What I feel is killing production companies.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Mark,

Yes, it is the new economy where our clients are finding new tools to deliver the same job – even if it is in a worse condition…

If you are occupying the middle ground, you might as well close the doors. Alternative is go low, lay off all your staff, and only do small profit making videos. Or go high and sell your services on consultancy, superior quality and customer service second to none. Just don’t stay in the middle…

There are nothing wrong in fixing and producing flip-cam videos. If anything, it is a good entry into the clients business. Who will want to use you for that one time where the CEO or owner needs to look good on telly or the internet.

On flip-side (get it :-)) you can always go high and offer services to your clients that the cable companies can’t match. Superior graphics, cloud viewing/project management, pack shots of product and people that can be used across a variety of media, and delivery for local cinema advertising etc. Occupy the ground your competitors can’t or don’t want to take.

Ultimately, as many will testify, the customers reason for choosing you is often nothing to do with price at all, and all to do with the emotion of working with a customer friendly professional who adds value to their business.

And yes, PR and ad agency employees are in a world of their own, with their own set of rules. If they keep taking your budget and ideas (which they often do) only pitch if you can meet the end-client. Failing that, remember to market to the potential end clients in your area with the tag-line: “Why pay the middleman?”

My 5c

All the Best
Mads

@madsvid, London, UK
Check out my other hangouts:
Twitter: @madsvid
https://mads-thinkingoutloud.blogspot.co.uk

[Mark Suszko]

Very well-stated, Mads.

We’re not in the video making business, actually.

We’re in the business of solving communications problems for clients.

That sometimes means producing a traditional video, but just as often these days, it could involve something else entirely, using formats and approaches that were not considered before.

The trick is to solve the customer’s problem/need in the best way, a way that makes you their obvious go-to-person for all the follow-on business.

[Mark Whitmore]

Mads you’re exactly right. I am not in this business to take the middle ground. I’ve been reworking the way we do business for years. Constantly reinventing ourselves.

Lately, we have been focusing on educating our clients, providing them with services that they never knew they needed. We give clients more than just videos, we do think of ourselves as problem solvers something that is lost on the small, fly by night groups.

Even with all of the extra services we do and the extra time we take and the most awesome graphics we can create, at the end of the day, money talks. Clients are working with smaller budgets or no budgets at all.

There will always be a need for our services it’s just getting a little tougher to find those people.

[Todd Terry]

Mads made some great points.

I think a couple of the tricks to being successful in the production business are to 1) find an underserved or niche market, and 2) be hands-down better than anyone else.

That’s what we tried to do.

The vast vast majority of our projects are broadcast television commercials. Most of our clients are advertising agencies, although we have several clients that we work for directly.

Before we started our company 16 years ago, potential television advertisers in our market had two choices… first, they could go to a television station or cable system and have a television spot produced. They spent almost nothing, maybe $200, and they certainly got a spot worth every penny of that. Their other option was to go to the only “real” post house in town, or to one in a neighboring city. There they would get a great production… but spend $50-100K on it and have no money left for a media buy.

We saw this as an underserved market and set out to provide production for clients who need something 100x better than they can get from a television station, but at about a fifth or so of the cost of a big production house.

In our particular market we found this was a good choice… that this area was indeed underserved. We do not target mom-n-pop businesses as potential clients (although as it turns out, we do have plenty of those as clients). Nor to we target the ginormous companies that have national advertising agencies… that would be wasting their time, and more importantly, mine. We target those in the middle.

Being better than anyone else can be the harder part. We are better than anyone else in our market, and I can say that without bragging. Part of that is that it (sadly) seems that these days the “quality bar” is set pretty darn low for people thinking they ought to do production for a living… and a lot of people out there trying are just terrible at it. Good. Good for me. And you. And all the other people who are doing good work. The other part of it is that we work very hard to make sure our work is good, and better than a client can get elsewhere for the same money.

The niche we’ve found and the way we do things might not be the same for everyone else in other markets. In fact, it’s guaranteed not to be. But I think it’s finding what works for you where you are that’s the key.

Still, there’s no guarantee for success. We’ve very fortunate that we usually stay pretty busy. we’re not killing ourselves and burning the midnight oil right now, but we still have a full production schedule. That’s not always the case though… I remember two summers a go a period of about six weeks where it was just dead as a doornail. We had lots of upcoming and potential big projects, but they were all weeks away. And the phone wasn’t ringing with anyone who wanted something right then. It can be a scary time, indeed. Especially to me… because I’m the last person that gets paid here.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Nick Griffin]

[Todd Terry] “successful in the production business… 1) find an underserved or niche market, and 2) be hands-down better than anyone else.”

Todd-
Succinct and brilliant.

[Steve Kownacki]

[Mark Suszko] “We’re in the business of solving communications problems for clients.
“

Came across this one today

“It’s not enough to be the best at what you do; you must be perceived as the only one who does what you do.” Jerry Garcia 1942-1995, Musician

Steve

[Andy Jackson]

Hi Mark.

I feel your pain.
This is the reason I changed careers.

Read my thread about my experience.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/876369

Hope this helps.

Cheers Andy

[Mike Calla]

The hardest part of my business is marketing.

[Andy Jackson]

Marketing was also a big issue for me.

To much competition after the same business which led to a race to
the bottom in pricing.

Feast or Famine as they say.

Ended being mostly famine as i could not compete with the noobs doing it for free

[Mark Whitmore]

Free is what is putting a lot of us in bad situations here as well or close to it. What we would bill at
$6500 they’ll do it for $2500 because they are hungry. There are too many little shops in the area and not enough clients to go around. Clients with money that is. Everyone with a camera is a videographer and everyone with a computer is a graphic artist nowadays.

I’m digging deep and looking for clients that have never thought about video solutions or other services we provide. It’s really about who you know and what you know that will separate us from the fly by nights it’s just harder to do at the moment.