Joe Simone: [00:00:00] Dan, I have been in B2B marketing for, let's call it just shy of 15 years now. If video strategy is not part of your strategy, I think you are making a huge mistake, and I think if you're not thinking strategically about your video strategy and just pumping it out for the sake of it You're making an even bigger mistake.

Dan Beresh: Everyone's saying, "You gotta have video. It's gotta be part of your strategy." And they say it's gotta be part of your strategy, and the real question is what strategy? Or do you have a strategy?  

Joe Simone: Yeah.  

Dan Beresh: I'm hoping that today what we can do is talk through a little bit about how we would create video strategy and recommendations for that kind of high-level thinking.

Joe Simone: Mm-hmm.  

Dan Beresh: And also, like you say, when you started, Joe, I think you could make a video, and it was a video. And so just by the fact of it being a video, it was amazing. Now, it's like, actually, no, I really don't wanna watch that. I'm trying to, I'm trying to get away from that. You know, LinkedIn's got that new video button on the bottom.

Joe Simone: Yeah.  

Dan Beresh: Uh, video, video, video. It's, uh, there's just nothing [00:01:00] but video that's being thrown at us. And so now it's not about having video, it's about doing video well.  

Joe Simone: Yeah. I was reading that LinkedIn was saying that video content was the top planned content for 2025. And you're seeing it- Yeah ... in the feeds.

It's just video after video after video. But how many are you stopping and watching past the first three seconds, if you even make it that far?  

Dan Beresh: I think you're starting to see influencers on LinkedIn who are using video in kind of an amazing way, and that's actually one of the ways that I would recommend learning about how to do it right because there's a bit of a difference between, you know, your, your kinda standard longer form traditional commercial and a piece of social video content, both of which I think, you know, you need to have a good strategy.

Um, but they shouldn't just be the same type of content repurposed across a bunch of platforms. And that's the, actually one thing that, you know, we, we have been trying to push clients to, to think broader as well, where even three years ago we would've said, "All right, hero video," you know, let's say it plays at your big conference.

[00:02:00] It's awesome. Then you've got your social cut down, which is kind of the exact same thing but maybe 15 or 30  

Joe Simone: seconds. Shortened, yeah.  

Dan Beresh: Yeah, exactly. I think that the best marketers are thinking beyond that and thinking, "How do I create something that feels native to social, something that feels really adapted to my environment?"

Good example is not all conferences have audio/video, sometimes it's just video.  

Joe Simone: Yep.  

Dan Beresh: You create this beautiful soundtrack, lots of great voiceover. The team takes it there, no one hears a thing.  

Joe Simone: Yeah.  

Dan Beresh: Everyone's reading subtitles. Like, you, you, you need to be thinking beyond that.  

Joe Simone: It's creating for the purpose of where it plays beyond just, "Well, we'll just make it shorter."

Dan Beresh: And the editing style that you would employ, I think, for a social video, something very cutty, very fast. Everyone expects, you know, you're stopping the scroll. Not every piece of video needs to stop the scroll, so it's really about understanding the, the ultimate purpose. And, and I think that, that comes back to, to strategy.

Uh, let's, let's talk broader though, Joe, because, I mean, [00:03:00] everyone these days obviously is talking about AI, uh, and the AI video creation tools are upon us. Veo is, is really catching up to Sora. You're seeing these- exclusively AI videos out on the LinkedIn feed, and that's a great, nice personal project for that person to have created.

But is it really gonna work for your brand? When you're a professional services brand, I think you- this is, it's a bit of a different game, and I think the game has to be come- always coming back to trust.  

Joe Simone: Yeah. I do produce videos for clients, and I do use AI to produce them. I use them to gain efficiencies where it otherwise might have taken me far longer than with the use of an AI tool.

For example, if it's a scripted, uh, piece, it's really good at brainstorming and helping me come up with a first draft, and then I can take away and really fine-tune. In terms of something like an interview case study, it is fantastic of taking all those [00:04:00] transcripts from those interviews. I can upload the treatment of the story we're trying to tell, and it can help pull out individual segments.

I'm not left there scrubbing through the transcripts or the footage trying to find that. So huge time save there.  

Dan Beresh: I think it's about saving time and becoming efficient where you can, um, and, and, and fitting that in as a tool in the process rather than it's an AI video. Yeah. And that, that's... 'Cause it's kind of a gold rush right now, and everyone's saying, "Oh my God, we've gotta get on this AI train," and I think absolutely we do.

