Zack Slingsby | Human Factor Media
Branded content is any marketing content that does not have a direct sales-related objective associated with it. Because it’s not designed to have a straight line relationship with sales goals, many marketers struggle to justify investing in it.
But branded content has an important place in the marketing mix, and this week, Human Factor Media founder Zack Slingsby explains why.
Human Factor Media specializes in a “branded entertainment” - a subset of branded content focused on video. In this interview, he covers:
When it does - and does not - make sense to invest in branded entertainment
How branded entertainment can help differentiate you from the competition
What good branded entertainment looks like
Why you should think about creating serialized content
How to measure the success of branded entertainment
The channels that you can use to distribute your content
The brands that are doing branded entertainment really well right now
Check out the full episode to get Zack’s insights on all of this, and more.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Zack on LinkedIn
Email Zack at zack@humanfactormedia.co
Visit the Human Factor Media website
Zack and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:02):
Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Zack Slingsby, who is the founder of Human Factor Media. Welcome to the podcast Zack.
Zack (00:25):
Hey Kathleen, how are you?
Kathleen (00:26):
I'm great. How are you doing?
Zack (00:28):
<Laugh> I'm doing great.
Kathleen (00:30):
So we're gonna have an interesting conversation around video and specifically branded content. And that is something that, you know a lot about through Human Factor Media. So maybe we could start out with you sharing a little bit of your background and story as well as what Human Factor Media is with my listeners.
Zack (00:50):
Absolutely. well, thanks for having me on here. We have been around almost five years based between Nashville, Tennessee and, and New York city. We have production teams in both places, and I think we came about, you know, most of our, the, the background of the people on the team is mostly creative. It's not wouldn't say it's marketing. A lot of us have had roles that have been tangential to marketing, but mostly I think we saw that there was an opportunity in the branded content space for creative storytelling, the, that could make use of our skill sets. You know, I think that as social media became such a key part of all brand strategies you realize that brands started to see that they were on a stage and part of what being on a stage requires is putting on a show. And so we thought that would be something that we could help with and to at least some extent we've been right about that.
Kathleen (01:50):
So when you and I first connected, we talked about this notion of branded content, and I wanna, I wanna pick up there because I think most marketers, well, no, not most every marketer I'm sure who listens to this podcast is, is talking about video is thinking about video as part of the marketing mix. And the, but there's a lot of different types of video, right? There's corporate explainers, there's like sales video, there's animated storytelling, there's all kinds of different ways you can use video there's episodic video. How do you define branded content? Because that's really a subset isn't it of the wider universe of video.
Zack (02:34):
Absolutely. Great question. Yeah, it is. It it's so branded content, it term doesn't even actually relate to video. It actually just really means anything that is, that is not a direct sales motivated ad. So it could be a white paper. It could be a series of, it could be a blog, right. It could be. So branded content means just about anything that's designed to get attention without trying to inform you that this is the, this is what they're selling and here's what it costs. And this is, you know, what you should pay for it and then please go buy it. So when we say branded content in the video world, we definitely mean that. But we also, we take it a step further. We call it branded entertainment, I think, is more aligned with what we do, or at least a large part of what we do.
Zack (03:24):
I think that when you're looking at videos online, a lot of them are coming from brands, but they're still really not for you. They're about the brand. And that's, I think the important dividing line, what is this about the purveyor or the video is about the company or is it for the viewer? Is it for the consumer? And once it becomes for the consumer, the options tend to open up and the, the kind of gate that we have naturally over our, our time and attention, our kind of this protective space that we have as consumers that goes down and you invite the brand willingly into your leisure time, and that's a kind of magical transformation. The, the skip rate of, of all videos are, is, or I should say all videos, all, all pre-roll videos, all interruption marketing, all ads is astronomical it's and some platforms it's 85% on some it's up to 96%.
