Are you looking to level up your brand video strategy in the next 1-2 years? Join industry expert Igor Petrov from Level Up Studio and LVL Up Media, as he shares his thoughts on the future of brand video and how AI is shaping content creation. From automation to audience targeting, Igor dives deep into how brands can use these tools effectively while staying true to their unique voice. Don’t miss this engaging conversation on how to keep your brand ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of video marketing!
Join Emanuel, our host from How About Some Marketing?, as he coordinates this fascinating conversation with Igor, an expert in video content production and studio management. From discussing the rise of AI-generated content to practical tips on creating compelling brand videos, this workshop covers it all!
Igor Petrof, the Toronto-based creative specialist with over 19 years of experience in media production, sheds light on the future of video production, content creation, and how AI is transforming the industry. Learn how businesses can leverage AI, Meta Ads, automate tedious processes, and maintain a balance between tech-driven efficiency and creative taste.
In this webinar hosted by Emanuel from How About Some Marketing? viewers get an inside look at the future of brand video and video marketing strategies with Igor, a seasoned expert in video content creation and production. The session covers key topics such as the growing role of AI in video production, the importance of audience targeting through platforms like Meta, and how automation is transforming creative industries. Igor shares his expertise on the value of keeping video content authentic and sincere, emphasizing that sometimes less polished, more personal videos resonate better with audiences.
The session covers practical advice on leveraging AI for tasks like color correction and editing, as well as insights on how businesses can stay ahead in an ever-changing landscape of digital content. Igor Petrov also discusses the significance of maintaining “taste” in creative work, explaining how automation tools can never fully replace human creativity. The webinar concludes with a Q&A session addressing participants’ specific challenges in video marketing and brand strategy.
Attendees are encouraged to explore AI-driven tools, stay adaptable in their content creation, and connect with Igor for further insights into elevating their video production strategies.
Show Notes
00:00 Introduction and Webinar Overview Emanuel introduces the webinar and sets the stage for the discussion on video marketing and AI in creative industries with Igor.
01:15 About Igor Petrov and Level Up Studios Overview of Igor’s background in video content creation and production, and the services offered by Level Up Studios.
03:20 The Power of Audience Targeting in Meta Ads Igor discusses the effectiveness of Meta’s advertising tools and how businesses can use AI to target the right audience.
06:45 AI’s Impact on Video Content Creation Igor shares insights on how AI is transforming video production, from color correction to editing, and how automation is reshaping the creative industry.
10:00 The Balance Between Automation and Taste in Creative Work A deep dive into how AI tools are useful but can’t replicate human creativity, especially when it comes to “taste” in video production.
12:30 Importance of Authentic and Sincere Content Igor highlights the value of creating authentic, personal video content that connects with the audience, and how overproduced videos can sometimes work against businesses.
15:05 Leveraging Meta’s “Advantage Plus” for Targeting the Right Audience Discussion on using Meta’s powerful AI-driven tools, like Advantage Plus, to target specific audiences effectively, even with a limited budget.
18:15 Automation in Editing and Color Correction Igor explains how AI tools are increasingly taking over time-consuming tasks like color correction, making it easier for businesses to produce high-quality video content at a lower cost.
21:00 The Future of AI in Video Marketing Igor shares his predictions for the future of AI in video marketing, and how it will continue to evolve in the next 1-2 years.
24:10 The Role of Taste and Experience in Video Production The importance of experienced creatives who know how to use AI tools sparingly to maintain high-quality, tasteful content.
28:05 Business Applications: Video Content Creation for All Industries Igor talks about how businesses from different industries can leverage video content for brand growth and customer engagement.
31:30 Social Media and Branding: Maintaining Professional Boundaries A discussion on how brands should avoid crossing the line between being professional and overly casual in their social media presence.
35:00 Q&A: Using AI for Effective Content Strategy Igor answers questions on how to integrate AI tools into video content creation for maximum impact.
36:40 Q&A: Overcoming Creative Blocks with AI Tips on using AI to overcome creative challenges, including how to automate repetitive tasks and focus more on creativity.
39:20 Q&A: How to Stand Out in a Crowded Digital Space Strategies for businesses to differentiate themselves using video marketing, and why authenticity is key to standing out.
42:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Igor wraps up with actionable advice for businesses looking to level up their video marketing, and encourages attendees to embrace AI while retaining the human touch in creative work.
Episode transcript:
Emanuel Petrescu: My name is Emanuel Petrescu. I’m the founder of How About Some Marketing?. I’m an SEO, digital marketing, and AI consultant. I help businesses make more money and get more traction from their digital channels: organic, social, paid, email, you name it.
