Latest / Gimbal Podcast / How to Make Shorts So Good The Whole World Talks About Them (ft. Anthony Smith from DOAC)

Transcript

How to Make Shorts So Good The Whole World Talks About Them (ft. Anthony Smith from DOAC) · Gimbal Podcast

• 0:00
  How do you strike the right balance between teasing a viewer and giving them something of substance?
• 0:06
  I have a 15-point checklist that every single trailer had to tick off.
• 0:11
  You need to be able to offer a promise that they genuinely want to find the answer to.
• 0:16
  Anthony, welcome to the show.
• 0:17
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:18
  I'm excited.
• 0:19
  Your videos have been viewed over 2 billion times.
• 0:23
  You are probably one of the most, if not the most, in-demand editor in the entire creator economy right now.
• 0:30
  You have a lot of crazy principles about how you make the work that you make.
• 0:35
  And my first question for you is, what on earth is horoscope theory?
• 0:40
  Horoscope theory is a new way of how I'm thinking about structuring content and techniques that you can use.
• 0:46
  Part of it was I've always been fascinated with horoscopes and I've always had this fascination of why it sort of brings so many people to look at what their horoscope will be and yet they always believe what they're reading.
• 0:59
  And so it's very similar to how you sort of craft a piece of content really is like ultimately you want to you want to try and bring in as many people as possible.
• 1:09
  But how do you do that with also knowing that you have to try and speak to the individual audience member to try and get them on board and to try and get them to get them to engage?
• 1:18
  Because a lot of people engage most when they feel like you're talking to them directly.
• 1:22
  when they feel like you've hit the nail in the head of their problem.
• 1:25
  The best example I can give for this is when we would have like a fitness expert on, right?
• 1:30
  And they will talk about a Zen pick, they'll talk about creatine, they'll talk about strength training, they'll talk about supplements, they'll talk about
• 1:38
  you know, sunlight, they'll talk about so many different, very niche topics within the podcast.
• 1:44
  And traditionally, what you would find is people would go and create a hook all about, say, a Zen pick, because they know that, for example, the data could come back and say that a Zen pick is the most searched term on Google, for example, they may focus on creatine because of the huge rise in creatine sales.
• 2:02
  But essentially, what you end up doing is you sort of you're casting your
• 2:08
  which may be creatine.
• 2:09
  And so essentially what we now do when we create a trailer, especially within the hook, is create this theme that relates to a much wider audience and then use those niche topics to really rein them in.
• 2:22
  And so what something all of those elements have in common that then becomes the theme of the episode, and therefore this is our horoscope, is burning belly fat and losing weight.
• 2:33
  So they may not pitch themselves as the belly fat expert
• 2:38
  this is the central theme of the interview.
• 2:40
  And so everything that you edit within the trailer itself has to point back to that central theme.
• 2:46
  Yeah, exactly.
• 2:46
  And that's how the greatest films of our time were made.
• 2:50
  You know, if you look at films like, say, Jurassic Park, obviously it's incredibly scripted.
• 2:55
  It's a classic.
• 2:57
  The cast are amazing.
• 2:58
  But when you actually take a process,
• 3:00
  proper step back and look at Jurassic Park, for example, you understand that there's this theme, which is the idea of man playing God.
• 3:08
  And so when you then start to dissect that, you sort of realise why the cast are portraying the characters in a certain way, why the dialogue is a certain way.
• 3:18
  how the narrative, all that sort of works.
• 3:20
  But more importantly, when it becomes 30, 40, 50 odd years later, and we're now in this world of AI, the theme is now the exact same again, which is man playing with God.
• 3:32
  Ultimately, no matter what content you're creating, whether it's a feature-length film, a trailer, podcast, a show, whatever it may be,
• 3:40
  The ultimate goal, I would say, is to try and make it as relatable to the audience as possible, right?
• 3:46
  And so how can you do that when a lot of the guests you have on, for example, are not the lives that our audience have lived?
• 3:54
  You know, when you have someone like, say, Matthew McConaughey on, how can you make his episode feel relatable to an audience who aren't Hollywood A-listers?