But let's not be blinded by it. Let's use it in strategic ways that help us to, you know, achieve our goals. I, I think the, one of the places I see the use of actual video generation, of course, is in kind of a stock video edit. Yeah. So you've got your, for example, you've got your documentary, right? Your, and, and your, that's your kind of interview, and I think that's always gonna have a place as having real people in it because someone wants to look at it and say, "That's a real person [00:05:00] talking to me."

But let's talk about a really polished sizzle reel or some kind of, you know, commercial that goes on one of these huge conferences that you produce with our team. How would you use AI for that to make sure that you're still creating something awesome that's bui- still building trust in the eyes of the client?

Joe Simone: Yeah, so when we're working with our editors on these videos and we need them to parse through, say, 16 different stock sites to find that perfect clip, that can take an enormous amount of time, and that's time that we just don't have. So we've started shifting to, let's see what AI can drum up with a prompt, because you can be hyper-specific with a prompt, and it's a lot faster to iterate on that prompt that comes out maybe not quite right, but almost there, than having your editor parse through, again, libraries upon libraries of stock footage.

So huge time saves there. And a lot of it looks really good at the moment, particularly in that kind of stock realm.  

Dan Beresh: Yeah, and when you say stock realm, I'm thinking, you know, that beautiful [00:06:00] cityscape or, right, that shot that's kind of in- the inspiring sun's rising over the mountaintop type of thing. I think AI's really good at making those kinds of what I might call maybe more general shots.

Joe Simone: Yeah.  

Dan Beresh: Um, and we- I think we're gonna see a lot more tech come out that'll, enables it to, to do something specific like, you know, the waiter is serving three plates to a table of four at a dark restaurant that has this type of food.  

Joe Simone: Yeah, I think l- it's, it's fast approaching. Um, we've done some experimenting on, you know, somebody typing at a computer.

Again, pretty simple, but it still involves a realistic person, realistic typing, realistic things on screen, and You know, six months ago we saw a really wide range of, you know, that's a wonky computer, that's, that person's got six fingers. Now it's rare to see that kind of thing.  

Dan Beresh: Here's the, the thing that I've been thinking about though from a broad strokes perspective.

I think that if you [00:07:00] spend your time creating custom clips for every single clip that goes in one of these, and let's say it's a 30-second video, you might maybe get 100 clips sometimes, right? And things go by really fast. The amount of time it's gonna take to generate the perfect shot- Yeah ... or at least the shot that works for every single one of those, is so much more time-consuming than actually just finding stock video.

And you know, the other thing I'm, I've been considering is the economics of stock video, right? Like where about 10 years ago you pay a huge amount of money for any clip online. Yeah. And it kind of all imploded about five years ago.  

Joe Simone: Mm-hmm.  

Dan Beresh: Now you have these subscription sites, it's pay per month, and so we're able to put in as many clips as we want to make the video as amazing as we can.

And so you kind of have this really cheap side of things from the stock side, and then if you think about actual time commitment to, to generate it, uh, you're looking at potentially a- actually maybe a more premium video that's using AI, not a cheaper video.  

Joe Simone: It's a very specific video that would use all [00:08:00] AI-generated, quote-unquote, stock.

W- where ... Because yeah, you, you can pay these cheaper subscriptions and go through this huge library, but even still we've run into the case where we still cannot find the right thing. That is where I see a huge efficiency gain from AI to say, "This is what I need. I'm not finding it. Can you generate this particular shot?"

And you can give it the prompt to have it blend in with your existing edit and this existing stock. You can show it, you know, this is the kind of stuff we're using, tell it how to match that, and then get something that falls in between  

Dan Beresh: It's about using a tool that gets you from kind of 80%, you know, kind of a B, B+, Exactly uh, that you could kind of get to if you're not willing to do that actual shoot, which obviously is 10 times more expensive.

Now with AI, we're like, okay, we can get to 90, 95%. And I think that there's a new role coming out for agencies, which is to be those people who can use AI in [00:09:00] ways that can get you to that 90, 95%. There is a skill required, and I think will always be required, to, to, to bring it to that level. Not everyone can go in and just prompt.

And so that, I think, is gonna be where we play and where we can really bring value to clients who say, "I want this very, very specific thing," and we say, "Yep, great. We got you. No worries." Let's talk about quantity versus quality. And, and that's something that I think we're gonna see increasingly, right? Is, is we've already seen it.

There's been a huge democratization of the creation of video, and so more and more people have been able to create it. With AI, obviously that's gonna be exponential. So where's, where's the line, Joe? Because obviously you need to show up. You can't just create one video a year and expect that to be effective.

But at the same time, you just can't be putting out anything and everything from everywhere that's just, that's just crap, right?  