Zack (04:17):
On YouTube, pre-rolls have a 95, 5% skip rate. So as soon as the five seconds are up, soon as the ticker, as soon as you're allowed to skip the skip ad button that you hit it in most cases. So we've become so sophisticated as consumers at obfuscating content that we really do not wish to engage with. And that was, that was really not true. Historically, we kind of have had to sit through it. We had, you know, you're watching a show on, on, on TV and you, you wanna see what happens next and the commercials come on. That's part of the deal. And you'll kind of comment on the commercials and talk about it, but we don't really have to do that anymore. Some 80 million people have ad blocking software on their computer. There's a term called banner blindness which relates to just our inability to even notice the peripherals of websites that were so this is, this is as consumers. This is pretty much commonality to this point. So I think when we say brand entertainment, we're looking for stuff that's coming from a brand, but that you'd be very surprised that it's coming from that brand. You'd, you'd expect to find this on YouTube or on a streaming platform, or you expect to have one of your friends send you this because it was genuinely interesting or funny or inspiring instead of instead of it being something that you're forced to watch.
Kathleen (05:31):
So we started with this premise that we were gonna talk about where branded entertainment, now I'm gonna call it, fits within the marketing mix. And the reason that I wanted to start there is that, you know, I think for most companies and most business marketers, it's easy to understand when and why you should spend money to do like an explainer video or a sales video, or a product demo video, because there's such a direct line from that to let's call it pipeline if you will. Totally. I think it's, I think many marketers like the idea of branded entertainment, but for a lot of them, it can feel like a luxury or a nice to have. Because it's harder to directly link it back to results. And so I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about how, when you, when you talk with your customers, how do you conceptualize or, or, or what's the framework within which you determine like this, yes, this is something you should invest in. And here's why.
Zack (06:37):
That's such a good question. So there is something we talk about pretty much every day and it's well, the first the truest answer okay, is that it's not for, it's not for everyone. It's not, you know, you might be at a level in your company, in your, in the building of your foundation where it is a luxury, and you wanna find your most, you wanna find your most receptive audience to the product that you're selling and you wanna do it in the quickest timeframe and on the most frictionless path. And that's very understandable. And I'm not gonna tell anybody they should do that. There, that, that phase though ends as a company. And once it does, hopefully.
Kathleen (07:19):
<Laugh>
Zack (07:20):
Possibly, yeah, not right. It either ends one way or the other it ends, or it goes back and reverse. But, but once you kind of make a decision that you wanna be, someone's favorite something that you don't want to just find the lowing fruit in a, you know, in a, in a, kind of a, a, this loop of a, of an ad funnel that you've created. When you're, when you're looking at when young businesses or businesses are even mid-tier, or even bigger brands are, are making decisions, they're using first principles a lot of the time. So they're saying, well, we have, we can either test our audience, use the same message and go find different audiences and see which audiences our audience, or we can test our message and keep changing what we're putting out there and see, you know, who's, who's relating to this message.
Zack (08:05):
So those are the two variables, right? You can test the content you're putting out, or you can test the people you're showing the content to. At first, I think everyone's in the boat of, let's talk about the product. Let's talk about what it is, how much it costs, where you can get it, and here's your discount code. And then let's tell everyone that and see your audience is gonna be our, what our people, the, I don't know what your experience is. Actually. I'm curious what your experience is, but that cycle tends to run out that you, you might find it, it might go well for a while, but it tends to bottom out. Have you found that?
Kathleen (08:32):
Oh, sure. I mean, I, I talk about this all the time where, you know, if you're doing product related content, you are really only marketing to people who are in a buying cycle or who like, should be really at that point. Right. but the way buying works today you know, if I need to get a new software for the company I work for, I'm not actually gonna go to Google. Like I might have, at one point, I'm gonna go into my communities that I'm a member of where there's other CMOs, and I'm gonna say, Hey, what are you using? And so to get an at bat today, you, it's not necessarily about SEO as much as to be it's more about how do you become the name that gets mentioned within those bald gardens within those peer groups. Isn't that funny? And a lot of those people that I'm asking for recommendations from either have already bought something, or they're not going to be a customer for whatever reason.