• 4:03
  And so what you then sort of find is traditionally, if you was going to have Matthew McConaughey on a show...
• 4:09
  You would talk about his rise to fame.
• 4:11
  You would talk about his favourite films, his worst films, the actors that he liked working with, the actors they did.
• 4:17
  And that's sort of like the traditional interview you get with these actors, right?
• 4:21
  And so when it then came down to our interview with him, in particular with the trailer, I didn't want the theme of that episode to be, oh, we're getting an inside scoop of Hollywood through Matthew McConaughey or how he rose to fame or how he struggled with fame.
• 4:35
  Because the reality of it is very few people can relate to that.
• 4:39
  And when you can't relate to that content, you're not really going to be as engaged through it.
• 4:44
  And so what we then turned Matthew McConaughey's is the idea of striving for success and how it's the building blocks that start from your childhood.
• 4:53
  Because loads of people can relate to the lessons that their mum and dad gave them and how if they were to actually take a step back and dissect it all sort of led to their career decisions now.
• 5:03
  And that's also why he's opening hook is nothing to do with Hollywood, nothing to do with films.
• 5:07
  You know, we didn't want to like didn't do any name dropping of any of like Wolf of Wall Street or anything like that.
• 5:13
  We started with him giving an analogy on people quitting too soon.
• 5:18
  And so that's a piece of advice that so many people can implement into their lives.
• 5:23
  It's just being told by a Hollywood actor.
• 5:25
  And so the rest of his trailer was learning about how to be the best version of yourself.
• 5:32
  But it was just told from his events, you know, from his childhood to the scripts that he was accepting to losing himself a bit through movies.
• 5:41
  being typecast with rom-coms and so he was using his life as examples but the thread of it and the theme was always on how to be the best version of yourself and to essentially never give up how would horoscope theory be applied poorly and how would it be applied correctly
• 5:56
  The way it would be applied poorly was the entire piece would just be about a ZenPick.
• 6:02
  And it wouldn't so much be about how it's going to affect people or so.
• 6:07
  It would just almost be a little bit like, this is how you use it.
• 6:10
  This is how many has been sold.
• 6:11
  Maybe, OK, here are the benefits of a ZenPick, etc.
• 6:14
  Almost like just telling the audience that this is going to happen.
• 6:17
  Where it would be done well was understanding why people want to take a ZenPick in the first place.
• 6:24
  And so you then start playing, okay, well, now we need to appeal to those people.
• 6:29
  So we need to use a certain emotive language or we need to sort of play to the problems and the costs that those people might be facing in their everyday lives.
• 6:38
  Loads of people have a fear that they don't want to die from a heart attack.
• 6:42
  You know, they want to age well.
• 6:44
  And so when you sort of start playing into those minds, the Zen pick is no longer the theme and the topic of the episode, but more or less, it's like a way in to explain a potential solution and essentially allow audiences to make up their own mind on what sort of topic that they want to invest in sooner.
• 7:03
  What's the action item based on all of this that you would give to editors watching or listening to this episode when they're thinking about horoscope theory?
• 7:11
  Yeah.
• 7:11
  Always look at why would someone want to go and watch this thing?
• 7:14
  You know, it's all well and good to say we want to interview an Azempic expert because, you know, Azempic sales are through the roof.
• 7:22
  You know, you're hearing stories of it being sold on the black market.
• 7:24
  You know, it's becoming more and more popular.
• 7:26
  But the reality of it is, is there's a reason why people are going to that drug.
• 7:31
  I want to explore what a trailer looks like from the start to the very finish.
• 7:37
  Can you walk me through your process from the moment a piece of footage lands on your desk all the way to the point where it's uploaded to the internet?
• 7:45
  I mean, the process changed so many times, you know, after I think I ended up making about 480 trailers and
• 7:53
  The process very rarely stayed the exact same because of schedules and because of ideas and teams.
• 8:00
  And essentially what it would begin with, I would receive the footage.
• 8:05
  We would transcribe everything.
