How the Video Landscape Is Changing for Marketers with John Weeke
In this episode of Notes from Video Village, host Dan Lichtenberg chats with B2B tech marketer John Weeke. With over a decade of experience in SaaS marketing, John shares his top tips for creating successful video content: think big, create plenty, repurpose smartly for every platform and don’t be deterred by budget— you may not need a big one.
Note: This is a podcast transcript and is best experienced through the audio version above. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I know you have kind of an unconventional path into marketing. Tell me a little bit about how you got into marketing and where you started in your career?
John: I went to NYU film school and graduated in 2009, which was interesting timing-wise, because, first of all, it was the Great Recession. It hit just the minute we hit the streets. And on the filmmaking side, it was when DSLRs became a thing. And you started being able to make high-quality video productions, not with big equipment rentals, but with your own gear. And that really kind of sprung the boom in YouTube video; the whole modern world of video that we live in now.
So basically, we experienced a lot of change off the bat. A lot of the things that we thought we were going into were no longer applicable. I spent a couple of years being like, "Oh, woe is me. The bad economy sucks," but I ended up actually thinking that is for the better, and that times of change are times of opportunity.
I ended up going to South Korea, living there for over four years. I taught English there initially as a way to start paying those college bills and have an adventure. And eventually I started making videos there; side projects of my own, passion projects of my own, and then ultimately working with Korean companies that were looking for English language videos. I started a small video production company and in 2014, I realized that it was probably time to move back home, see what was going on, be close to family so that's what I did.
The tech boom was inflight already but I was kind of new to it, and I immediately just started hustling, trying to get some work, and put my video gear to use. I got a bunch of different freelance jobs to start with. Inevitably, the one that I ended up in was doing some projects for SaaS. I had no idea what this was. “SaaS? What is this?” Turns out, it means software as a service.
I did a little bit of work for it and found a full-time job at one of these really small B2B SaaS startups called ToutApp. It was an interesting first experience, 30, 40 people hiring an in-house video producer. We were able to get in there, do some really cool stuff, learn about the world of B2B SaaS, of startups, of storytelling, of messaging. Since then, I've been at three other startups, all in similar spaces. Amazingly, it's been 10 years at this point.
And as I was getting deeper into it, what I realized is that though companies were hiring for video production, really the core of what I was doing is more described as product marketing.
Video is one of the key deliverables, but the job of product marketing, especially at these smaller companies, is helping to define stories, to write stories, to explain the value, why what you're doing is so exciting, talking to customers, understanding the product, and synthesizing these things.
Ultimately, I realized that product marketing was more the core of what I was doing. Since then, I've been doing product marketing, but it's also wearing a lot of hats and trying to bridge those gaps.
Dan: One thing I remember you talking about when you were transitioning to your first pure marketing role at Insightly was something like— "What I realized I really like to do is tell the story of a company, of a brand. I just want to figure out what the voice is of the brand, capture that voice in the format that needs to be captured, and tell that story and make people understand that story."
John: That's right. It's this double edged sword of video— the most powerful medium. Video is images, music, people, the core message, writing.
No medium outside video isn't included in video. Video is multimedia multidisciplinary by nature.The double edged sword nature is oftentimes you get pigeonholed. It's like, oh, you're doing video— just third or fourth on a list of deliverables people think about when putting together an important product launch —along with everything. That's been the question.
What are you doing? Producing a video or trying to distill a message?
What was an early experience making a marketing video? What did you learn?
John: So one of my best experiences was on my second job. I was hired onto the product team at a company called Insightly, a product led, freemium product and basically B2C in its scale. The product team needed ways to improve funnel, improve conversion, and they decided they wanted to add video into that approach.
And so I was thinking about (video production) in a way that was so different from being on a marketing team. On a marketing team, you'll often be like, “Alright, we need the video. We need to explain what we do.” We put it on the website, we put it out there and it's good to go. You think about it like this is an ad. I think that's the key misunderstanding about what a video should do.
Everybody's seen a lot of videos.You've seen a lot of ads. Maybe you've seen other tech companies’ videos and thought, “that video is good,” but you need to really think about the function of the video in the moment in the customer journey. And I think oftentimes we really overspend on a general video that anybody can watch.
