Jeff Breuer
Forum Replies Created
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[Mark Suszko] “For an extra five bucks, you also get the Glen Ross leads. :-)”
Curious Mark, do these come with the brass balls? Or at least some coffee…
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Thanks for sharing Ned. We have a service that automates the search and emails those people, but I’m sure you can attest that there is still something to be said about a physical connection. I’m wondering though, do you just send the business card or have you tried a campaign with some clever and creative marketing piece?
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Just be careful not to put the cart before the horse. If you are making a business investment with this money, it’s best to know what the business is before you invest. Do you research. You can learn a lot here on the COW, but look locally and see what kind of demand there is for what you want to do. Figure out what direction you want to take, what are your goals and what kind of timeline you would like those goals to fit in. With limited resources, this plan will best help you to make smart decisions and make the limited resources stretch further. Good luck Xavier!
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I’m with Mark. You need to look at your long term goals and work backwards from there. What do you plan on shooting? If you are shooting interviews, you want lav mics and a light kit. If you are shooting lectures you may want a heavier tripod and XLR cord to plug into the board or a wireless lav. If you are shooting documentary stuff, maybe a shoulder rig.
A tripod is a pretty good use of that money that you know you will need and you can fit into that budget, but there are a lot of different tripods for different needs. If you want to shoot only DSLR, that is one tripod. If you want to shoot with bigger cameras and know that you may need it to support a teleprompter, that’s another tripod.
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Always a rough spot Todd, I get it. It sounds to me like you are on the right path though. You know what you don’t like and what you do like. It sounds like you would prefer to just focus on being a production company and depending on the market you are in there are a lot of opportunities for that. If we start with that as the goal there are a couple things you could do. You could hire a part time media buyer who works on commission, there is good money in ad buys even if you are just picking a little bit off the top.
Secondly the one big piece of business advice that I am constantly being reminded of is, when you are an owner you must dedicate your focus to working ON the business, not simply IN your business. It sounds like this is what your partner is trying to do but keeps getting caught up in writing and some pre/production work. If you need to, maybe hire a part time writer just to save him time to focus on building relationships with the local ad companies to drive more work in.
Finally I know a lot of businesses that are going away from broadcast advertising. The market just isn’t there like it used to. Over the years we have been shifting more of our work to online videos (both for advertising and marketing). At some point you will need a good motion graphics designer though. I like to look at a lot of stuff Epipheo puts out or popular Kinetic Type ads and especially the Ford Truck ads, those are great use of motion design.
I’m sure there are a lot of good ideas out there, this was just on my mind when I read your post. Best of luck to you Todd!
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You will need to be really organized and will need as much of a head start as you can. Like you said you will need to get parental consent for the kids on camera and that can be tough. If you can focus and particular classes, you can coordinate with those teachers on connecting with the students (assuming you have already gone through the principal and allowed access to shoot on campus). From there you will need to get the kids to have their parents sign the permission slip which, as much as you like, isn’t going to happen over night and I wouldn’t get too excited about 100% participation.
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If efficiency and quick turn around is your goal, you could buy live streaming software like Telestream’s Wirecast. That would allow you to feed the Power Point and the Camera into your computer and live switch on set. Even though you aren’t live streaming, you can still record to disk.
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Haha! That’s funny.
[Mark Suszko] “I was looking for the image but couldn’t find it. I’ll describe it, as it is a great visual description of the difference between advertising and marketing.”
Mark, I love that image too. Here is a quick picture I took of it. It’s from the great advertising book, “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This” by Luke Sullivan. The ad was created by Alex Bogusky for Crispin and Porter (Now conveniently Crispin Porter and Bogusky)
Sorry, the image is formatted right but imported sideways for some odd reason.
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That makes me laugh AND want to shove my head through my desk!
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Haha! That’s great.