• 8:06
  We purposely done that because we wanted to make sure that the trailer that we created was a perfect representation of that episode.
• 8:14
  You know, we never really wanted to create something that after five minutes, the audience was like, I've been duped here.
• 8:20
  You know, I've been sold a promise that is clearly not going to be kept.
• 8:24
  So once we've done that and we've got it down to about 15 pages, we would then start creating the narrative process.
• 8:31
  And...
• 8:31
  That would be a mixture of looking through the data and then also going back to the reason why we got into this in the first place, which is to be storytellers and to tell a compelling story and to take an audience on an emotional journey that is backed by the data.
• 8:46
  And when you say we, what roles are involved in this process at this point?
• 8:50
  Yeah, so for the first two years, I believe, it was just me.
• 8:55
  So that would be storyteller, writer, director, sound designer, colorist, all of that sort of thing.
• 9:01
  And then by the time I left, we had a team of four.
• 9:04
  I had Liv...
• 9:06
  who is the most incredible editor who I essentially trained to replace me and become trailer editor 2.0.
• 9:14
  We had Cam, who was an incredible B-roll and AI animator.
• 9:18
  So he would take on all of the animation elements to it.
• 9:22
  And then we had Dom, who was our last recruit, who essentially would then start working on the text and doing the ratios and finding all the tiny little 1%s within the fonts and the colours that we can then enhance the trailers even further.
• 9:35
  As the trailers progressed, so the number of people that we brought in.
• 9:39
  But what I quite liked was...
• 9:40
  you know, at those first two years where it was just me working on it, is I got a really incredible insight into every single element of it.
• 9:48
  The role at the start was, yeah, to read it through and then to create the narrative.
• 9:53
  And the narrative was very much backed by data.
• 9:56
  And then from there, we would then, you know, go pull it through the edit, we would create
• 10:01
  music scenes of it, you know, we would do the sound design, we would send it off to, like, Cam would start doing the B-roll elements of it, we would do the text.
• 10:08
  But essentially, creating the narrative was 50% of the entire trailer.
• 10:12
  The way I can explain it cleanly is that when it was just me, I had two days to turn around these trailers.
• 10:19
  Day one was narrative, and then day two was music, animation, text, ratios.
• 10:23
  So we put so much importance on the narrative because storytelling is king.
• 10:30
  You know, that's the thing that will hook people in, that will make people engaged, that'll make people stay, that'll make people wanting to know more, that will provoke the emotions.
• 10:38
  And we know that provoking certain emotions leads to certain buying behaviours, whether you want them to subscribe, whether you want them to buy a product, whether you want them to leave a...
• 10:46
  social media page to go onto another social media platform.
• 10:49
  If you don't have a clear story, then there's no point doing the rest.
• 10:54
  And I do think that's where a lot of edits and a lot of content gets lost today is they sort of cherry pick the cool stuff and the elements that they do want to use, but then they wonder why it just never quite lands.
• 11:06
  And it's because you've not done all of that work in the narrative beforehand to guide the audience to that moment.
• 11:13
  That's great insight.
• 11:14
  So are you saying that the majority of the edit takes place on paper where you are like, like you're literally going through highlighting, creating the script through there?
• 11:23
  Yeah, we literally got to the stage where we were writing out the scripts as well.
• 11:28
  You know, we would type out the dialogue.
• 11:30
  So it's in our mind.
• 11:31
  So we understood it.
• 11:32
  We would then create our own what I would call filler words.
• 11:35
  So how can we lead them from this topic to this topic without just sort of having a straight cut?
• 11:40
  What is the sentence or what is the wordage that we need here to guide them into that lane?
• 11:46
  And so ultimately, that's where sometimes a little bit of moving magic would come in where you'd have to combine two sentences together.
• 11:52
  Or it could just be a single word.
• 11:54
  It could be like a but or an and or an also.
• 11:57
  The reason why we've done that was because if we could then read that script and understand it completely...
• 12:03
  then as far as we're concerned, the edit just has become 50% easier because now we're just doing everything to elevate that story as opposed to still trying to create something, still trying to create this narrative.