Kathleen (09:30):
And so if you're only marketing to the person you're trying to sell to, you're missing an important part of the journey, because you need to market to the people that are the ones making the recommendation to that person. And if those people aren't in a buying cycle, they're not gonna be consuming your product related content. So how do you stay in front of them? Right. And you have to stay in front of them regularly. So you have to be creating something that adds value for in a way that has nothing to do with your product. Right.
Zack (09:59):
There you go.
Kathleen (09:59):
That's how, that's how I said.
Zack (10:01):
Any better. Yeah. You take the next one, Kathy. That was better than what I could say. <Laugh> no, that's exactly what I think it's now it's Malcolm Gladwell made this point that even though we have all these sources of comparison, product comparison, and unbelievable in and figuring out what's exactly right for us, the most common way we make decisions is by asking a friend what he or she recommends and, or asking a parent or someone we know, or like you said, going into a trust, trusted group and finding out, so you're right. That repeat exposure and then embedding yourself in someone's being someone's favorite thing. And how does that happen? That's a magical process, very hard to quantify, but it's it definitely starts with what you, what you just mentioned, which is veering outside the lane of product specificity, right.
Zack (10:48):
Going into the, going into the, the branding would be too generic, a word, but becoming, becoming something bigger than a product, you know, doing something more than a, a service. So, we think that brand entertainment or branded content is a great starting point for that. And and so, but you're, it didn't exactly get to your question cause your, your, your question is, you know, even if that's true in theory, is it not a luxury? So for that, well, that, that is one answer why it's not a luxury, but another answer would be, you know, what is more of a risk? Is it more of a risk to look like everyone else or not? You know, the, the like Don Draper's line, everyone says they wanna be different, but not really, you know, you, you wanna be, you wanna be, you wanna stand out by fitting it. You wanna kind of, you want to your marketing different, but you also ask everyone, look, have you seen, are other people doing this? Are you sure that we can do, like other people are doing this right. We can do it. So they, you don't wanna be too weird. You don't want to be to, they don't, nobody wants to be too eccentric. And that is, I think, a real it's
Kathleen (11:54):
Yes. The whole, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Right? Like there
Zack (11:56):
You go. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, there's something that's really consoling about just being different by degrees. Just, we wanna just a little stand out a little bit and that's even, even us like, and we use it in, in our, in our pitch deck, just pointing to the trend of branded entertainment. You know, it's a way it's permissive. It's a way to say, you know, this is, you're getting on a train here. You're not just totally standing out from the crowd because that's not very appealing to a lot of people who have to make these decisions. And a lot of times the decisions are made by committee and we know that's a hard way to, to achieve anything visionary, let's say, but it's and that's no individual person's fault. It's just, it's just the, the kind of nature of the beast.
Zack (12:40):
And so when you, when you do make a decision as a brand that you do really want to be different and you do really wanna stand out from competitors and in the marketplace you have to look at the ways that that's available to you. And in most cases you know, and unless you're Elon Musk and you have rocket ships going to the, in most cases, we have a very crowded market for almost all product lines. And in most cases, when you're, you're competing on product alone, the ways that you can be different are gonna be in the margins. But when you're in the content game, you have the entire the entire gamut of, of the human imagination, open to you to make stuff and try to, and try to get in front of people in an original way and resonate and connect with them as human beings. And all new possibilities were opened up and all new worlds are now available.
Kathleen (13:29):
So I, I wanna talk about like, who's doing this well, not who's doing it well, actually, what are some examples of how brands have used branded entertainment? Because the thing that I keep coming back to is I get the importance of doing stuff like this, but I also think there's a fine line, right. And I've seen companies cross it where they're creating and specifically video, cuz I I've worked at a few places that have been very video first and I've seen brands create like fun entertainment videos that just like honestly are never gonna translate into anything. I don't know. They just seem more like vanity projects than anything else versus video that is entertainment that you can see how it's like going to build a following and get people engaged, you know, create brand affinity. And so I'm curious to hear some examples of how this type of content has been used or like what the formats are. And, and, and if you have any thoughts on like how you draw that line <laugh> and maybe you don't agree that there is a line, but I feel like there is
Zack (14:33):
No there's certainly
Kathleen (14:34):
Projects and actual like quality business entertainment video.