I founded How About Some Marketing? in 2018 with the idea of creating a hub for marketing professionals and savvy business owners who wanted to do the marketing for themselves. I wanted it to be a hub that people trust for their information. So far, it’s been going well.
Thank you so much for being here for this live edition with my special guest, Igor Petrov, a videographer from Toronto, Canada. Before we dive right in, I have a couple of questions for Igor. This is a new, hybrid format: we’re in person, and we have a few people present.
Igor Petrov: I’m not sure I’ve ever been a guest at a podcast-style interview in person like this. This is an interesting format, one of a kind.
Emanuel Petrescu: But before that, I would like to ask for the biggest favor of all. I wouldn’t be much of a marketer if I didn’t ask you to go right now to howaboutsomemarketing.com and subscribe to the newsletter. From there, you will be able to see past webinar recordings, future announcements of upcoming events that I’m excited to present, and, of course, all the information that you’ll need to become better at your marketing.
I’d like to give a shout-out to our partners: Aspiration Marketing—Joachim has been with us since the beginning; Organic Growth—Kevin Carney has been a guest a couple of times; Toronto Marketing Hub—Pavlo and Daniel, the people through whom I met Igor, my guest today; the Global Center for FinTech Innovation; and, of course, Level Up Studio and Level Up Media.
Now, without further ado, I’m going to jump right into our topic for today. I’m going to introduce our guest, but I’ll also ask him to say a couple of words about himself, because I like when somebody asks me to do so, so I give that opportunity to my guests as well.
Igor Petrov is a Toronto-based creative specialist with over 15 years of experience in the television and media industry. His career began as a video editor on hit shows like The Bachelor and X Factor, and he later transitioned into directing, creating successful TV series such as the acclaimed Rama Dreams. Currently, Igor is a video producer and editor at CBC, while also leading Level Up Media and Level Up Studio, his companies specializing in high-end video production, content creation, and event hosting. As a senior colorist at Creative Post Inc., his color-grading portfolio includes Emmy-nominated shows like Blue’s Clues and Wild Kratts, as well as projects for major networks such as Netflix, CBC, Nickelodeon, Discovery, and Crave. His expertise spans producing, directing, color grading, and full-scale content creation, helping brands and artists tell compelling visual stories. I highly encourage you to check out Igor’s work at igorpetrov.com.
That being said, Igor, thank you so much for accepting.
Igor Petrov: Thank you. My pleasure.
Emanuel Petrescu: It’s been a pretty thorough introduction, but is there anything else you would like to add?
Igor Petrov: No, you covered it. You covered it well. I wouldn’t add anything.
Emanuel Petrescu: Let’s jump straight into questions. Video is such an important thing. As the people who have read my newsletter or saw my LinkedIn posts know, I tell people, “Do videos, do videos, do videos.” Yet, I wasn’t doing them myself. So I started doing a lot of videos, and things change.
Okay, Igor, you’ve worked on everything from Emmy-nominated shows to brand campaigns, and we’re going to look into brand campaigns more later. What’s the biggest difference between professional video production and what most businesses are doing right now?
Igor Petrov: I think the line is getting blurred between what professionals do for TV and film production and what people are doing for brand companies. If you take top brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or even a company like KPMG, the content they’re producing is pretty much on par with what television used to produce. People are pumping the same amount of money into video marketing that they used to pump into big TV or film productions, so it has matched up.
However, the reasons and goals of a marketing campaign versus a TV show are very different. I would say there’s big money in it right now, but also, because the whole industry is shifting towards digital with lots of AI tools, it’s becoming much more affordable for brands. The entry into content creation and video marketing has become much more affordable.
Emanuel Petrescu: That’s a great point. We’re going to get to that later, but people shouldn’t be afraid of video.
Igor Petrov: I think people are already not afraid of video. From what we see on TikTok and Instagram Reels, the pitch for people to not be afraid of video is kind of redundant because people already know they have to do it.
Emanuel Petrescu: Fair enough. Do you think that many businesses, even big ones, struggle with creating video and getting the video thing right?
Igor Petrov: People do struggle because sometimes they don’t understand it or just don’t have experience with it. Quite often, if people don’t have a decent marketing budget, they can’t hire a production company or a videographer to produce something for them. So, they have to produce it internally or dedicate someone within the company to be the videographer, whether that person has the skills or not.
In the majority of cases, I would say that if you don’t have a strong person to be the video producer within your company, it should be your goal to find a production company or individual videographers who can do it for you, even if it’s currently out of your budget. Right now, digital is where you’re supposed to be, because that’s where you’re going to sell. It’s not a question of if you should; you should. There’s no question. You definitely should be there.