I think the value can be a lot stronger if you're more surgical, or more thoughtful about what job the video is doing at any moment.
So for example, I worked with this company to develop onboarding and educational videos.
At the time, I was like, “Oh man, I want to be a filmmaker. I don't want to do educational videos.” But then after working on it for three months, I realized this has a lot of magic potential there.
A lot of times, people engage with your product before they know what your product does. They just go in, do the free trial, click around a little bit.
They've already crossed a certain threshold, they're engaged in your product, they're ready to do stuff, but they're not bought in, you can't just assume they're bought in, you really push them across that way, say, this is exciting, this is going to change your life after they've gotten in there, but then also not just making marketing, give them a framework for understanding things.
And so I created this onboarding video series, put it in the product and then created deep dive individual videos or tutorials about different parts of the product. I try to make anything I work on fun, try to make it engaging, and make it so it's not a chore—video should never be a chore to watch, right? If it is, it should be a different medium. If you're like, “Oh man, this is boring to watch,” do a different medium.
But what we found is suddenly these videos we'd created on the product team for product onboarding started to get used by the sales team for people who had never been in the product before. Why? Because the sales teams didn't want to send fluffy, salesy videos that just have some music and some nice images and make promises to people. They need substance, but they need substance that also excites people, gets people interested, and aligns with what's going on. So it was used by the sales team a lot. And then suddenly, it's on the marketing website before people even sign up. And so that's when you know you've thought about the video in the right way— if it really solves the problem and then it expands from there..
So I would suggest get to the core, the most important problem; try to solve that problem with the video for them, give them the framework they need to understand things, get them excited about it, move them forward, and provide that value rather than selling to people. People don't like those types of videos, especially these days.
Dan: It’s interesting because I think the traditional model of video usage in marketing or in a customer journey is top of the funnel. The ad, or the broadcast spot is very vague. It is trying to elicit awareness and favorability, but not necessarily win people over to the next step of buying something. Usually it's that first big splash, the first time you're associated with a brand.
So thinking about the customer journey, I think what you're saying is there shouldn't just be a video at the first stage of the journey; there should be a video at the second stage and a different video at the third and a different video at the fourth stage. And then finally, when they buy the product, there should be a video after that too, that launches them through the experience of using the product.
John: Yeah, exactly. If you have an unlimited budget, then you would break down each step of the customer journey and give them the right message at that time, hopefully integrated in a way that they can see it within the product or it's part of the email series. I think you need to prioritize video that doesn't just pitch.
Everybody's seen a lot of videos; in the same way everybody writes emails and reads stuff and is familiar with the medium. Unless you’re less than 25 years old, our understanding of video is very much like the Mad Men model of like, a video is a promotion, it's a commercial. That is not how it works, right? That should in no way be the first video that you're trying to do if you're 90 percent of businesses.
The video needs to provide value. It needs to be content. It needs to educate your audience about what it is you do, what approach you take that's different. It needs to explain, not just inspire.
Dan: Like you said earlier, educational content as a marketer or a filmmaker or a storyteller, it's like, “Do I really want to make three- to- eight -minute videos? Do I really want to make a 30 minute webinar? Do I want to write a 60 minute keynote?”
It's tough to sometimes focus as much attention on those things, which a lot of people think of as throwaway, versus the big sexy ad, which is, 30, 60, 90 seconds. You're going to put tons of money behind it. Millions of people are going to see it, right? But really, you should put just as much effort into all that other stuff because of that customer journey. And sometimes, the most valuable engagements happen later down the road.
The other thing that I was thinking about was you mentioned, “When I made the educational content”, I also made it fun, engaging, et cetera, but I think what you didn't say, which you've told me before, so I'll just bring it to the surface is that, even though it's educational content, it should still be in the voice of the brand. It should still feel like your company. It shouldn't feel like a piece of educational content. It should feel like a piece of Ironclad content that is educational.
And I think the projects that we worked on together, like SDCs, the 30-minute quarterly videos, are a perfect example of that in terms of a type of business communication that's typically drier and is further along in the customer journey. But you found a way to bring the Ironclad voice into it and make it really compelling and interesting, even though the base content is kind of dry.