• 12:17
  I have a,
• 12:18
  15-point checklist that every single trailer had to tick off.
• 12:22
  One of those points was justification.
• 12:25
  Every single element of your trailer needed to be justified, in my eyes, because disconnection kills retention, right?
• 12:32
  If there's anything that happens that
• 12:35
  really takes the brain away from the moment.
• 12:38
  Even in that split second, because we're such a scrolling nature, it's near on impossible to get them back.
• 12:44
  You know, you need them to be fixed onto that piece of content for as long as you possibly can.
• 12:49
  The second you do something out of the ordinary,
• 12:52
  that's not justified and the brain has to then think about it, they've gone.
• 12:57
  A lot of that comes down to the story.
• 12:58
  You know, if we're explaining the moment here and then it just suddenly cuts to something completely different and we've not had closure on that moment or we've not been led to the next moment and now our brain's starting to work overtime because it's like, well, how do we get from here to here?
• 13:12
  Because we've grown up in traditional storytelling, right?
• 13:16
  We've grown up on this idea of a journey.
• 13:18
  If you're doing that, then that's just, it's too much.
• 13:21
  And then you just swipe away and you move on to something else.
• 13:24
  I like how you said that every choice needs to be justified.
• 13:27
  In my usual work, I have sometimes left feedback for video editors on a bunch of things.
• 13:34
  And one of the things that I think about pretty deeply is a video editor has to make maybe a thousand decisions over the course of a video.
• 13:41
  Which is an insane number of decisions, right?
• 13:43
  Each decision needs to have a reason why it exists.
• 13:46
  And I find that sometimes a video editor will punch in or pull out on a shot or do some kind of cutaway.
• 13:55
  And if I ask them why they do it, they will say something like, well, I just felt like I needed to do it at that point.
• 13:59
  And I feel like you actually need as a video editor to be very, very granular about every single decision.
• 14:05
  And you need to be able to explain to someone why you did that.
• 14:08
  Why did you punch in?
• 14:09
  Well, we want the viewer to lean in more.
• 14:10
  100%.
• 14:11
  If you were to speak to Scorsese or if you were to speak to Spielberg or if you were going to speak to like Deakin on why they've made the decisions they've made, they would be able to do that.
• 14:21
  And it's so much care for a craft that, you know, I do think part of it has been lost.
• 14:27
  You know, social media obviously hasn't helped with that.
• 14:30
  You know, the idea that we're such an impatient society right now, you know, which has been hand held.
• 14:36
  along the way with social media, for example, you know, people wanting more.
• 14:39
  The idea that, you know, if you want to ever become successful, you have to post like four things a day.
• 14:45
  This like constant churn out of content, for example, has ultimately led to now you're creating a generation of creatives where they're not thinking about the craft or the detail.
• 14:56
  And instead, they're just seeing something that they like and then they're copying it.
• 15:00
  But then they wonder why it doesn't have the exact same impact to it.
• 15:03
  And so ultimately then what you then realize is, is if you then take a step back, you then realize why it didn't land.
• 15:10
  And it's because we've not spent the effort to try and get the audience to that point there.
• 15:15
  You know, we've not made them care about this topic.
• 15:18
  We've not made them care about this cliffhanger.
• 15:20
  So why the hell would they want to go and watch this two hour long episode, which is a big thing to ask someone to do, you know, especially in this day and age to get someone to commit to that a long amount of time.
• 15:31
  You know, you need to be able to offer a promise that they genuinely want to find the answer to.
• 15:36
  And the only way you can do that is to almost deconstruct them and whittle it down and almost break them and break down that topic and break the audience down.
• 15:46
  to then start the process of rebuilding that moment, you know?
• 15:50
  And so it's ultimately like a lot of care and attention that needs to go into it.
• 15:55
  And so I would ask Dom, for example, why he would use a certain font within the edit.
• 16:02
  And bless him, I mean, the first few times he would say things like, oh, I thought it was really cool.
• 16:07
  And the reality of it is I thought it was cool too.
