Compelling copy doesn’t happen by accident. Orange Label writers Ashley Ruiz and Krystina Holford sit down with copywriter and copy coach Terry Schilling to discuss the details writers need to bring projects to life, how to keep copy consistent and the factors that make copy stand out in Part One of this podcast.  Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:06] This is the 19. In 19 minutes or less, game changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:24] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Today, we’re going to switch things up a bit and do a roundtable talk on how to get the best from your copywriting team, whether that be your agency, freelancers or someone on staff here to share helpful tips and inspiration, we have Orange Label Senior Content Writer Ashley Ruiz and Copywriter Krystina Holford, along with our special guest copywriter and copy coach Terry Schilling. Since Ashley will be leading today’s discussion. I’ll let her take it from here! Ashley Ruiz: [00:00:58] Thanks for joining us here on the 19 today, as Rochelle said, I’m Ashley and I’m the senior content writer at Orange Label. I’ve been with Orange Label for almost three years and what I love most about our agency and our clients is that I get to tell brand stories in a variety of different ways. In the past, I’ve really enjoyed interviewing small business owners for local and Latina Magazine. And now that I’m in marketing, I’m able to play a role in a wide range of brand voices, but enough about me. Terry, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your copywriting journey? Terry Schilling: [00:01:29] Yeah, absolutely! So I am a copywriter in Chicago and I have only left really the Chicago land area to go to college. And there I was, studying to be a sports journalist, so I was really into the broadcast journalism and basically after that, after college did a little bit of freelancing from broadcasting side and sports reporting. And then I eventually worked for a startup, got into copywriting and marketing and got hired as a junior copywriter for an agency. And then from there just really got the entrepreneur bug, if you will, to do it on my own went all in on there and just wanted a little bit more variety from things I was working on at the agency and just felt that I could take it on. And, you know, here we are still like evolving my services, learning what I like, learning, you know, how to pitch those services efficiently. That also just pays the bills to at the end of the day, but really like fine things that I like to enjoy, you know, as well. But yeah, did not really think I’d get into copywriting from how I started. But the more I hear people who were like in journalism, the more I like, See, it’s such a simple pivot, you know, to go into marketing, and a lot of people have made a similar shift. Ashley Ruiz: [00:02:36] Definitely. I had a bit of a similar shift with that as well. What would you say are the top three services that you offer? Terry Schilling: [00:02:44] Yeah, I offer website copy, brand messaging and then working a lot with email marketing with different companies. So helping them almost as a consultant where we look at like their nurture series or help them build lead magnets and help them with newsletters. But that conversion copy side is really a main focus of what I offer to the brand messaging. But yeah, including that in email marketing, those are really the three big ones that I offer. Ashley Ruiz: [00:03:10] Ok. Awesome. Yeah, I know we’re getting ready to have a lot of emails coming our way with all the holidays coming up as well. Terry Schilling: [00:03:16] Oh my gosh, yes. All the cheesy subject lines. Yes, no doubt.