John: I think most people don't realize that video is 10 times as potent of a brand vehicle as anything else you do. We spend proportionally way more time thinking about the look and feel of a website or a logo, or different imagery. When you are watching a video, it captures all of your senses. It has so many different stylistic details that all fit together to create an impression.
If you're watching a video, somebody's usually talking to you, you see people oftentimes, and you hear some music. There's a whole combination of everything and it's very immediately clear the level of production value or the quality of what's being put there. And so, anytime you're putting a video in front of somebody, it has more brand impact than any other single thing that you do. And so you have to put a lot of thought into that.
I think it's also why, you know, you think about it less and less in our world of B2B or corporate video, but more in consumer brands. You think about a campaign that a high-end agency puts together. The core element of that is always the video, right? And you have the core video that tells the story. It could be a commercial, it could be something longer; a customer story or some case study or documentary, but, (a video) is the thing that encapsulates everything and then you have extensions of that—you have the copy, you have the visuals—most of the time this is the approach for those super-high-end campaigns. So the reason for that is because it's such a powerful medium for pulling it all together.
The impact of thinking about your videos and making sure that they are on brand is huge. And it doesn't mean it needs to be super expensive. It doesn't mean that you need to hire a big crew and do a bunch of iterations. It's just these light touches that gives it a personality.
Dan: Right! I see a lot of people invest a lot in that top-funnel stuff, and then when they dig into the product and you play a tutorial or an educational video, it's literally just a Loom video with some random person that just starts talking and it's super low- fi. It's totally fine to do it that way, but there are key things you have to get right with that. One is the person presenting - is that person a good personification of the brand? If they're not, if they're just a random person that doesn't feel like they embody the brand, then you're going to miss with that. But if they are a really good embodiment of the brand, that could be a great way to approach that content.
John: It's funny you bring that up because I'm in the midst of building an initiative all around this idea because it's hard to scale. If your company is growing fast and you need a hundred different videos, or you could use a hundred different videos on different features for different audiences, then it's not practical to think of each one as its own production. You need to create a template, a format that supports it.
And so yeah, the Loom videos are a good example. How do you take a Loom video and make it an effective communication of the message you're trying to get across while not hurting the brand, but actually adding to the brand? And the answer oftentimes is not getting a film crew to do it for you. It's thinking through, “Who is the person?” and getting into the details a little bit. These Loom videos, they do neither; there's some guy, a person in a small bubble, in the bottom corner you can barely make out who they are, what they are, and they're reading off a script.
That's another practical tip: you can't have people reading off the script at all because 100% of the time, it just sounds like they're reading off a script, and you cannot listen to that. You need to have somebody who is just speaking to the audience directly. So get rid of the scripts, give them some talking points, and select the person who is charismatic and knows what the hell they're talking about.
So the program that I'm building, it's leading with these charismatic SMEs, these people who really know their stuff. They know what they're talking about, can talk to anybody at any time about the subject matter, and you just stick a camera on them.
If you think about the evolution of video in general to the types of content that people consume, it's very different from when we were in college studying filmmaking. I would estimate that 90 to 95 percent of video consumed these days is a SME talking head. It is somebody who is talking to the camera. It could be a YouTube channel about how to renovate your Airstream. Or it could be somebody telling you about the day that they had. I'm super into golf right now, so it could be somebody who's showing you a round of golf that he played. But they are not writing or reading from a script. Ever. They are just talking to you.
I think one of the keys is to let your brand shine. You need to break down the constraints, or the preconceived notions, of what a video is. Just think of it as, “It's not a video. It is somebody talking to your audience.” That's it. And you're going to use video editing, maybe a little bit of motion graphics, and certainly editing to trim down (the content), and make sure they're quick and straight to the point.
Can you think of any times when you used video ineffectively and you kind of regretted it and learned something from that experience?
John: Yeah, it was a project that we worked on together! I was really happy with the output. In fact, people bring it up all the time and say, “Man, that was really good!” I think we called it The Ironclad Community Dinner. It was a little high concept where it was like an unscripted, reality tv show— let's just get some people together over a nice dinner and film it with multiple cameras and edit it together. It's content, it's educational, but it’s making people feel like they're there.