Emanuel Petrescu: You touched on this, but I’m going to ask my question anyway. For someone who has no team, no budget, just their phone—what’s the smartest first step they can take to create better video content?
Igor Petrov: You can do a lot of damage with your phone. These days, the technology barrier has become so affordable that you don’t have to start with a fancy camera or fancy lights. You sort of graduate to that level. We see so many influencers and content creators achieving great success just by shooting on their phones.
It’s the content, the substance of it, that really matters—not how you shoot it. If we start talking about equipment, lenses, cameras, or lights, that matters less than the substance. Sometimes people start exploring and get into “gear acquisition syndrome,” thinking that buying more stuff will make their videos better. They are very wrong, because it’s the content that will make the video better. It’s about how you are telling stories, how you are presenting your business, and how you are presenting yourself.
There are many avenues to explore in video for marketing. Is it just entertainment content? Is it a promo video? Is it an advertisement? Is it promoting your business or a direct sales pitch? Is it going to be attached to a PDF or a landing page? Is it for converting something? You have to answer many questions before you produce a piece of content, and the most important thing is the substance of it.
Storytelling. Think about what you are telling people. Is it an infomercial? There are so many avenues you should explore before you start investing in equipment. If your content isn’t engaging on a phone, upping the production quality will not do you any good. Even if you’re just sitting and talking to your phone to pitch something in a short, concise time for a Reel or a TikTok, you have 30 seconds. If you cannot deliver that information within 30 seconds in a compelling, engaging way, you can add lights, better mics, or buy a $10,000 camera—it’s not going to improve it. Your delivery is the problem. You should improve on that.
Emanuel Petrescu: When I said people are afraid of videos, that’s what I was referring to. They can get intimidated. People don’t see it online, but our setup here can be a little intimidating, right? We’ve got a couple of cameras…
Igor Petrov: Well, this is just an example because this is my 20th year working in TV production specifically. I have it by default because this is my bread and butter, my business. This is what I do for other people. But this doesn’t mean that if you’re starting a video production company, you should acquire all of this. For people producing for themselves, it’s not necessary.
As I said, people have to practice storytelling. They can also hire someone to be the face of their company. Someone in marketing can be dedicated to be the person who speaks best. You just choose the person who has the most presentable delivery, and that will be your dedicated spokesperson.
Right now, there are many AI tools that generate voice. However, people sometimes don’t understand how to utilize them. You still have to know storytelling and be proficient with delivering information to even use those tools. It’s the same way people say, “Oh, copywriters are dead because of ChatGPT.” True, but if you want to write a compelling copy, even with ChatGPT writing it, you become an editor of ChatGPT. It writes something, and you say, “Okay, this is wrong, rewrite it.” The same goes for writing a voice-over. If you don’t have a budget and decide to do a promo video using a voice generator and B-roll from stock sites, you can do that. But you have to know what you want from the voice-over you’re going to use. It will generate a voice for you, but you have to rewrite it until the copy is really good. Maybe you do A/B/C versions of the same video, run them as Meta or Google ads, see which one is falling off, kill those, and then do variations.
You don’t have to speak on camera. It’s always more presentable if the owner, CEO, or a spokesperson from the company speaks directly to people—it’s always better. But is it necessary in our age? No. There are a lot of AI tools you can use if you’re starting. But again, if you want to build a public image or do PR for your company, of course you should have someone who is the face of your company. I hope that answers the question.
Emanuel Petrescu: It did, and it generated a couple more questions. We’ve seen some big brands putting a lot of budget towards influencers who shoot videos with their phones. So where I wanted to go is, don’t be afraid to actually start, and don’t think that you need all the things you think you need.
Igor Petrov: No, you don’t. Practice your delivery and practice your storytelling—that is pretty much free. We all have phones that shoot in 4K with high-quality audio, and you can get a lavalier mic for probably $30 on Amazon. It has become very accessible to be on camera and to promote your content online, so you no longer need all the fancy bells and whistles.
Emanuel Petrescu: Can you walk us through a campaign where video made a major difference for a brand or organization? Maybe for someone smaller where doing videos completely changed the pattern they were operating in.
Igor Petrov: Oh yeah, tons. That’s the whole point of having a production company that works for people. One good example would be a friend of mine now, this guy named Fraser who approached me. He has a company called Tax Mechanic, with about 10 tax accountants who do taxes for small, medium, and sometimes large businesses. He was struggling with digital marketing, so he came to me and we started a whole campaign. He’s in his 70s.