Zack (14:39):
Well, you can do anything bad. Right, right. There's always an option to do something not the right way. So I mean, there's always, you know, like most of what you find on Netflix, you probably is not for you. Right. So, I mean, there's, so there's the majority of any content, even if it's entertainment motivated is still has adoption to not be very good. So that's that's definitely a danger. Our only kind of argument or our kind of original conceit is that you're in the, when you're in this arena, you're better off than when you're in this arena. You know, when you're, when you're starting from the mode of, of trying to make something that, that connects on a more human level, then you're, you're generally gonna be better off. Of course there's still a lot of dangers in that and there's a lot of there's execution still has to be done.
Zack (15:20):
Right. So when, when you, I, we think that, so let's say you, you creating a series. And we definitely advocate a series instead of one video. I mean, one video is just, it's just a hard and this, yeah. The volume that it's gotten to it's very hard to have a kind of dollar shave club moment where you make one video and your company changes to like a billion dollar valuation, a couple of weeks. That's very, that's a real hard thing to have happen now. And the, the amount of content being uploaded to,
Kathleen (15:50):
Right. And if it was easy, everybody would have done it.
Zack (15:52):
Yeah, exactly. Right. So the amount of content being uploaded all the time is exceeding like all of the content in human history. It's some crazy statistics. So it's it's, we've gotten definitely to a, a content shock moment. But that's, I, you know, the value of the value of a very small subset of people is shouldn't be overlooked, right? So we, once you, a lot of brands will say that they have a very clear idea of who their audience is. And so once you define that, and then you can sort of, you can have the next conversation of, well, how do we reverse engineer what they might be interested in from a content perspective, and then having no motive, more, a greater just trying to get them to watch what you've created. This is sort of the, the entertainment version of demand generation. And it's I think, I mean, Red Bull's a huge example, Red Bull TV they've become so sophisticated at it that, you know, there was an interview recently with some filmmakers who did a couple of docs for docuseries for them. And they said they were asked, you know, what's the metric that you guys used to to determine the success of these things. It was very surprising answer. Do you have a guess?
Kathleen (17:06):
Is it just raw audience numbers or
Zack (17:10):
It's it's it was the comments section. They wanted to see what they, what kind of comments they were, were being left if they were, Hey, good job, good for you. You know, not that great if they were paragraphs about how much they connected with this and how this was something they could never have seen coming from Red Bull or how they were, they thought the, the protagonist was inspiring. And, you know, if, if the, if they got to that level in the comments, they thought this was a real success. So it, it definitely, you know, not every brand to your point is gonna have the patients for that kind of creative metric, right. They're they're gonna wanna know how well, how many people click through and then, and then order a, a resupply. But I think that the line is, it's very hard to say where the line is gonna be between something, you know, that's goofy and not gonna move the needle between some and something that is gonna have such an impact that you're creating followers for life.
Zack (18:02):
And we know that, you know, we know statistically that a third of followers end up purchasing from a brand. So, you know, you follow account is it's not trivial. It is, it is an important thing in terms of the your actual bottom line. But whether that's gonna be something that just creates a kind of moment that very quickly fades away, or you're gonna create an audience, that's gonna be lifetime fans. It's, it's very dependent on the goals of the brand and the style of the brand. But I think as long, I, I think the best starting point is to say, well, if we could have someone here and we could impart to them the great value, you know, the values that we're really trying to impart here, what would that look like in a video? And then what would that look like in a series and what can, how can we test this? You know, can we, can we just run this video against this ad that we have and see what, which one has a greater watch time, which one has a greater clickthrough, which one is getting more comments, and if it's the latter, then let's try to make it at, at a bigger scale. You know, that would be an experiment that you could run to kind of hedge against what you're, what you're talking about.