Joe Simone: Yeah, it's, it's a really, really fine line between, between, you know- Constant cadence and just being annoying. That, that person that's always in your feed, oh my God, [00:10:00] this is the fourth video I've seen of them today.

That's too much. It comes back to what we said at the top. You need to be strategic about it. Um, quantity for the sake of it can kill credibility. It's video for the sake of it, and, you know, that dilutes the trust that you're trying to build with your audience. There's this kind of misinformation out there that more content equals more engagement equals more pipeline, and that's just not the case.

It's actually good or smart content equals more engagement equals more pipeline. Because if it's not good, they're not gonna watch.  

Dan Beresh: I think there's two camps of people that we're increasingly seeing. One camp says, "Oh my God, I can make this so fast and so easy, I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna pump out as much as I possibly can."

And the other camp is saying, "Let me stop prior to the production and write a real story and say something that is gonna really resonate." And absolutely use the tools, but use them in ways that are gonna be smart, and yeah, that's gonna slow down your production process. But I would consider [00:11:00] strongly being in that second camp, whatever that means for you.

And, and it depends on the size of your team and the size of your company. You may be able to put out a video every week that's super polished if you've got a huge team.  

Joe Simone: What do you think contributes to the quality of the content not being worth watching? 'Cause I got, I have a few ideas.  

Dan Beresh: So I think that the first thing is you have to deeply know your audience and what they want to see.

Yeah. And v- everything you make has to be underpinned by serious research or knowledge of, of their specific mindset. If you are not actively doing market research, then I'm kind of sitting here wondering, like, what you're putting out and of why you think it might be effective in the first place. That's the, that's the first thing I'd say.

Joe, let me pass it back to you, and why don't we, we'll go back and forth here.  

Joe Simone: Yeah, I think you have to ask yourself, does this video justify itself? And what I mean by that is, is the content of your video conducive to what video is really good at? And what is that? It is human [00:12:00] connection. It is emotion.

It is storytelling. If you're using the video in your campaign just to regurgitate a bunch of stats from the report that's from that campaign, there's no new ad coming from that video, so it's a waste of space in my opinion.  

Dan Beresh: Yeah, especially when it comes to video, whenever someone comes to us with an ask, I say, "Do you really need a video?"

Joe Simone: But sometimes they don't want to hear that. They, they want that shiny cool thing to show their boss and say, "Look what we made." But then you look at what it drove, and it's Not really anything  

Dan Beresh: Efficiency is not effectiveness. And when you think about the true purpose of marketing, which is to make money for the business, you've gotta look at the metrics and say, "What is this driving?"

And it makes me so sad to hear when people just wanna say, "Well, my performance review, I showed that I made [00:13:00] five or six videos this year. Look at how great they were. They were really good quality. Everyone loved them." And I really think that business leaders need to be harder on marketers, to say, "What did you drive from these great videos?

And also, who is saying they're great?" Yeah. Keep in mind, you know, this is not a, a matter of, of taste. Uh, it, it, it is a matter of having the right mix of messaging and design that's gonna be effective with your audience. Why don't we talk a little bit about video length? This is kind of the number one question that I feel like I get asked right at the top of the project.

"Hey, Dan..." It's either, "Hey, Dan, what length should the video be?" Or, "Hey, Dan, we think the video should be seven and three-quarters minutes long." Um, and I'm sitting there thinking, "Hang on a sec. Let's, let's think of some other, uh, let's think of some other variables here before we make that decision"  

Joe Simone: Yeah, like you say, there's so much information that goes into that decision, and this has been said time and time again, so it's nothing new, but your video doesn't need to be short, it needs [00:14:00] to be good, and that rings true There's this myth that, you know, B2B buyers and clients have the same attention spans as TikTok teenagers, and I just don't think that's the case.

I've seen them sit through two-day seminars to get the information that they, they need that they think will solve a problem that they're having. Now, those are two different mediums, but I think the logic still applies. You don't need to shave your video down to 30 seconds just for the sake of it. If you have valuable insights to add, add them.

Your audience will thank you for it.  

Dan Beresh: Think about when you sit down to watch Netflix and you're loving the show you're watching. You can watch three, four hours in a row. So your two-minute video can be three minutes, can be four minutes if it is interesting. To your point, Joe, people will watch as long as the content is interesting, and I wanna flip this on its head and say, I think you have to be brutal.

I think you've gotta look at your video, you look at your three-minute video, and you gotta say to yourself, [00:15:00] "Is this actually a three-minute video? Does it have to be that long?"  

Joe Simone: It has to be insightful. I'm, uh, it comes back to don't do video for the sake of video. Don't extend your video's length just because you think what you're saying is valuable.