So yeah, the concept was good. We were really happy with the product, but the question is about distribution, right? It was conceived as a top-of-funnel piece of content that anybody could tune into if they're interested in our world. But ultimately, people aren't used to consuming a 15 minute long video. And it wasn't integrated into a demand gen program either. The lesson there was you can make something really great, but if it's not really tightly integrated into a customer journey, or you have a plan for how you're going to make it work, the quality of the product itself isn't going to do it.
Dan: Right. You could have shot that on iPhones, similar content, the audio could have been crappy, but if you had like a really bulletproof use case for it and distribution plan, it probably would have been a lot more successful than what we shot on high-end cinema cameras. Is that kind of what you're saying?
John: Yeah. I think there is diminishing returns when it comes to production value. Especially these days where a lot of what people consume is really simply produced. But yeah, I think it is production value, but it's more— if you want to take a shot at something, it has to be supported by your distribution.
There's no Hollywood movie that doesn't have a robust distribution plan. Even if that plan is, let's submit it to a million film festivals. If it's an indie movie, that's a distribution plan. But yeah, you cannot take for granted that the quality of something itself will get it over the edge. It needs to be integrated into your distribution plan.
Dan: So if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.
John: They won't, they won't come. Upload it to YouTube, it'll be very quiet. Even if it's the best thing you've ever seen, it takes time. It takes audience development. And hopefully you already have that established, but you need to think through where it's going to go.
Do you have any pet peeves around how you see brands and companies using video right now?
John: I think we're at the verge of a revolution. I think that we're five to ten years behind consumer DTC brands. And by we, I mean B2B, SaaS, but also traditional corporate video that's not really close to the consumer.
When we went to film school, we had an idea of what a film is— it is all these different inputs, it's this much money to get it made, it is these cycles. And then, the tech-enabled, indie, solo, video producer and content creator just came out of nowhere, and even now I have to check myself and be like, “Look, a film is not that. It doesn't need to be that. It can be, but it doesn't need to be that.”
I think that as an example, Slack recently released a combination between a brand commercial and a very high-level explainer video. And stylistically, it is really cool. It was a choreographed dance musical sequence in the office. And the production value is A-level, super high production value; a creative song and dancing, which I love, physical movement. Anytime you can bring more of the real world into your videos, the better.
I watched it and I was like, “How many people, how much money was involved in this thing? Where are they going to put it? Who's going to watch this thing?” It felt really dated despite the fact that it was released just a couple of months ago. As an audience member, I do not feel affinity (for Slack) having watched that. I feel like in the Wizard of Oz, somebody's pulling the strings. It feels like somebody's talking at me versus having a conversation with me and trying really hard to do it. It almost came off as cringe. And so I don't think we're going to see a lot of those going forward.
Dan: I actually saw that too, and it was a good piece of content and maybe it was a good exercise in the brand? I'm not sure. But, it's like, “Who are they talking to?” They already have their audience on lock. I use Slack because I love the product. It's awesome. The rest of the world that doesn't use Slack uses Microsoft Teams because their giant corporation uses Microsoft products and they use Teams because they get it free with the suite.
So, are you telling me that that video was made for the Teams people to try to sway their opinions of Slack? If anything, I think it would scare the Teams people. Because it's too quirky and too weird. “Oh, no wonder we don't use Slack at our company!” you know? Why are they spending millions of dollars on that?
John: Exactly. I don't get the messaging strategy. And beyond that, it felt a little alienating because it was almost forced quirkiness. It didn't feel like they're being authentic to me.
As an audience member, it's just that one refrain: just talk to me. Your audience is saying, “Just talk to me. I'm here. Talk to me. Don't talk at me. Yeah, entertain me. But you kind of have to let go of the preciousness and the manipulation.”
Video is just best when it's honest. You have to be so fucking good if you want to be manipulative in a video. You don't have to be that good if you're just straightforward and honest and saying what you know and believe. And so I almost always defer to the latter.
Dan: And, and in some ways, that Slack ad feels like it was made by someone with an inferior product, trying to convince you that it's superior. When in fact, Slack has the superior product. So why are you making this video?
John: That’s exactly right. Confidence is key, and knowing what you should be confident about and just being clear about it.