Kathleen (19:04):
So let's, let's break this down. If I were to come into you and say, I wanted to do something along these lines, some branded entertainment, how, how do you start? Like, what are the questions that you would ask me in order to frame out the strategy?
Zack (19:20):
We would come in with ideas. We would come in with a deck of three or four concepts that we think would be match for your brand. And so on a, on the creative level, we would look to a couple of metrics, a couple of indicators there. One would be your, your ideal audience and two would be the, the kind of invisible characteristics of the brand itself. So maybe your, so we just did, we, we had a presentation this week with a very, a popular candle company. And so the, the, what they're really, you know, on, on the face of it, they're making these unique candles, but they really, what they're, what the brand is, how they're relating to their followers is through this idea of a taste of home. Once you're somewhere else, you're on an adventure you're in the world where you move to a new city and this candle provides you this new idea of what home, this, this, this kind of nostalgic indicator of what home was to you. And so how do you wrap that up in a series? And so we would look to create something that one would actually have some purchase online that, that there are indicators that this kind of content is already doing well online. So we're not just kind of reinventing the wheel. So you want have, I think the proper amount of convention for a branded series is not zero. You, you want to have some cliche, some, something,
Kathleen (20:45):
The frame of reference for your view.
Zack (20:46):
Yeah. Frame of reference. So many people to grab onto and say, well, you know, we, we know this from our, some part of our brain recognizes this already. We have, we have a reflex for it. So then, and then after that, we would say how do we just make it? So it exists on every platform on a very practical level. You know, you want long form series for long form content for YouTube shorts, for all the TikTok and Instagram reels and all those things. And then just very shareable snippets of the content. So, you know, you can't really make cast blanket and put it on YouTube and hope it does well. You have to create things the way people consume them now, which oftentimes is the long form stuff. But it's also, it's in the small bits that are gonna have the chance to try have a lot further and act as gateway back to the long form content and then to your website and your product.
Kathleen (21:33):
Interesting. Okay. So you're looking at the brand attributes. You're looking at the customer profile. Are there certain formats that you like see that tend to work over and over again? Or is it start from scratch every time?
Zack (21:48):
<Affirmative> well, it's so hard to know because the format might be the X factor or the, the story might be the X factor. And so it's, it's it's very I, I mean, if we, if we make something and, and we, this is, this is, I don't have any other answer. This is a bit of a, this is a very subjective answer, but I just, if we feel really like excited and motor and, and inspired by it or emotional about it, you know, then we, we haven't made it or seen it, you know, then we know, okay, this is really novel. And so you want, I think that novelty really does do well. And this is, I, I don't mean to contradict what I just said about convention. I mean, you wanna have something to grab onto, but you want to take the viewer somewhere else.
Zack (22:30):
So here's, here's a really cool experiment that was done with content. They said they did a a a test where they showed people three different kinds of vaudevillian plays. And in the first one people could predict the, the, the, what was gonna happen almost a hundred percent of the time. And the second one, they could not predict anything. And in the third one, they were right about half the time. Okay. And the first one, when they were right about everything, they thought this is hackneyed cliched, terrible, garbage entertainment, right. And the second one, when they didn't get it at all, when they could predict nothing that was gonna happen, they thought this is mental jazz, and Avant garde this isn't for me when they were right. Half the time when they got, when they get their guesses were half, right.
Zack (23:18):
They loved it. So it means that there was enough there for people to grab onto and say, there's, I have a, I have a me, a muscle memory for this content, but not so much that they couldn't still be surprised and taken to a kind in a new frontier. So I think as a storyteller, your job is to kind of take people where they are and where, what find the foundations that they're already used to. And then from there say, well, what's the next kind of frontier we can explore with them as, as viewers,
Kathleen (23:46):
You, you mentioned earlier Red Bull gauging its success by the comment section. And I feel like that makes sense for Red Bull because they have an established audience. And they've been doing this for a while. If, for brands that are just getting started with this type of content, how do you measure impact, or how do you recommend they measure impact?