If it is, absolutely keep it. Don't be constrained to that mythical 30-second, 60-second window that, that all the metrics are telling us we need to be doing to drive engagement. Because I think those metrics, in my opinion, can be a little bit skewed, because how many great quality videos do you see on those feeds?

Dan Beresh: The other thing in the world that we're working is You only need a few high-value individuals to really like the video for the video to be effective. You don't need... Like, view count is absolutely a vanity metric. I would not even look at it. "Oh, my video got 1,000 views." Well, are all 1,000 of those people on the decision committee of the purchase?

Just, you know-  

Joe Simone: How many of those [00:16:00] people are the person who posted the video and is just watching it to, to see if it worked?  

Dan Beresh: How many people are underneath that? And we see a lot of this, underneath that person trying to get a promotion, watching the video, commenting on LinkedIn. Saw a... Well, we had a, a video sent to us that w- had a huge number of views and comments from a big tech company, and I went and looked at it, and 95% of the comments were from people inside the company trying to suck up to the leaders who posted the video.

Um, it's a totally natural thing, but that is not an effective video, and, and I think there's a real, uh, a, a real line you need to draw in the sand there. So I think, I, the other thing I wanna say is, remember, big Hollywood studios will spend millions of dollars filming a scene that ends up on the cutting room floor.

Why? Because they know that including that scene is gonna make the movie worse, and it is going to negatively affect box office numbers. Like, let's not, let's not mince words, Hollywood is all about the money, and so is your marketing. [00:17:00] So when you think about what they're doing, they are making a strategic decision to make more ROI off the end of their creative product, and I think you have to do the same.

And frankly, and we said this before, if you have a high-up leader who is in your video and is not contributing to it, I think you have to find a way to say to that leader, "I'm so sorry," you know, "Let's take this content and repurpose it. Let's put this into a different video. This is just not where it belongs."

Joe Simone: Back to our initial point, maybe that is not meant for video. Maybe it is a thought leadership post. Maybe it's some other type of medium. Not everything has to be video, and the most successful teams are the ones that know when and where to do what.  

Dan Beresh: Yeah, 100%, and here's the other thing that we were talking about last week, Joe.

Let's think about a view-through chart on a video. It is inevitably going to be a downward slope, right? Because you're gonna start watching at the beginning, and people are gonna quit at some point. Hopefully, they'll watch all the way through if they can, but it's never gonna be the case. So be smart about it.

I mean, [00:18:00] yes, everyone's talking about put that hook at the top of your video. For sure. That's, you know, we, we're, we're beyond that. I think also put the good content at the beginning of your video.  

Joe Simone: Put the meat of it right there  

Dan Beresh: Yeah, and actually, if you think of someone who stays on to the end, that's someone who's much more interested in your product or service.

So you could put lower quali- no, sorry, excuse me, lower in the funnel content-  

Joe Simone: Specific ...  

Dan Beresh: something that's a little more spec- Yeah, exactly, like a testimonial quote or some kind of, you know, statistic back half of the video. Keep your front half more broad, bringing people into it, getting people excited type of thing.

I think that's the way to structure a video in 2025. And, and again, people do not care as much as we want them to care about our product, about our service. It's gotta be about them.  

Joe Simone: They wanna know it's gonna solve their problem. That's it.  

Dan Beresh: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Does it have AI? Again, AI in your software, it's not a benefit, it's a feature.

Yeah. And so tell me not w- not that it's AI, tell me how the AI's gonna help me to ultimately solve [00:19:00] my problem.  

Joe Simone: Exactly.  

Dan Beresh: Um, and hopefully, you know, through this podcast we've helped you as a listener to, to think a little bit broader about, okay, how am I gonna implement AI in terms of my creative and, and how am I gonna make sure that it doesn't take over s- so far that I'm part of that kinda group A that's just going after the absolute quantity, quantity, quantity?

Because even before, A, the advent of this generative AI stuff, we saw people going after the quantity game, and I really do think it's a losing battle, especially if you work for a premium brand, especially if you're a big professional services or tech company. Uh, I just don't think that's the way that, um, that you're gonna win in the market.

Video is and very much, uh, has always been a shiny object. Things are more difficult than ever to get into, and I would really just consider a few things before you, you know, before you, you dive headfirst into video production because otherwise you're just gonna create efficiency and not effectiveness.

Joe Simone: Yeah, I think it comes back to the top. Be hyper-specific about is video what it [00:20:00] is that you need, and then if it is what you need, make sure it is purposeful and adding to the conversation versus just the noise that's already out there.  

Dan Beresh: Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thanks everyone.

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