Latest / Straight To Voicemail / Winning B2B Buyers with Short Form Video | Richard Ormsby, Lavendr
Transcript
- Adam Sockel (00:01): I'm Adam Sockel. Richard Ormsby thinks a lot about content and the ways that we engage with it, and it makes sense. He's an award-winning filmmaker. He's a growth marketing expert. He's founded his own company, Lavendr, which is an independent distribution label pioneering a premium home for LGBTQ+ short films. And he recently put a post out on social media about the vertical content that you may have seen in your TikTok feeds, in your Snapchat feeds, in your Instagram feeds. And they're a really fascinating experience. These short form dramas that are vertically shot and are designed to be ingested on the phone that we are all holding twenty four seven. Obviously in B2B marketing, there's a ton of short form content out there. There's a ton of short form video out there. As you will hear in his answer, he talks about the fact that B2B marketing was kind of actually the first place that short form videos became a thing in the form of commercials. (01:10): But I wanted to hear from him, what does this huge booming opportunity in the space of B2C vertical dramas, how does that connect to B2B marketing? And is there a downward funnel where this is going to take over and become the norm in the B2B side of things? (01:31): Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message. Richard Ormsby (01:38): Hey Adam, sorry I missed your call. Thinking about your question on microdramas and whether this massive B2C boom hits B2B video. And it is a boom. It's currently an $8 billion business projected to be $26 billion business by 2030. It's just massive, but I think it does have a downstream effect on B2B video. What these microdramas are proving is that there's a legitimate profitable business model in short-form video. I think back in the day, Quibi had the right thesis, but not the right environment. But what we found is the short-form video is capable of holding an audience's attention. Sure, social media has opened the door to the vertical format and we've been grappling with a sort of cultural shift of shortening attention spans, but this medium is finally proving short-term video works. And I'm actually betting on this myself. I'm building a short-form channel right now called Lavendr to sort of prove out this economic model. (02:31): And so how that sort of comes down to B2B video I think is really interesting because if you think about B2B, they're kind of the first to short-form video with traditional commercials. The problem we have now is the current media environment makes audiences totally resistant to commercials. We just shun them unless it's like the Super Bowl. I know I personally just swipe past those ads on Instagram because I don't want to watch a second on them. There's a new formula out there. It's storytelling plus format. We need to adapt our video stories to the actual physical device, the vertical screen in our pockets, and then the attention spans of all the people holding them. I think in a lot of ways, B2B has been sort of slow to adapt to this new environment. We've been dealing with this shift on Instagram and TikTok, et cetera, for a long time. (03:15): And you'll notice creators are out there having to trick their audience almost and then like, "Oh, hey, I'm using this beauty product to sell that thing or what have you." It's like, "Okay, that was subtle. That was slow. You got me." So you have to hook them with a convincing story right up front or a trend or a parody or something to make them feel something in three seconds and then subtly present a product or service or a solution that might be irrelevant to their lives. I think at the end of the day, we have to sort of change the B2B video mindset. We need to start targeting buyers, corporate personas, influencers in the corporate structure, like any other consumer might consume video because they don't stop being human consumers when they clock in, go to work. So I think even in the B2B video space, we're not immune to the bend of culture. (04:03): Buyers are people. People need a good story. They need it fast to be convinced to watch and hopefully begin the often very long, tedious process of B2B buying by submitting that form or scheduling a call. But I've seen it work. I've seen short form video work to produce millions in revenue in the B2B space in my time at cast and crew. So I think it's absolutely worth the investment. Thanks for the question, Adam. Bye