With just over two months left until the new year, a great deal of planning has been done and yet as marketers, there’s still so much to do. When we’re in this constant state of planning, the one question that’s always top of mind is: how do we stand out to our audiences? Offering an inside look at the decisions that VP-level marketers are making at hundreds of U.S. companies, the bi-annual CMO Survey extrapolates backward- and forward-looking data to help inform future decisions. In today’s episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, we have an exclusive interview with the report’s founder–professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business–Christine Moorman. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:24] Welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Author Tom Fishburne once said, “the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” Behind the scenes, we know the magic of marketing isn’t magic after all. It’s constant planning, research, optimizing and more. And while we know the plans that we’re making, it’s always good to take a pulse on trends as a whole. The biannual CMO survey pulls back this curtain and details data points from hundreds of VP-level marketers across the U.S. to help guide future decisions and innovate marketing strategies. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:59] Here to share key insights from the latest report is Christine Moorman, professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and founder of the CMO Survey. Christine, thank you for joining us on The 19! Christine Moorman: [00:01:10] Thank you, Rochelle. Happy to be here! Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:16] So you created the CMO survey in two thousand eight. What led you to create the survey? Christine Moorman: [00:01:21] You know, I was part of several organizations like the American Marketing Association, the Marketing Science Institute and just talking to a lot of practitioners. There was a lot of concern and hand-wringing over the fact that marketers really weren’t getting that seat at the table. They weren’t getting the respect within organizations that they frankly deserve. It was unclear what I could do as a single academic, but one of the things that I thought about and was inspired also by my colleagues who were running something called the CFO survey at Duke University, was to create the CMO survey and to provide a way for the regular collection of information from marketers as a way to get that information out because people were asking about, say, what was going on in the marketplace and they were asking CFOs about that because there was no regular source of information about what CMOs we’re thinking. That’s changed a lot over the last thirteen or so years. There’s more and more of these sources, but I think the CMO survey is very unique, and I think it’s had some of the impact that I hoped it would had, which was to bring attention to what marketers were thinking, but also to provide some benchmarks to to marketers. Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:35] Yeah, it’s it’s been great for us to access for sure as an agency. So it comes out twice a year. The most recent release in August. In your opinion, what value does the report bring to marketing leaders and brands? Christine Moorman: [00:02:48] Well, part of it is really to collect and disseminate the opinions of these top marketers, and we use that and we ask them a lot of forward looking questions. What will you be doing over the next year? so, because often I think marketing is driven by a backward looking view. We ask about what happened in the past, but we don’t have any way to extrapolate into the future.

When it comes to on-the-spot thinking and creative projects that make the client go “wow”, Strategic Play Expert Gary Ware knows the secret. It’s play, of course! With a motto that “Employees that play together, stay together,” Gary shares how play is the “superfood of behavior,” and the benefits it can provide to employees’ and business’ well-being. Listen now in this special episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is the 19. In 19 minutes or less game changing insights from Orange Label. Well, actually this one, we broke the rules because we had so much fun with Gary Ware we went a little longer than 19 minutes, so I hope you enjoy this episode. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:24] Hello and welcome to the 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Between the last quarter of the year and the holidays quickly approaching, life always seems to go into overdrive. To combat the stress in the workplace burnout that may come along with this today’s episode is all about the importance of play. And who better to talk about this topic than creative play strategist Gary Ware? Gary is the founder of Breakthrough Play, a training program that teaches professionals how to embrace the power of play, and he’s given TED talks, webinars and thousands of workshops about it. Gary, welcome to the 19. We’re thrilled to have you here today. Gary Ware: [00:01:01] Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:10] I know you’re big on play in the workplace, so I thought we would start this episode off with a game if that’s OK with you? Gary Ware: [00:01:17] Oh yes, my favorite way to kick things off and the game that I have in mind, especially since we’re not physically in the same location, is a game called Crisis Situation. And in this game I’m going to state a fictitious crisis that I’m having and a random object. Then you’re going to state a fictitious crisis you’re having in a different random object. Then it is my job to find a way to solve your crisis with my object. And for you to solve my crisis with your object. And it may sound a little confusing, but the goal here is to think outside the box and then afterwards, we’ll talk about it and see how it goes. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:02] Awesome! Gary Ware: [00:02:02] All right. I’m going to kick it off. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:05] Ok. Gary Ware: [00:02:05] All right. All right I’m having. Oh my gosh, I’m having such a wacky day, I locked myself out of my house and all I have is an avocado. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:20] I was driving in to this podcast today and my car broke down, and my random object is a rubber ducky. Gary Ware: [00:02:28] Great. Ok, so I’m going to solve your crisis with my object. I have an avocado and this is what I’m going to do. If I cut open the avocado and take the avocado pit. I think it might can conduct electricity, and I will. I will put it up to your battery and see if we can get just a spark to get your car running again. And if not, then what we will do is we will take the avocado meat, and I will use that to give myself enough energy to run and find a mechanic. Rochelle Reiter: [00:03:06] Awesome. I love it! Gary Ware: [00:03:09] So how are you going to help me get into my house with your rubber ducky? Rochelle Reiter: [00:03:12] So what I’m going to do is put that rubber ducky on your porch and hopefully you have a ring doorbell and I’m going to ring the doorbell and somebody is going to see the rubber ducky and know that they need to come and open the door. Gary Ware: [00:03:30] So smart. So smart. Yes! Crisis averted! Rochelle Reiter: [00:03:34] All right. Yeah! Gary Ware: [00:03:36] And that’s the game, Yay!