Zack (24:09):
Well, some of them have done very well. And now I'm gonna blank on their names, but there are a few that I've seen recently that have really blown up by just by there's a, there's a, there's a men men's clothing line on TikTok that I'm, I can't believe I forgot, but I'll, I'll, you maybe I'll send it the link afterwards for the show notes or something, but it, they they just made funny TikTok videos and they really blew up. And then the Chubby guys also did that with a podcast and with, you know, recurring entertainment away did that. And so I, I don't think there's, no, you have, everyone has to make it. It's not like you just, you just because you have, you know, funny stuff in it or, or some dramatic, inspiring content that you're, you're shoeing.
Zack (24:56):
Definitely not. You have to find your audience, you have to be motivated about it. You have to know the best hacks for distribution, things like that, but everybody is also on the same playing field. I mean, it used to be that you had to go out in, spend millions of dollars on this stuff and find some studio distribution to help you with. And now none of that is true. You just need you know, if you can't bring in an ex outside team like ours, you just need a couple of, of young guys who understand DSLR cameras and someone who can help you be halfway sophisticated about digital distribution. And those two skillsets exist in aids now. So for a young brand that is starting I would say you're about to get inundated with options, and we both know what they are.
Zack (25:36):
You could do SEO and Facebook ads, and you could do pay per click. And you could do all the, you know, tricks to your back end of your website to stand out on the third page of Google or something. Right? So there's a, all these things that we know young brands can do, their only real differentiation point is the story that you're telling. And so I would say to once, you know what that is internally, once, you know what you're saying about yourself, you have to go through that process of how do I then, how do I then translate it into a narrative that people would want to watch? Because they're also interested, not just in, they're interested in how you created the company and what your inspiration was and how this service or product came about, but what's the tie to, to the, to the other side, to human beings.
Zack (26:21):
So I'll give you the candle example again, suppose instead of, you know, we sourced the aromas from all these different parks and all these in cities to create these amazing nostalgic gifts instead, maybe it's, you know, what is the journey of the person who left home and is now living in Chicago and is trying to make friends and is trying to get comfortable at their, at their new job. And maybe that's a, a three or four part series and in each one there's room for brand integration and product placement, and, you know, and, and the, listen, the shop now button that exists on all these social media channels. That's the best friend of of branded content strategist, because you can create content that is not about the product, but there's a shop now button on every, on every scene and in every clip.
Zack (27:06):
And so you're, you're constantly, you're, you're, it's not really that different from sponsorship in a way, because right now, brand sponsor entertainment instead, it's just production. So brand is the producer of the entertainment. So it's that much more surprising to the consumer, but you also get that many more at bats during the, during the, the kind of episodic experience to say, here's, here's what we're doing, here's what we're selling, but this story is our gift to you. This is our, this is our vignette that embodies the, the, the values of our brand. And we're just going about it a little bit differently.
Kathleen (27:39):
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned TikTok because you know, and we started out talking about YouTube and the amount of content being uploaded there. And I think traditionally people have thought of YouTube when they've thought of video in terms of where to publish it and host it. But it's, I've been fascinated watching TikTok because I feel like it's really changing the game.
Zack (28:00):
Are you on there? Are you on it?
Kathleen (28:02):
I am not, well, I mean, I think I have an account, but I'm not, but my, but my team, my marketing team and the company I'm at is actually we launched our account last week and just listed our first video. And so it's an experiment, but I just really feel like it's democratizing kind of access to this type of content for all kinds of brands and creators. Like, it's just, it's really changing the accessibility of it because you can't really, I mean, what works on TikTok is not at all fancy, you know what I mean? And, and it's just been fascinating to watch it. And I've seen some people who who've stumbled into tremendous success on there. So I'm excited to test it out, but I, I I'll be very, you interested to watch how this evolves between TikTok and YouTube.