• 16:09
  And I also thought it's nice and it works, but get rid of it, you know?
• 16:14
  And he had to get rid of it.
• 16:16
  But then what that actually done was by the time when I did ask him and then he explained why and I was like, perfect, it's going in, the excitement, the fact that it was in the trailer completely,
• 16:27
  completely outweighed the times when he said it was cool and it didn't go in.
• 16:31
  And then what you then found was that he was actually doing more research into stuff and he was doing more mood boards and he was looking into all of these little granular details.
• 16:39
  And when you're doing things like that, you just, I think it's just one of those things where you just naturally become more detail orientated and you enjoy it more.
• 16:46
  You know, the reason why I love what I do now is because I get the opportunity to just go down so many rabbit holes and
• 16:53
  and read about case studies on brands and, you know, people that I've never heard of, but yet somehow make it relatable to film and content.
• 17:02
  You know, I'm reading about Snickers at the moment and Kraft Mac and Cheese, and there's studies and Edison and the light bulb and all of these elements here.
• 17:11
  And their principles also work with the content that we're making.
• 17:16
  How do you strike the right balance between teasing a viewer and giving them something of substance?
• 17:25
  It is a very delicate balance, 100%.
• 17:28
  And I know from my time, even with DOAC, I've sort of experienced what happens when you do so much teasing that there's no substance left.
• 17:38
  And ultimately, when you're offering something which offers no substance, no one gives a crap.
• 17:45
  You know, and so ultimately I did fall into that trap once upon a time with DOAC where, you know, I got carried away with people love hating the cliffhangers, for example.
• 17:57
  And this idea of just throwing in cliffhangers left, right and centre and teasing in this topic and that topic.
• 18:02
  And then what I then found was the comments were coming back and being like, I didn't learn anything here.
• 18:08
  Or why should I go and watch?
• 18:10
  Or are you just selling me something?
• 18:12
  And then that really hit home of this idea of like, no matter what content you create, ideally you want to try and give as much value as you can within the parameters of that piece of content.
• 18:24
  You know, if you're creating a standalone clip, you can offer as much value as you want.
• 18:29
  Obviously, with a trailer, you can't give everything away because you are still creating a marketing asset, right?
• 18:35
  But you want to be able to give something because essentially that achieves a lot more than just teasing and just teasing.
• 18:43
  And so an example of this is what supermarkets used to do, which they used to call a loss leader, where they would sort of give out free fruit when you walk into the supermarket.
• 18:53
  And people are more likely to spend more money in the supermarket if they're offered free fruit.
• 18:56
  It's the exact same thing with giving free bread at a restaurant.
• 18:59
  And ultimately, it does a few things.
• 19:01
  A, it sort of triggers a little bit of a guilt complex.
• 19:04
  You know, if someone gives us a present, the first thing we want to do is figure out how we can give them a present back.
• 19:10
  And so it's the same thing with restaurants.
• 19:12
  You know, if they're offering us all of this free stuff, suddenly when you're looking at the menu, you go, oh, you know what, I might treat myself to that steak.
• 19:18
  And it's the same thing with the trailers, right?
• 19:20
  You know, if we're offering you these pieces of advice, it's almost like, okay, I'm starting to trust them a bit here.
• 19:27
  Maybe I should go and watch the full thing because if they're offering me this, there's going to be a lot more that they're doing here.
• 19:32
  We're not here to just sell you something.
• 19:35
  We're here to genuinely want to help you and to have interesting and at times uncomfortable conversations.
• 19:41
  Here's an example of that because we've got nothing to hide.
• 19:44
  And if you come and watch the full thing, you're going to you're going to get a hell of a lot more from that.
• 19:48
  I guess the fear on the flip side is that if you give too much value away, then there's no need to consume the entire podcast.
• 19:54
  I mean, what I would say is if you're if you have like an hour long or even like a 45 minutes or an hour long podcast and you're worried that all of the value is going to be given away in 30 seconds, then you probably then need to look at the other 39 minutes.
• 20:11
  That's a good point.
• 20:13
  That's a great point.
