texture, color, and time. This is a shot we picked up while at Fort Lauderdale beach of some locals enjoying a quick pick-up game of volleyball.

The Reach Kini is a joint effort between our good friends at Montce Swim and our non-profit organization C&I Reach. We wanted to offer a product that helped us raise money for Reach while maintaining a fashion forward, sexy, and ultimately something people would want to wear.

Through Reach, we want to shed light on the amazing people and organizations all around the world doing selfless, amazing, life changing work. We want to help raise awareness, funds, and ultimately change the way people think. We want to challenge people to care, and to educate people about life beyond their own small world.

With Montce, we managed to create a bikini that focuses on the girl who wants the best of the beach, fashion, and self expression. Alexandra Grief, their head designer, focused on the “fit and flattery” for all body types ideal. Regardless of your size, Montce bikinis are made to complement your body, so go ahead and try our Reach Kini on and kill it this summer.

This holiday season we worked with Kids in Distress, The Salvation Army, and Children’s Home Society to bring an uplifting experience to children in need. There was breakfast for the kids, we played games all morning, and opened presents after a couple of hours. There was hot chocolate with marshmallows that the kids loved, and we even had Diaz playing some music to sing along to which was awesome, but these descriptions of the day don’t do it any justice. Its something felt through the presence of all these children.

We were all so touched, so humbled by the kids’ reactions and how their faces lit up when they found out they had presents to open like a true Christmas morning, it was incredible.

There is nothing better than giving someone else more than you ever imagined was possible. Simply put, It was a magical day.

We were honored to partner with Help-Portrait in Washington DC. We’ve been partnering with them for a few years now and are so grateful to be able to give back to the community in the only way we know how.

Help-Portrait is a community of photographers coming together from across the world to use their skills to give back to the local community. Help-Portrait is about GIVING the pictures, not taking them. Every holiday season, you have the chance to give a family something they may have never had before—a portrait together. In December, photographers around the world grab their cameras, and with the help of Help Portrait,  find people wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford the luxury.

To partake in Help-Portrait, we had to go through the organization SOME, who helped us link up with the families in need and the venue for us to work in. SOME (So Others Might Eat) is an interfaith, community-based organization that exists to help the poor and homeless of our nation’s capital. They meet the immediate daily needs of the people they serve with food, clothing, and health care. They also help break the cycle of homelessness by offering services, like affordable housing, job training, addiction treatment, and counseling to the poor, the elderly, and individuals with mental illness. To support SOME you can contact them on their website.