Zack (28:49):
We have a TikTok partnership with an agency, so we're, we just started making a ton of them. And then we just got another we have, we're doing a bunch. I think, I don't know when this will air, but I think I can say now we're doing a bunch for sleep.com mattress firm. And so they're, they're doing we thought we'll make we'll, we'll make a series and we'll say, you can repurpose it for TikTok. And they said, no, no, no, no. Tiktok is our, this is what we want to do. Like you, we have to start on TikTok and work backwards from there. Yeah, it's definitely taking a it's gain. It's just gaining attention and user share very quickly. And it's very it's very creative place. It's a weird platform because it's a creator studio, you know, the other, the other platforms are used that way, but they're not inherently that way. Tiktok is inherently, you're there to show a creative skill. Usually usually it's, you're dancing or you're doing a ski or you're doing something a little, like you said off, you know, offbeat or so it definitely requires marketers to, to brand brandish actual creativity.
Kathleen (29:51):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm very curious to see what's gonna happen with our presence.
Zack (29:56):
What are you gonna, what are you guys doing
Kathleen (29:57):
Well, we're, I have it the a member of my team Shannon who owns our content and social, and she's great. And she, we talk, we talk a lot about data, which isn't normally what you would think of TikTok for and it's data for e-commerce. There are a lot of e-commerce brands active on TikTok though, which is part of why we're, we're doing it because that's our audience. But she, her first video, I mean, I I'm staying completely out of it. I was like, you just go and try things and do what you wanna do. And her first one literally was her with her arm around her dog, talking about like some lesson we learned through our data.
Zack (30:34):
Let's see. You gotta find, well, see trying to throw some something in there to hum humanize it.
Kathleen (30:39):
I think she said she got like 500 views on it or something. I, our first video. So that's a heck of a lot more views than we would probably get if we posted that video to YouTube.
Zack (30:47):
Yeah. That kind of organic reach doesn't really, I don't think exists any, any other platform.
Kathleen (30:52):
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's gonna be fun for sure. So who's doing this really well right now. You mentioned a couple of brands. You mentioned like sleep.com And Red Bull. I would love it. I'm sure there are, there are some larger brands that are doing it really well. Any smaller brands also that you can mention
Zack (31:12):
Smaller brands that are, that are doing that are really committed to branded narratives? I think that I don't know if you can say that are these smaller, but Me Undies is doing a good job. Swedish fish does content like this. There are for, well, this is not a small brand at all, but this is a good story. Formula racing formula, formula one. Oh, yeah. Created a they were, they didn't think that they needed, they there's, the, the story goes that they were very content with their market share and they thought, you know, we're for a very specific type of person. And they had a new kind of had a marketing come in and say, we're gonna explore branded entertainment. And they got the Netflix deal and they've been doing Formula One Racing on. I can't remember the name of the show.
Kathleen (32:04):
I know it's blown up. I don't knows. I don't know either, but it's,
Zack (32:07):
It has changed their company's valuation 4 billion over a couple years. Just that,
Kathleen (32:13):
That, that head of marketing better have gotten a really good raise, at least some hope amazing equity. I feel like marketers take so much, they take the brunt of so much. And like when you hear stories like that, I'm I just really hope that person gotta pay out of something.
Zack (32:28):
That would be good. That would be justice. Yeah. you know, you see all the, so I, I was in Sonoma once with my wife and the cab driver was telling us that the place had never been the same since Sideways came out, you know, Sideways movie with Paul Giamatti where they, they were, he said the, it was a nice kind of people like to come here for the wine, but that just blew it up. And you see that kind of thing with like the cafe that that it in Manhattan, that Seinfeld was where they had all their meetings.
Kathleen (32:59):
Or like, I'm sure Waco, Texas with Chip and Joanna Gaines like that.
Zack (33:02):
Exactly.
Kathleen (33:04):
Whoever went to Waco before that.