Adventurous agers. Communal caregivers. Empty nesters. Seniors. When brands lean on these categories to define adults ages 65+ in their marketing strategy, they’re often missing the point. An expert in aging, Gerontologist Kerry Burnight provides strategies on how to connect with an aging audience, or our future selves, in The 19: Entrepreneur Edition podcast. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that the population of older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history in 2035. And yet, when we look at much of the advertising and marketing content around us, adults 65+ are often left out completely or catered to for age-related issues. Not only is this a disservice, it may be a major misstep as Euromonitor finds that more than 50% of U.S. income belongs to those over 55. National expert in aging, Kerry Burnight is dedicated to understanding older adults and making aging a better experience for all of us. With a PhD in gerontology and 18 years as a professor of Geriatric Medicine, Kerry is now focused on advising brands on how to create everyday solutions that serve older people and the entire population. Welcome to The 19, Kerry, it’s great to have you! Kerry Burnight: [00:01:20] Oh, I’m glad to be here! Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:27] So we’ve worked together in various capacities over the years, and now you are having a new endeavor, which is called the Gerontologists. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what you do? Kerry Burnight: [00:01:37] Yes, after about 30 years of real hands-on with older adults in geriatric medicine, I really had this front row seat of both the triumphs and the tragedies of older age. So we are right now at this really exciting time because there’s all this innovation, largely digital innovation in housing, health care, transportation, end of life, care-giving. But what companies are finding is that this innovation only makes a difference if it’s adopted, accepted, embraced by its intended users, older adults. So this advisory firm, The Gerontologist, it’s helping companies succeed in the human side of longevity. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:23] Mm hmm. That’s amazing. So knowing you and your mission to improve the second half of life, how does this guide and direct you in advising your clients on a daily basis? Kerry Burnight: [00:02:33] Well, the clients these companies are incredibly new and innovative. And yet I’m guided by this really, really ancient Latin phrase that’s Nihil de nobis, sine nobis and it’s nothing about us without us. The companies, in order to succeed both short term and long term, need to be listening to be including the people that they’re hoping to serve. And so really the biggest thing, if there’s only one take home, it’s that companies learn how to listen to older adults. Rochelle Reiter: [00:03:13] Yeah. Playing the typical situation why clients hire you. At what point are they at where they say we need Kerry and we need The Gerontologist? Kerry Burnight: [00:03:23] I think any company that has its eyes open sees that demographic imperative that you pointed out early on, and that is that we are all aging and we can’t underestimate what it means, that the fastest growing segment of the population is those over 80. So companies recognize the medical, social, ethical, legal complexity of older age and they recognize that they need to know not only about gerontology, but also how to listen to older adults and then turn that learning into actionable strategy, into implementation and into outcomes that we can measure. Rochelle Reiter: [00:04:06] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Are you tapping into the full value that social media can provide your business? As the largest focus group, social media allows brands to get a pulse on how their product or service is doing and what audiences are saying about it. Used by over 25,000+ brands globally to improve engagement, increase customer satisfaction and optimize content strategies, Sprout Social is at the forefront of all things social media and we have an exclusive interview with their Solutions Engineer Collin Johnson! In the latest episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition podcast, Collin discusses the most important social data to capture, the power of connecting with audiences across platforms and more in under 20 minutes. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19! In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. In today’s day and age, social media is used for more than just connecting with friends and family. Reports find that at least 25% of individuals use it to discover or learn more about products, services or brands. And 89% of businesses say their company’s success depends on how effectively it can use social data to inform marketing strategy. Ranked as the best social media management platform by Investopedia, Sprout Social helps organizations build connections with their audience through real-time reporting, social listening and more. Here to tell us about how to use social data to enhance your marketing strategy is Sprout’s Social Solutions engineer Collin Johnson. Collin, welcome to The 19th, it’s great to have you here today! Collin Johnson: [00:01:12] Thank you so much for having me. Excited to talk about social. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:20] So, Collin, tell me about your role at Sprout Social. Collin Johnson: [00:01:23] Sure, so I’m a Solutions Engineer and I exclusively support our agency sales team. My team, the solutions engineering team. We actually sit between sales and product, which means we have the unique opportunity to get a pulse for what the product is capable of doing, what features are coming down the line. And also we get to work with customers every single day. So learning from agencies, learning from brands, seeing how they’re using Sprout Social and using that learning to help other customers achieve that same level of success. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:01] Awesome. So what value does Social bring to brands? Collin Johnson: [00:02:05] Sure. Yeah. Tough to summarize. It’s such, such a comprehensive answer. Really, at Sprout we think realizing the overall power of social starts with looking beyond the traditional marketing function that social is occupied for the last decade or so. Social is valuable as a communications channel, but there’s so much more than just the conversations brands are having with customers. Sprout’s role is that we unlock that potential and intuitive, elegantly designed social media management platform and in addition, we focus on the success of our customers in terms of providing them whatever’s necessary to help grow their business. And that means thought leadership, training, hands on support to help agencies and brands achieve those goals with our help. Rochelle Reiter: [00:03:03] Awesome. So you talked about beyond Social. What are some of the metrics that are able to be translated from social to general marketing? Collin Johnson: [00:03:13] Something that we talk to, to brands about every day and really we see social marketers as being on the front lines of social feeds and having the data to understand better than anyone what content is resonating most powerfully with audiences and exactly who makes up those audiences...

What photographers see through their viewfinder is different from what most people see. With an eye that’s attuned to capture a spontaneous moment on a shoot, like a model that can do a backflip, and scout the perfect location, like finding triangles in nature that mirror a brand’s logo, Erik Isakson shares his personal experiences as a top brand photographer. Having worked with leading brands, including Nike, Chevrolet, UCLA and more, Erik provides insights on how to effectively work with a professional photographer to bring your brand story to life, visually, in this new episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:06] This is the 19. In 19 minutes or less game changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. In our digital world, image focused platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are continuing to grow and have over one billion global users. We all know the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and today we’ll be putting that to the test. With over 20 years of experience and an impressive client list, including Nike, Samsung, Chevrolet, UCLA and more. Commercial photographer Erik Isakson is here to share tips, tricks and insights on how to take your custom brand photography to the next level. Erik, welcome to The 19, we’re thrilled to have you! Erik Isakson: [00:01:02] Good to be here. Thank you. Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:09] Let’s start off with talking a little bit about your background. Erik Isakson: [00:01:13] All right. So I’ve always had an interest in photography growing up, studied in high school and studied it in college. I went to Brigham Young University and got a BFA in photography and always had a passion and an interest in photography. And while I was at BYU, I was trying to decide on my final project for my BFA final show. And at that time, the Winter Olympics were coming soon to Utah and there was a posting from an Olympic fencer who is training and for a couple hundred dollars paid me to do some portraits of her. I had so much fun getting creative with these portraits of this athlete that I thought, wow, I could do Olympic portraits because there were so many athletes that were training in the area to. Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:01] Right. Erik Isakson: [00:02:01] So I ended up doing 10 final portraits, half of them summer athletes, half winter athletes, and traveled some to photograph them and also locally there and it ended up being an amazing experience. That kind of spring boarded me into knowing, you know, getting into photographing athletes and sports lifestyle. I moved to Los Angeles in 2000 and was a studio manager for a photographer and really learned a lot of the ins and outs of budgets and working with clients and producing shoots and all of that. So and then I gradually got into doing my own work after a few years and to where I was working on my own as a photographer within a few years after that, so. Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:50] Awesome. What are some of the brands that you’ve worked on? Erik Isakson: [00:02:53] I’ve done work with Nike, Chevrolet, GMC, Budweiser, Modelo, quite a few ongoing shoots with Samsung as well. So a lot of focus on people, lifestyle, active sports, lifestyle imagery. Rochelle Reiter : [00:03:11] What are some of the benefits that you see when brands use custom photography? Erik Isakson: [00:03:18] Well, I had an experience even just this past week. I was in Salt Lake photographing for a tech company and up until this point, they’ve been using stock photography. And there’s a lot of great stock photography out there, but they knew that they needed to really customize it ...