• 20:14
  And it's one of those where you see it all the time with films fell into this rut where they would give away the entire film.
• 20:21
  Netflix sort of fell into this trap where they were giving away all of the best moments in the trailer.
• 20:26
  And then people would go and watch the film and be like, I could have just watched the trailer because the rest clearly just wasn't worthy enough to be in the trailer.
• 20:33
  If you're creating any piece of content, I genuinely think that every piece of content should cover at least two of these three things, which is story, emotion, and value.
• 20:42
  Does it tell a compelling story?
• 20:45
  Does it take an audience on an emotional journey?
• 20:47
  Am I feeling something watching this?
• 20:50
  And the third one is value.
• 20:51
  Am I learning something from this?
• 20:53
  And so sometimes you might not always be able to tick the story box because for whatever reason, you're talking to an expert or you're creating a clip
• 21:00
  that's about a particular topic.
• 21:02
  But you can still offer value and you can still offer emotion.
• 21:05
  You can do that through music, you can do that through the tone, you can do that through the language, right?
• 21:08
  If you can't offer emotion, then again, you've still got story and from the story, you can still perceive a bit of value from that.
• 21:16
  And then ultimately, the final one is story and
• 21:23
  Through story, there's, I mean, you could argue there's still an element of value there because people love to hear stories, you know, if it's like an actual narrative piece, then if it's still got a theme behind it, for example, then it almost like they can sort of create the value themselves.
• 21:39
  You know, they'll sort of read through the lines.
• 21:41
  Now they'll find a way to make it relatable to themselves.
• 21:44
  But ideally, you want all three in every single piece of content you make.
• 21:48
  And especially, especially in the trailers, you know, you've got no reason not to offer value within it.
• 21:54
  What is the best way to convert someone from watching the trailer to consuming the main episode?
• 22:01
  What is the best CTA that you've done?
• 22:04
  One is creating a piece of content that sticks with them.
• 22:08
  Because, for example, for a lot of people, especially with Dive CEO, the trailer in the episode would go out at 8 a.m.
• 22:15
  Most people are on their way to work then.
• 22:17
  So a lot of people might not actually even get a chance to consider watching the episode until half 5, 6 p.m. when they're on their way home.
• 22:26
  And so that was obviously part of the challenge.
• 22:28
  And so when we was creating the trailer, we wanted to create a piece of content that stuck with them or create a piece of content that they would want to share with people that created a bit of a buzz that created comments and conversation between people.
• 22:40
  And so obviously you do that by raising the stakes.
• 22:42
  You do that by, again, horoscope theory of like really trying to appeal to the individual person, even though your content is actually appealing to the masses.
• 22:51
  And so you create a piece of content that they might still be thinking about when it gets to six o'clock.
• 22:56
  You know, they've saved it or someone's going to send it to me like, I'll remember to watch that.
• 23:00
  So that's the first one, which then obviously when they go and watch the full episode, it starts off with the trailer, which is now turned into the intro.
• 23:07
  So it's that reminder again of the excitement buzz is coming on.
• 23:10
  from an intro perspective, so if it's playing before the episode begins, or even if it's on social, is making sure that whatever you end on is compelling enough to create a little bit of annoyance with the audience.
• 23:25
  And so this goes back to a study, I think it was in Berlin.
• 23:30
  The location was a cafe.
• 23:33
  and they were interviewing waiters who had experiences with good paying customers and customers who just ran out of the shop and didn't pay.
• 23:42
  You know, they'd done questionnaires, they were doing like CT scans, etc, etc.
• 23:46
  And what they found was that for the patients that paid,
• 23:51
  and was just a perfectly pleasant experience.
• 23:54
  They couldn't really remember anything about their exchanges.
• 23:58
  They couldn't remember what they ordered.
• 24:00
  They couldn't really remember what they were wearing, what they were talking about.
• 24:03
  They couldn't really remember anything, but they remembered it was a pleasant experience.
• 24:07
  When it then came to the customers who just ran off,
• 24:11
  suddenly they remembered what they were wearing.