I asked him, “What’s your goal?” He said, “I want to generate more leads for taxes in season.” I told him, “Let’s do TikTok.” He was like, “Well, I’m kind of past TikTok.” But I said, “No, you don’t understand. There’s a lot of people on TikTok.” The platforms have shifted: Facebook now skews 60-plus, Instagram is probably 40-plus, and TikTok is now 30-plus. That’s the prime audience for people doing their taxes.
We started a campaign where we would post almost daily videos, sometimes two a day on TikTok. He would do what was natural and organic to him: he’s a tax accountant, so he would talk about taxes on TikTok. And people loved it. We had many videos with 600,000 to a million views because people actually wanted to learn. For example, we did a video topic called “Is it deductible?” People would ask, “What if I buy a Lambo? Is it deductible?” And he’d say, “Well, if you’re going to shoot a music video and you total that Lambo in a crash, then it’s tax-deductible. So it really depends.” We would go through different interesting topics.
@taxmechanic Don’t forget to save it just in case 📌 #tax #taxtok #taxtip #selfemployed #court #cra ♬ original sound – TaxMechanic
Plus, one interesting thing we did was I had him wear a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. That generated so much engagement because it’s unrelated. He wasn’t even acknowledging he was wearing it, but in the comments, especially on Meta, we would have people fighting. We got so much free publicity because people would say, “I will never trust an accountant who wears a Leafs jersey,” and others would be like, “I will only trust an accountant who wears a Leafs jersey.” We got so much free engagement. Every post would get 600 to 800 comments for free.
Emanuel Petrescu: Speaking of comments, if anyone has any questions for Igor, feel free to drop them in our chat online, and I’ll address them at the end. But if I sense that there is anything we can address right at the moment, I’ll bring it up.
So, tax is a very interesting topic that everybody’s hyped about.
Igor Petrov: But he didn’t believe it at first. He’s older, and he was like, “Taxes… Is TikTok the place for a person like me?” I said, “Listen, if you want to sell a product, you want to go where the people are. And the people right now are on TikTok.”
Emanuel Petrescu: And it goes without saying that it generated a lot of business for him.
Igor Petrov: Oh yeah. At some point, we had to kind of cut it out, especially on Meta, because he said, “I’m getting too many leads. I cannot process them.” That can be dangerous for a business. It’s a good thing to have too many leads, but it actually damages your brand image if you can’t process them. People should realize that as well when they’re trying to generate high-volume campaigns on Meta or Google. You can generate so many leads that you can’t physically process them because you have to get back to people. If people are left hanging in DMs, that actually damages your brand very much.
Emanuel Petrescu: I’m a consultant as well, and my background is in SEO. There’s a lot of literature out there saying you can do it by yourself, including videos. I’m pretty sure you have this conversation a lot with your clients, but I want to reinforce the importance of working with a consultant and a professional—in this case, for video—to actually generate the results you need for your business.
For people watching who feel camera-shy, do you have any tips to show up on video without feeling like they’re faking it?
Igor Petrov: Practice. You just practice. The more you do it, the better you will be at it. They say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Okay, so you’d better start putting those hours in. That’s why actors practice in the mirror. But in this day and age, you have phones. Just record yourself, review it, and ask, “What can I improve? How can I be better at this?”
But again, for people starting out who want to create content to promote their business, we’re living in a great time of AI tools. You have generated voice. Just wait a little bit, and we’re going to be able to generate faces that are great for video needs. This speaks to the trust issues people have: Is it a real person talking? Is it a real voice? If you want to promote brand value and the quality of your business, you should be real. You should see a real person talking; you should feel that, because that reflects the quality of the business. If you provide a premium service, it should feel like a premium thing, not something generated by AI.
AI is good for volume and it allows people to access the tools, but you should graduate to real content if you provide a premium service. Yet again, don’t get discouraged. If you sell something high-volume that costs a few dollars on Amazon, like napkins or pens, does it matter if the person promoting the product is real? In that case, if you’re promoting a cheap product at scale, you just have to talk about features and quality. You produce 50 different ad variations and just run them. You’ll get great success.
It just depends. But if your product is craftsman watches assembled by hand, and your promo video for that is an AI voice, I think you’re going to fail really quickly.
Emanuel Petrescu: Definitely. It’s a sweet spot right now that brands and businesses, big or small, need to figure out. I’m going to ask Sabrina to monitor the chat, and if there are any questions worth mentioning, just put them on the screen. Until then, let’s move on.
What’s one mistake you wish brands would stop making when it comes to video marketing, from a professional’s perspective?