We shared pragmatic tips on the lights, camera and sound quality behind video communication in part one of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. Now it’s time for the action! In just 19 minutes, the always entertaining Michael Allosso (Communications Expert and Professional Actor/Director) explains how to form emotional connections with the people on the other side of the screen and become an even better leader. Learn how to identify and focus on your objective to guide you through obstacles, practice empathy to convey authenticity and “put a ding in the universe” with each daily interaction. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Today, we’re going to dive into part two of our series with Michael Allosso, master communications expert, self-awareness, specialist and professional theater and film director and actor. In part one, we talked about the pragmatic tips of being an effective communicator in the virtual world. Today, we’re going to shift to the softer side of things. The emotional connections created during virtual meetings and find out if this is even possible. Michael, welcome back to The 19, part two in our series. Michael Allosso: [00:00:57] Thanks Rochelle! Michael Allosso: [00:01:03] Steve Jobs, 66th birthday today. “I want to put a ding in the universe.” That’s what he said and so do I and so do you. That’s why we’re here today. So let’s begin dinging. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:18] Awesome, so in our previous episode, we talked about the pragmatic tips of communicating virtually. This time, let’s talk about the emotional connection during meetings and where do you see people missing that mark right now? Michael Allosso: [00:01:32] I’m a huge Brené Brown fan, as so many people are. I know you are and Dr. Brown says if you don’t own your own feelings, they’ll eat you alive. She said, you may be afraid, but you do it anyway. One of my favorite things, she says, Rochelle, is there are many cheap seats in the arena. Leaders are people who step into the ring and so what I think happens is that this medium virtual, virtually makes us falsely think we can be passive. That we’re sitting in our home, the small of our back get’s comfortable in the chair, and we forget that we have to jump in the ring. Whether we’re the leader of the meeting or are not the leader. It’s our job to jump into the ring and so, so much of this is about energy. You know, I have my thirty five nuclear weapons helping you, be you and your best day. Number one is energy. I think it’s so important. I wrote it first. I wrote it three times and put an exclamation point after it. And right now people are whining about the low energy. And the problem with that is it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have got to bring it. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:43] Yeah. Michael Allosso: [00:02:43] We call it in theater, playing the obstacle instead of playing the objective. You follow what that means Rochelle? Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:49] No explain that to me. Michael Allosso: [00:02:49] Well, former military and military people get this the best. So secret weapon, 16, 17, 18, objective tactic obstacle. So Navy SEALs will tell me. Objective kill the enemy. Tactics, land, sea, air. Obstacle find war in the desert, the enemy lives in the desert, but it’s theater 101. If I were to coach you in the scene, those would be the questions I’d be asking. What is your objective? What is your desired result? How are you going to get it? Those are your tactics and what’s preventing you from getti...