• 24:13
  They knew exactly what they ordered.
• 24:15
  They knew exactly how much it cost.
• 24:17
  They remembered everything about those little pieces of detail and what they actually realized when they started doing all these brain scans and looking at it was they actually created this trigger within the brain where the brain just kept reminding them of this unfinished piece of conflict or scenario that wasn't resolved.
• 24:38
  And the humans want resolution.
• 24:40
  You know, we long for resolution.
• 24:43
  This is why X is so big in the way it is, is because if we don't know the answers to what's going on in the world, especially like through geopolitics, we'll go to X to try and find the answer.
• 24:54
  And if we can't find the answer, we'll start creating our own answers.
• 24:57
  And then that's when that side of social media blows up.
• 25:00
  And so what happens is when something sudden or really annoying or, you know, really impactful just stops and is unresolved, your brain will literally remind you to try and find out that answer.
• 25:13
  Because ultimately, it always comes down to survival.
• 25:17
  tactics, right, and survival techniques.
• 25:19
  And it's essentially like if you don't learn the resolve of this, this could be life and death.
• 25:24
  You know, that's how evolution, how our brains are wired.
• 25:27
  Obviously, it's never to that extreme now.
• 25:29
  But it's the same mechanisms are at work.
• 25:31
  And so if you can create a cliffhanger or an ending that just really grates on them, and they go, I need to know this because this is really, really bugging me now, then you're
• 25:43
  instantly increase your chances of making them go and watch the full thing.
• 25:47
  In fact, like one of my favorite comment ever from a Diary of CEO trailer was when we had, I can't remember his name, but he was a barista.
• 25:56
  One of the comments on social media was, I had to come back to write this.
• 26:01
  I hate coffee and I cannot believe I've just watched two hours watching a coffee expert.
• 26:06
  That blew my mind because not only did they feel like they had to go back to Instagram to write that comment, but it was the fact that we managed to convince someone who hates coffee to watch two hours of a coffee episode.
• 26:18
  And it was because of what we put into that trailer, right?
• 26:21
  We essentially gave enough away to be like, if you watch this episode, you'll be able to talk to any of your friends and almost sound like a coffee connoisseur.
• 26:31
  You're going to know what the best grind is.
• 26:36
  whatever.
• 26:36
  I don't like coffee.
• 26:37
  So, so I don't quite know what it was, but it was, there was enough there to cause that annoyance of almost like a little bit of, um, if, if I learned this, I can talk to my friends about coffee.
• 26:49
  So in a world where everybody is trying to optimize their CTA and get people to convert through many chat, comment this, and I'll send you the episode, these kinds of things.
• 26:58
  What I'm hearing is, um,
• 27:00
  If you tell a really compelling story with some transformation, a piece of value, and then you kind of piss the viewer off just a little bit with some really catchy cliffhanger, that is the best way to get someone to convert into watching the full episode.
• 27:13
  It's part of it.
• 27:14
  I mean, the great thing about ManyChat is that, especially on Instagram, it's a perfect tool to get people over to it.
• 27:21
  But yeah, ultimately, it's like we evolved to listen to stories.
• 27:26
  So many people can probably remember the idea of like, you know, they would have to get tucked into bed and they'll be told a bedtime story.
• 27:32
  And then when they was old enough, they would like, I mean, back in my day, you'd have a cassette.
• 27:37
  So I'd listen to a cassette of Harry Potter or a book called The Demon Headmaster.
• 27:42
  And then that then elevated to being able to watch a film at night.
• 27:45
  And then when I was a teenager, I was secretly watching films until 2, 3 a.m.,
• 27:50
  And so we're constantly being told stories as we grow up.
• 27:53
  And then even as adults, it's just in the form of the news.
• 27:56
  You know, the best storytellers and the best news stories that last forever are stories.
• 28:01
  One of the best examples ever is War of the Worlds.
• 28:04
  Do you know, like, the whole thing with War of the Worlds and the radio play?
• 28:07
  No, no, no.
• 28:08
  Oh, the Oscar.