Igor Petrov: At some point, brands decided they wanted to be influencers themselves. There was a popular craze when brands like Ryanair were cracking jokes. They even had these meta-conversations where one brand would go into the comment section of another brand. There was a Wild West period when brands hired really young social media managers, and they started acting like buddies with people. Wendy’s was guilty of that.
But is that really what we want from brands—to be our buddies? I don’t think so. I think that was the wrong path, because you’re providing a product, you’re not really our buddy and friend. So I feel they were guilty of playing too close to the influencers.
Also, one big mistake brands sometimes make is relying too much on influencer marketing because they think the influencer’s audience is their audience, and quite often it’s not. They pump so much money into influencer marketing and expect amazing results. They think, “Okay, he has one million followers. If I promote my cream with him, I’m going to get a percentage of his audience to subscribe to my channel.” That’s not how it works. They are following him for him. If you put an ad with him there, they are not going to convert into your audience.
Emanuel Petrescu: That’s why it’s important to partner with an agency or somebody who actually does the research and can help you find the right influencer for your product or service. Excellent point.
I don’t see any questions from the online audience so far, so after my next question, I’ll ask the live audience if they have any questions. You mentioned AI. As generated content is growing fast, how can small brands stay authentic and competitive using video in the AI paradigm?
Igor Petrov: I think it goes back to that original point. We have so much access to different AI tools. You can create an AI voice, you can create an avatar, and tools like Sora can generate pretty good video—mostly abstract things like wide shots of cityscapes or good drone shots. But it struggles with very specific things. If your product or service is very specific and you want Sora to generate a video of your particular product, you will have a lot of trouble with that. That’s when you will still resort to hiring a media or video agency to shoot your specific product.
But you should utilize the tools we have now because they save you a lot of money, pain, and headaches. The key is that, as in the case of copywriters, they didn’t really die; they just became prompt operators for ChatGPT. You have to review what the AI network spits back at you. You cannot take it at face value. To refine it, you actually have to be a specialist in that field. What if I want to use Sora to recreate a period drama from the 1960s? If I’m not an expert in the 1960s, I will get a very bad result because I would have no way of checking if Sora gave me accurate period costumes.
This applies to whatever field you are in. If you are an expert in oil refinement and you want a commercial that promotes your business, how would you know if what ChatGPT writes is correct if you’re not an expert? Having tools like ChatGPT or Sora doesn’t mean you can be clueless. You actually have to understand what you are requesting. You become the expert, not the AI. ChatGPT just alleviates the most painful part, which is staring at an empty page. It gets you there, but it’s still up to you to evaluate the content and say, “This is not accurate,” or “This is not how this business works.” You have to nudge it and continuously improve it.
The tools are amazing and we should use them. If you become a purist of video production and say, “I’m never going to use those tools,” you will quickly become old school and get pushed out of the market. That’s the nature of the game. When I started 20 years ago working on The Bachelor, I started working on a linear editing system. There was already non-linear editing like Final Cut and Avid emerging, but the nature of television was linear. You’d shoot on tape, watch your tape, and get an empty tape that would be your master. You’d record little pieces from the footage tapes onto the empty tape. That’s why it’s called linear editing. If I messed up in the beginning and wanted to extend a shot, I would have to re-record the whole tape.
When non-linear editing came in, it was groundbreaking. People were like, “Oh my God, now I can move audio files and do this so much faster.” But there was such a pushback among old-school editors who said, “We’re never going to do this. This is never going to stick.” They used to say that about color and sound in film. Same goes for all new technology. It democratizes the industry. It used to be so expensive. I remember post-production houses used to charge $1,000 an hour for you to book an editing suite. Now you can edit on a MacBook or even your phone with an app like CapCut, which does exactly the same thing that professional software costing millions used to do.
Take it one step further: now you don’t even have to edit; AI edits for you. As long as you are an expert and can say, “This is not right,” and you have a vision, you can use these tools. One thing I don’t think these tools will give you is vision. You have to be very articulate about what you want to get clear results. And you need some way to test if the stuff they’re pumping out will work for you and represent your business accurately.
Emanuel Petrescu: Great way to put it. I have a music production background, so in music, it was similar with the tapes—you’d actually cut them with a razor blade and stitch them together. On a personal note, when I hear The Bachelor 20 years ago, it makes me realize how fast time flies.
Now, I promised some questions from the audience. Let’s take the ones from online first. A question from Joanna: “Igor mentioned earlier that the content or substance is the most critical factor. Where can you find inspiration for content ideas, and how do you ensure the content is relevant to your audience?”
Igor Petrov: Excellent question. I always find it’s similar to filmmaking or book writing: you talk about what you know. Quite often, people want to be so relevant and in the mainstream that they try to talk about things they have no expertise in or experience with. People should stay close to their interests, their hobbies, and talk about what they actually know.