Zack (33:05):
And the, the rise in enrollments for auto engineering skyrocketed after Fast and the Furious. So you have, you have all these weird connections between the entertainment world and commerce that are oftentimes overlooked, but the, but it, the force of entertainment, it's not like you can't do it wrong. You can do it wrong a lot. And it can, can be an order of magnitude more expensive, but when you do it right, I mean, there's just no greater force for branding in the world. And so you, you think, you know, your question about small businesses, how do you, how do you monopolize that power when you have a limited budget and when you, and when you have many concerns and you're juggling a lot of things at once, but it's like, I would, I would try to find some way to, if you're a winery in Sonoma, you know, you, you are, you are already a place where there are so many stores, you are already a place where there are stories passing through your doors every day. And so how do you, how do you find a way to turn those stories into content that's gonna, that are gonna work for you? And there are, you know, I think there are a lot of, a lot of successful case studies in that realm. And I think that sometimes it's a failure of the imagination or a failure of effort.
Kathleen (34:12):
Yeah. I love that. You just sort of said, there's already stories happening all around you. And, and I would say you don't even have to be a winery, like, cuz that's a sexier kind of a business, but I've seen, I've seen some very, you know, unsexy companies make great content. We, we were talking recently about a company up in Michigan that is, they manufacture industrial foam and they have an awesome video team and create tons of video. And so like doesn't have to just be the, the industries that seem like they're really exciting. And you know that you can leverage this for no. Well, very cool. All right. I'm gonna switch over now. Cause I have two questions that I always ask my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say about this. The first is just digital marketing in general is changing so quickly and there's a lot happening and there's platform changes and regulatory changes and tech changes. How do you personally stay on top of it all?
Zack (35:10):
Good question. I think that you know, it's not my, it's not my background, it's not my specialty. So it's extra important for me to have some grounding and it's, I don't embarrass myself on client calls or in any in any context where I'm expected to know more than I do. So I mean, I, my team is very knowledgeable about most of these trends. I would say that LinkedIn is a great source. Usually if you have three or four people that you trust on there, who you either know personally or who you, who you follow for the updates on these things you could tell pretty quickly whether they're, they're giving you stuff, that's gonna be reliable you know, for a long time or not. And then in my world brand at storytelling there are, there are not many sources and there are not, it's sort of a novelty.
Zack (36:03):
I mean, in, in, in one sense, it's been around for a long time in the, in another sense. I think we're just starting to realize how powerful it is. And, and to your point about examples, you know, I think we're gonna see more and more of them and already seeing Samsung doing documentaries and, and Budweiser teaming up with great content partners to do Levis doing music videos now. And Huckberry doing these unbelievable collaborations. So I think that'll only get more, I think there'll only be more sources as it, as that proliferates, but I, for now branded storytelling, TV on YouTube is an amazing source of, of interviews and amazing source of information. And you know, just, I, I think that the more we they're, the books are a little longer to get through and they're a little more of a you don't know if the publish, you cram all the information to the first 30 pages and you're reading for no reason after that, but some of the some of the great marketing writers today I think are really important to keep track of Seth Godin and, and guys like that.
Kathleen (37:09):
Great. second question. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I define as anything that naturally attracts the right customer to you. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park and setting an example for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Zack (37:29):
Well, I listed a few of those examples before, but I think I think that Yeti is still the king pin of this world. I think they make, they turn real people's stories into cinematic journeys. You know, they, they really make them like movies and turning reality into a movie. I don't know, maybe that's not always the best thing, but in some cases it can be very uplifting and very inspiring. And I think they reap a lot of rewards for that. I think they're doing a great job.
Kathleen (37:58):
All right. That's a great one. All right, we're gonna wrap it up now. So if somebody has a question and wants to reach out and connect with you online, or they wanna learn more about Human Factor Media, what's the best way for them to do that?
Zack (38:09):
They can email me at Zack@humanfactormedia.co, or our website, humanfactormedia.co, or our work on there, our portfolio awards and clients, things like that.
Kathleen (38:24):
Great, well, head to the show notes kathleen-booth.com and you will find those links there. And if you know somebody else who's doing great marketing, you can always tweet me at @Kathleenlbooth on Twitter. And I would love to make them my next guest in the meantime. Thanks so much, Zack, for joining me. This was great. I learned a lot.
Zack (38:44):
I hope so. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