• 28:09
  Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 28:10
  So I think it's H.G.
• 28:11
  Wells who wrote War of the Worlds, and he read it as a radio play.
• 28:16
  And the idea was that loads of people listened to it and were so convinced by the story that aliens were coming onto the world and destroying the world that it caused this mass hysteria and there was all this panic.
• 28:29
  People were like they genuinely were fearing for their lives that the world is being overtaken by aliens because of this fictional book that was being read out on the radio.
• 28:39
  So that's part one of the story to show a true power of storytelling.
• 28:42
  But what I really love about this story is that there's another side that not many people know about, which is the actual radio play didn't cause as much hysteria as everyone believes.
• 28:55
  You know, if you Google it, there's loads of like newspaper articles about it.
• 28:59
  You know, it's told a lot about how this radio play was so convincing people are running away.
• 29:04
  But it wasn't actually that powerful.
• 29:07
  What was more powerful was the idea that around that time, newspapers were scared of radio because radio was this new thing and they thought all of their readers are going to go over to radio and newspapers are going to become obsolete.
• 29:20
  And so what they done is they created a story that the radio created such mass hysteria, radio is the villain.
• 29:28
  And so that story that we all know was actually more made up because of a story from newspapers who wanted to paint the radio as the villain, not the book and not the story as the villain.
• 29:42
  And so it's this idea of like, it's a story within a story.
• 29:45
  It's almost like the inception of stories.
• 29:47
  It's this idea that newspaper crafted this element of little elements of truth and created their own story, which now has become legend.
• 29:55
  But not many people actually know the origins of that story.
• 29:57
  They just assume it's from, you know, the radio play itself.
• 30:01
  And so that's just how important story is, you know, like a story told by Mary Shelley in a campfire has now got theme parks and films of Frankenstein and characters and characters.
• 30:13
  It's something that humans have had ingrained in us since we were born.
• 30:17
  And that's how we communicate.
• 30:19
  And that's how we know what's good and what's wrong.
• 30:22
  And so ultimately, if your pieces of content can tell a compelling story, but through the marketing angle from a trader perspective and create that little bit of annoyance, ultimately, you are like just ticking off everything within the brain to make them to want to go and watch the full episode.
• 30:39
  Anthony, wow, I feel like I could talk to you for hours.
• 30:41
  We've only just scratched the surface with what's inside your brain.
• 30:44
  Let's wrap it up.
• 30:45
  I asked the same question to everybody at the very end.
• 30:47
  Who is a creator or video editor on your radar that's doing an excellent job right now?
• 30:52
  There's one in particular who I'm fascinated by at the moment.
• 30:55
  I've had the honor to speak to him a few times now.
• 30:59
  A guy called Sam Ekholm.
• 31:00
  So he's the host of the show Access Granted.
• 31:03
  It's mainly based around military and he goes in and sort of goes and checks out incredible jets and submarines.
• 31:11
  But the content he creates is so compelling to watch.
• 31:14
  And for someone like me, who I'm not really interested in the army to that extent, you know, I don't have any plans of joining it.
• 31:21
  It's not really something that I thought I'd be that interested in.
• 31:24
  But the way he crafts narrative, the way he hosts, and now I've had the honour of actually speaking to him and his team.
• 31:31
  seeing what goes on behind the scenes it is it's truly incredible and it sort of shows how you can take topics that could be relatively niche and making it feel huge and making it for the mass audience he's been an absolute master of that so he he's a creator that um i'm very much watching a lot of his content right now
• 31:50
  I just learned about this guy, so I'm going to have to consume some more of his stuff.
• 31:53
  Thank you so much for being on the show.
• 31:55
  We'll link your contact information in the description box.
• 31:58
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 31:59
  Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode.
• 32:01
  If you're new here, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms.
• 32:05
  It helps us as a very new show.
• 32:07
  If you want to check out another episode, just look through our library.
• 32:10
  It's starting to build up.
• 32:10
  We're at like 40 episodes now, and we have a new one coming out every single Thursday.
• 32:14
  So thank you for being here, and I will see you then.