If you are struggling with ideas to promote your business, you should talk about what interests you. Naturally, your business will be in a field that interests you. If you have a carpentry shop, it would be weird if you started doing content about shipbuilding, unless it’s really your hobby on the side. It’s always very obvious. If you are providing a certain service, you should be an expert in that service and talk more about that.
It always boils down to one thing I don’t really like, because I like to do a lot of different things, but it’s specialization. Unfortunately, digital marketing works right now in a way that it’s so much easier to promote yourself in a niche, as opposed to casting a wide net to attract everyone. It’s very hard and costly. It’s so much easier to target film lovers or people who like ice cream than to try to force everyone to like ice cream. The more specialized you are, the cheaper the marketing becomes. If you only target people who collect model trains, it’s so much easier. You know where to find them.
The slimmer and more specific the niche is, the easier it is to market. This creates a pitfall for people like influencers or public speakers. For companies, it’s straightforward because that’s the product you sell. But if you’re a public figure, you unfortunately have to pick a very specific niche and continuously do that. If you go to top TikTokers and scroll through their feed, it will be exactly the same video over and over. That’s the nature of the game, because as soon as they introduce variety, they will see their numbers go down. Only a few very successful people can afford to rediscover themselves and say, “I was doing rock all my life, now I’m going to start doing country,” and watch half their audience leave.
Emanuel Petrescu: I believe that answered the question. And on top of that, speaking of AI, the algorithm kind of pushes you towards creating the same type of content.
Does anyone in the live audience have a question for Igor?
Audience Member: We do a lot of work in the beauty industry. It’s interesting you mentioned that, because the beauty influencers were so big about eight years ago. We worked with Estée Lauder, Shiseido, Sephora. I’m sensing there’s a trend now away from this influencer makeup tutorial stuff. What would you do to really contemporize and update video for the beauty industry, something radical that would stand out? Because a lot of these videos look the same. Even Fenty seems to be fading.
Igor Petrov: Okay, so the question is how to rejuvenate video and content marketing for beauty brands. I feel that when a category has a lot of success and is trending up, like the beauty industry did, it gets saturated. There are so many beauty influencers, and the beauty category on YouTube is huge. I think people got tired and exhausted. There are so many products.
If you go to the biggest beauty influencers now, their audience is a little exhausted because they promote an ungodly amount of products. There’s a famous Japanese influencer who gives maybe five seconds to a product, and those five seconds cost a million dollars or something crazy. On her stream, she just shows a t-shirt and throws it away, then an eyelash extension and throws it away. The commodification of it, the fact that she’s doing it, becomes the entertainment. No one’s really interested in the product.
I feel that what would rejuvenate the beauty industry is authentic connection. Something that people immediately pick up is authenticity. I would say give the light to smaller influencers or people who are growing, or even moms. What if you make a beauty product for moms, or for teen boys who want to look good? You’d go for someone authentic, someone who has 60,000 or 100,000 followers, not millions, and try to build a real rapport with them. Give them a product to try without pressure.
I like watching YouTubers in the tech and gear category. Brands like Sony or Panasonic will send a product to an influencer and say, “No strings attached. You can totally destroy it if you want to. That’s how we improve.” If you approach it that way, that you iterate on your product, it becomes a conversation. If you go to an influencer and say, “You’re not going to say anything bad about this product, we’re going to pay you to say this is the best product I ever used,” that’s a problem. Then someone else pays them to say the same thing about another product. Which one is the best?
But if you as a brand write to an influencer and say, “No strings attached. We’re sending you a product, we’ll even pay you, but you’re going to tell us how you really feel about it,” I think you will grow better and build that rapport. But again, I would say start growing your own influencers, in a way. Don’t go to the top ones. We’re in an age where there’s a scarcity of authenticity. If you can foster that in your company, you will go far.
Emanuel Petrescu: Let’s move on to another question from the virtual audience. Shubha asks, “What advice would you have for someone wishing to start a business and considering making a video for the very first time? What should be their first set of content?”
Igor Petrov: It would really depend on what kind of industry the person is in. But to give more general advice, whatever you’re starting with, it should be good. You should represent and stand behind your brand. If you provide a service and you are the face of it, like an accountant, then you should be proactive and build your personal brand. It’s very important.
But what if you sell socks and it’s a quirky company? If you don’t have any money to hire a marketing department, you become your own marketing department. You have to be the face of your company and show up. Even in the worst-case scenario where you have trouble speaking or think you don’t look that great, I still think you should push past it and create authentic content with yourself, as opposed to going the AI route and generating something that isn’t authentic to your brand.