Video meetings don’t have to be boring. Communications Expert and Professional Actor/Director Michael Allosso shares tips on how to transform your daily video calls from a drab to fab production, avoid Zoom fatigue and make the most out of each virtual interaction in the latest episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. From introductions to mic-drop closures and the micro-messages in between, learn how to transform the obstacles that come with video conferencing into opportunity in Part One of our podcast. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:22] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, president of Orange Label. In the past few episodes, we talked with experts who had to transform their business models in 2020 and today is no different. Michael Allosso, master communications expert, self-awareness, specialist, professional theater and film director and actor is going to be chatting with me today. He has led award winning You On Your Best Day® workshops for leaders and sales teams all over the world and is a much sought-after personal coach. His current You On Your Best Zoom Day trainings provide communications and awareness skills to maximize virtual presence and impact. He’s a dynamic presenter and entertainer who brings results and life to any in-person or virtual event. Michael, welcome back to The 19. Michael Allosso: [00:01:12] It’s great to be with you to do the podcast scene! Today is my lucky day with Orange Label The 19! Whoa-ho Rochelle. I hope your listeners can inspire us! How we can get through this darn coronavirus. mm-hm. Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:38] Oh, wow, I have never had that sort of a welcome. That’s fantastic. Thank you, Michael. So it’s been about two years since you were the guest on The 19 edition of the podcast. And we’ve seen our world completely change in how we communicate. What do you see as the biggest shift in the way we effectively communicate in business? Michael Allosso: [00:02:02] Today is Steve Job’s 66th birthday. Can you imagine he would have been 66? Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:07] Wow Michael Allosso: [00:02:07] He said this cool thing where he says innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. And what I’ve noticed is people who stay the same, who are trying to crank out the same, they always did. Most of them have failed. And anyone who’s thought about being creative and using that overused word, pivot, have been successful. Obstacles are put in our way so that we create opportunities from them. So to me, the single biggest magic is learning how to turn obstacles into opportunities. And I think that’s what we’re going to be discussing for 19 minutes. Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:46] Absolutely. Absolutely. And with the shift from in-person to virtual, how has that changed the environment? Michael Allosso: [00:02:55] Any deficiencies we have in-person, Rochelle, only get magnified when we translate that to the screen. So we’re going from being theater actors to TV actors. And think about Rochelle when you go to the theater, the first act, what, an hour-fifteen minutes, hour-ten minutes, hour-twenty minutes. You have time to grow into things. TV Oh man, I’m going to the bathroom after six or seven minutes. I’m grabbing for popcorn after eight. So the immediacy of the screen is a major change. Now, if you’re sloppy coming out of the gate, you don’t get away with it. If your ending isn’t a mic drop ending, you don’t get away with it. If you’re vocally homogenize, you lose your audience in seconds. If you’re static physically and don’t envelop the camera,

Product videos. Brand videos. Animations. Social media videos. These consumed our feeds in 2020 and it wasn’t uncommon for these to be filmed or watched in our comfy pants. While the landscapes of how video was produced (and consumed) changed slightly, 85% of businesses used it as a marketing tool and this year is following in stride. Having spent the last 15-plus years helping brands grow by producing videos that impress, astonish and outperform, Torrey Tayenaka, CEO of national video agency Sparkhouse, shares tips on video creation and how to do it right in The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. For the first episode of The 19 in 2021, we’re focusing on video. Why? Well, 85 percent of businesses used video as a marketing tool in 2020 and the results are in: research shows that people watch an average of 16 hours of online video per week, and 84 percent of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. So, how has video production been transformed over the past 10 months and what’s in store for 2021? Here today with me is Torrey Tayenaka, CEO and Founder of Sparkhouse. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Torrey over the past decade on various brand projects, and he comes with a wealth of expertise and insight on video. Torrey, welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you. Torrey Tayenaka: [00:01:15] Thanks for having me out. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:21] So, tell our listeners about Sparkhouse and what you provide for clients. Torrey Tayenaka: [00:01:25] Yeah, so Sparkhouse is a video production company. We like to lean towards having a little bit more of a marketing side. We’re definitely not a marketing agency. That’s why we work with companies like yours. But we want to create video content that accomplishes our clients’ goals. So anything from TV commercials, YouTube videos, Amazon videos and animations, we like to help our clients basically just get things done using video. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:51] As a video marketing company, how have you had to adjust your business model over the past 10 months, especially internally with your team? Torrey Tayenaka: [00:01:57] With social distancing, with everything, we moved out of our offices. Really no one has been doing like day-to-day office work in our office since early March after kind of an initial lockdown. We definitely went right back into production. I think L.A. has considered filmmaking an essential worker, which I’m not really sure how or why. But, you know, we’re taking the precautions to do everything right on the film side. And then on the post-production and editing side, we’ve invested heavily into what’s called a proxy workflow, but basically taking some of our massive large video files and making them much more digestible so that our editors can work remotely. We can edit files with clients without having to have them come into our office and work in what used to be like the traditional way of doing the post-production. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:43] Sure. Do you think that you were headed there anyways and this just sped up the process? Torrey Tayenaka: [00:02:48] It probably should have been on my radar as something that we could have invested if we were really pushing to lead in that technology. It was a very expensive investment for us to make. I’m glad that we have it now and it allows us to spread out our network of who we can work with moving forward.

The figurative faucet for lead generation and networking at in-person events was in danger of running dry this year. With the events space far from returning to “normal” in the foreseeable future, Clarity Experiences CEO Brian Lagestee and his leadership team asked two questions many entrepreneurs are facing: How can we avoid layoffs? And, what can we do for our industry, right now? Listen to our latest podcast to find out how a people-first mentality can help you ask the right questions and allow your clients to take the (virtual) center stage. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:04] This is the 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Level, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to the 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. We’ve seen a lot of changes this year, to say the least. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:32] Brands and marketers have had to adapt and pivot to remain relevant to their audiences. One industry that has been hit really hard is the world of live events. Any brand that relied on attending trade shows for leads and networking was immediately faced with the figurative faucet running dry. If you know people in the live event industry, many have been laid off or furloughed. However, 60 percent of people in the event planning industry have actually transitioned to virtual events. One of these companies that has not only weathered the storm but has also thrived in this environment is clarity experiences. Today we have Brian Lagestee, CEO of Clarity Experiences. Welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you here. Brian Lagestee: [00:01:14] Thanks, Rochelle! So great to be with you today and we’re looking forward to really talking about the business and how everything’s been going for us. So, thanks for having me. Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:25] Well, tell me a little bit about Clarity Experiences and what you do. Brian Lagestee: [00:01:29] Yeah so Clarity Experiences is a live event production company, and we’ve been doing events for many, many years all over North America, some overseas as well. Our primary customer is really live events where we do events and convention centers, hotels and different venues across all the major cities in the U.S. and Canada. Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:47] As a leader in your organization, describe how Clarity Experiences has tangibly and emotionally adjusted to your business model in 2020. Brian Lagestee: [00:01:55] Well, that’s an amazing situation that happened across the world in a lot of ways. You know, very difficult to get through. However, we had an amazing beginning of the year. January and February were just record months for us and our teams were doing such a fantastic job. And everything literally stopped for us on one day where we shut everything down. Rochelle Reiter : Sure. Brian Lagestee: And we had teams in all different cities doing all different kinds of work. And we just stopped. And it was it was a big challenge for us emotionally and everyone was like, “What’s going on?” Rochelle Reiter : Right. Brian Lagestee: Most of our, you know, executives and our team members felt like, OK, this is you know, we can do this a couple of weeks, couple months and no problem. We’re going to be good. Rochelle Reiter : Right. Brian Lagestee: So that was our general attitude in the beginning. And then when we realized it was going to be a more of a major hit to our industry and to our company, you know, we really had to go through some emotional changes and actually structural changes and we had to change our entire business model pretty much overnight. And it was a big struggle for us. But we learned a lot about ourselves, you know,