Again, it depends. If your product is high-volume and cheap, you can potentially sell it to everyone. But whenever I’m working with companies whose product is really expensive and niche, let’s say a client has to pay them $10,000 for the service, then it becomes very hard to sell digitally. If your product costs more than $1,000, digital marketing almost becomes not your main source of revenue. For certain premium price tags, it’s actually personal relationships and direct selling. Phone calls sometimes work better.
But if you have a high-volume, cheap product, then digital marketing is amazing. I had clients that did installations of hi-fi theater equipment, and their installations cost $150,000. Digital marketing did nothing for them. We had zero clients from it. No one watches a video and decides to spend $150,000 with those guys. They have to go and experience it in a showroom. When you’re buying something for $100,000, you’re going to have 10 or 20 connection points with the brand. You’ll watch, check, read the FAQ, and go to forums to research. Meanwhile, if you’re selling an iPhone case that costs $10, people aren’t going to read forums about it. It can be an impulse buy, so video really works for that. It really depends on the type of product.
Emanuel Petrescu: Excellent answer. We have one more question from the live audience.
Audience Member: What is your advice for people who talk too much on camera? How can you condense the information and be more concise?
Igor Petrov: So the question is how to talk less but be more effective. Of course, it’s a matter of practice, but also a matter of rewriting and being your own editor. You should always write scripts for yourself until you get really comfortable speaking on video. Unless you want to spend an ungodly amount of time editing, you should write scripts.
You have to remember you’re producing content for other people, not for yourself. You always have to keep the target audience in mind and value their time. We live in an age where people have a very small attention span. You have to catch their attention within the first few seconds. At CBC, we have whole departments that research this. Whenever we post TikToks or YouTube videos, we have seminars on how the thumbnail should look. It goes through 50 iterations before we hit the one that makes people click. There’s a science behind how people react to shapes and forms.
It’s very important to be concise, get straight to the point, and hook people right away. Keep policing yourself, keep editing, and keep getting to the chase. That’s why you have to write a script. I write scripts for myself all the time with ChatGPT, and then I’ll say, “Shorter, shorter, make it shorter.” Then you edit it and add a human touch.
Book editors do the same thing. You write a book, and they will go through it with a black marker and say, “This is about nothing. This is filler.” You have to be your own editor. Record yourself, and then have ChatGPT give you a summary of what you just said. You might realize you meandered for five minutes about something unrelated. People came to hear about a specific topic. If you’re a psychologist talking about how to deal with depression, then talk about depression. If you meander, they’re going to leave. Edit yourself.
Emanuel Petrescu: When I started making videos, I was under the impression it should take five minutes to record and edit a 30-second video. But you need to get better by doing more. I highly recommend people start doing it and follow Igor.
Igor Petrov: I still suck at it. I’m not good at being in front of the camera. I’m the guy you call to produce for you. My business is to make you look good, make your content look good, and make your videos look good. I know how to tell stories. That’s what I studied. But the nature of the game right now is that I have to do this, I have to make content, because that’s how I get my clients. People have to perceive me as an expert. At some point, for my media company, word-of-mouth is not enough to generate the revenue to pay salaries. Even though I’m in the behind-the-scenes business, people make a decision based on if they want to work with you personally. Your personal brand is what sells.
Emanuel Petrescu: Authenticity is the keyword here. Even in SEO, there’s a concept called E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s an abstract metric Google looks at. Who is speaking about a topic? Is it someone with experience or a random individual?
We have two more audience questions.
Audience Member: How do you measure the return on investment for video marketing, especially balancing short-term and long-term goals?
Igor Petrov: I think that’s a deeper question that relates to your whole marketing department. For the hi-fi installation company I worked with, one client is at least $100,000 in revenue. They told me they were willing to spend $10,000 to $15,000 to acquire a single lead. They had that kind of marketing budget.
Depending on your product, you allocate a portion of the revenue of that product to your marketing needs. If you have a high-volume, low-cost product, you can sometimes allocate 50% of your whole revenue to generating sales on Meta or other platforms. It really depends on the specific business. For a tutoring service, for example, it’s about your time. Let’s say you charge $100 per hour. You might decide you want to make $60 in profit and you’re willing to spend $40 on marketing. When you’re resource-constrained, you look for the cheapest, most effective type of marketing, which will probably be Meta. The leads and views there are really cheap. As a tutor, you could get pretty good results spending just $5 to $10 a day. You only have so many hours a day, so you can fill your schedule pretty fast.
But if you have 20 teachers, $5 a day won’t get you very far. Fortunately, and this is scary, Meta knows better than anyone who your target audience is. It has very powerful, smart tools for picking your audience. I quite often just use their “Advantage+” audience feature, and it always gives pretty good results. Even with a budget of just $50 a month, you can do quite a bit of damage on Meta.
Sometimes your video can just be: “Hey, I’m so-and-so and I’m offering my tutoring services. I’ve helped X amount of people, and I’m going to help you.” That’s your video. It’s very sincere and direct, and people find that compelling. You don’t always need overly produced videos. Sometimes, if a video is too crazy for the service you’re providing, it actually pushes people away. I’ve had cases where clients said, “This is too much, people stopped messaging us because now they think they can’t afford this.”
Emanuel Petrescu: Where do you see brand video going in the next one to two years? What should businesses be preparing for?
Igor Petrov: It’s not going to be a surprise: it’s moving in the direction of AI and AI-generated content. On top of that, there’s a lot of work happening with the European Union and consumer privacy acts to put some guardrails around AI-generated content, so some legislation is probably coming.
Whatever is possible to automate will be automated. A lot of things that I do are going to get automated. I’ve been doing color correction for the longest time, and it used to be a very premium profession. To color correct a one-hour documentary, you would pay a post-production house $20,000 to $50,000. Now, there are so many AI tools, even within editing software, that do color correction almost automatically. It’s not perfect yet, but I give it a year or a year and a half, and it will be there. 90% of my job as a colorist is matching shots to each other to create a smooth experience. That’s going to get automated. I think editing will get automated soon.
One thing you can’t learn with AI is taste.
Taste is a very ephemeral and interesting thing. The best creative professionals I work with are the ones who use tools sparingly. A sound mixer might know every single effect in Pro Tools, but on a project, he’ll only use three of them. Then you have someone else who uses every single tool in Photoshop to retouch a photo, and it’s a nightmare. The fact that you’re skilled and know all the tools doesn’t make you a professional. It’s the restraint. That’s what I call taste. A typography designer might just give you a smudge and that’s your logo. You’re not paying for the 30 seconds it took him; you paid for his years of experience, his understanding, and his taste.
In the creative industry, the line between tacky and tasteful is very thin. ChatGPT is not going to make you classy. It’s not going to teach you taste. That’s where experience comes from—what sort of content you consume, what books you read, and whether you have a vision.
Emanuel Petrescu: I once listened to an interview with the graphic designer who created the Target logo 40 or 50 years ago, and it’s just what Igor spoke of. Everyone in the business said, “WTF?” yet today it’s one of the most recognized logos we see.
We have one last question from the audience.
Audience Member: You mentioned brands trying to be buddies with their audience. I was wondering, why not? Their audience is young people. Why not connect with them that way?
Igor Petrov: I think you’re diluting your brand message and your brand image. Brands should be brands, and influencers should be influencers. If you start crossing the line into being buddy-buddy, you open yourself up to lawsuits and other issues.
Maybe because I work in such a strict environment at CBC with journalistic standards, I see it through a corporate lens. When your social media manager writes those posts and they cross a line—what if Ryanair was joking around on the same day one of their planes crashed? Who would be liable? The corporation would be liable. That’s why there’s this fine line. When they start blurring it, they open themselves to a lot of scrutiny. It’s beyond memes and jokes; there are real repercussions because you represent thousands of employees. For your privacy compliance officer, it’s a nightmare. Some companies do it with class, but sometimes they just give too much agency to a social media manager who goes haywire.
Emanuel Petrescu: Personally, I like when Burger King trolls McDonald’s, but they can afford it. To that point, maybe small businesses are a little more flexible with this type of content.
Burger King trolls McDonald’s with fiery holiday gift https://t.co/4eZ6mOX6M9 pic.twitter.com/L9ity4RUAX
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 21, 2017
It’s been an hour and twenty minutes. I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. Thank you so much, Igor, for having us. A special thank you to our host today, Level Up Studio. Can you let people know where they can find you and your work?
Igor Petrov: It’s easy. You can find us at Level Up Studio Toronto if you Google that, and Level Up Media Inc. is my production company. I offer production, content creation, podcasts—anything video. The studio space can also be rented for events, parties, or product launches. We have a variety of cameras and equipment if you want to livestream something like we’re doing right now.
Emanuel Petrescu: Excellent. Thank you, everyone, here. My name is Emanuel, founder of How About Some Marketing. At howaboutsomemarketing.com, you can subscribe to the newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news. We have a lot to announce. You’ll also find today’s recording, past recordings, and future podcasts there.
That being said, thank you so much. Have a pleasant evening. See you next time.