Can I ask you to tell the audience a little bit about your State of Digital Contracting (SDC) video projects? Because I think these are really interesting. My understanding is that most of them were pretty successful for your marketing and business goals.
John: So the State of Digital Contracting, which is what we called it, evolved into Ironclad Live.
We have a quarterly product launch— one moment where we can announce to the world, “This is the progress. This is the new world. This is how we're revolutionizing contracts,” in our case for our customers. And so we made that product launch the cornerstone or the tent pole of our product marketing plus brand marketing, plus comms. We really invested in that one thing in the beginning, and then used it for many, many benefits.
I'm a big fan of two-for-ones, three-for-ones, two birds with one stone as it were— two birds is not enough for me, three birds, minimum five birds optimally.
And so what happened is that COVID happened. We were doing these bespoke, in-person events— we needed to go digital and realized that the product launch was the key thing that we could build around it. So we put our first one together and decided that since it can also be a touchstone for brand and for customer storytelling and all that, let's make it way more than a product announcement and do a full keynote.
I think we were partly inspired by Apple, who around the same time, started doing their pre- filmed, produced keynotes, WWDCs. So we kind of took our own spin on that. We invested in some production, but really it was just about figuring out the teams: What are we going to talk about? Who are we going to talk to? What types of different content?
The event was 45 minutes to an hour, and it was not just one long keynote, but it was a highly compressed event where you had three minutes hearing from one person, three minutes from another person, a three minute demo, a one minute commercial or interstitial.
At the same time, it helped to evolve our brand, the way we talk about our specific products and how they relate to each other. People could see our executives or presenters in real time as opposed to putting them on a zoom screen. We were able to put them into the real world. They felt more real, they felt more human.
And so they had a long shelf life as well after (the event) and were used by the sales team and marketing team.
I'd say it was really key to helping the company transition and continue, continue to grow. At the time when we started doing it, the company had a couple of hundred customers and we've 10X’d in size in just the three years.
And I think this was certainly not the only thing, but one of the core things that helped to enable growth through that period.
Dan: The thing I really admire about it was that other companies do this type of thing, but you did it in a really creative, entertaining way.
You were like,“I'm going to make it fun and interesting.” And you always find a way to do that. Even in B2B contracts, SaaS, you find ways to be entertaining, but also express the brand's voice and keep people on edge being like, “What are they going to do for the next SDC?”
No one ever says that about B2B software companies, but they were saying that about Ironclad.
John: If you're in a space where your audience doesn't expect it, there's massive potential impact. Everything is about surprise at the end of the day. Can you give me more than what I’m not expecting? If so, then you're successful. It applies to every single part of life. So if you are in a place where your audience has low expectations, just a relatively small amount of effort will really help you stand out.
So that was definitely part of the strategy too.
Dan: One thing you talked about early on is this idea that if you make a big video or you make some video content, it can turn into a bunch of different stuff, including blog content, copy and social posts. A lot of people still do think in this dichotomy: “I'm going to make a video. It's just going to be out there.This is the thing that I'm driving people to.” It seems like your approach is more, “It's all source material, and I'm going to make tons and tons of content.” And the video almost is now just the raw source material.
Talk to me a little bit about your thoughts on that.
John: In the case of SDC, we called it the Buffalo strategy: it's a big game, we're taking down some big game, and then it is going to feed us for the whole quarter because we're able to use all the different parts of it. And not just the individual videos that can be broken out and used on their own, but the key messages, the pieces of visual design that can translate into decks, into web messages and things like that.
I think source material is a good way of putting it. Whether it's that big long keynote or, to use a different example of something that I've been working on lately, a podcast. I honestly was pretty anti-podcast a couple of years ago because every business launched their own podcast, and then maybe 45 people watched it. Then 9 times out of 10, they do 7 episodes, then they never do it again because it's a lot of work. People only have so much time, so you’ve got to be able to create a ton of value if you're going to do that.
What changed my mind though was reframing my thinking about a podcast and just saying, “Hey, this is a film, because it should be filmed whether it's on zoom or in person, it doesn't have to be super high quality, but it should have a video component too. This is a filmed conversation of something that we think is valuable and relevant to our audience.”
And it's long form, which means that you can get a lot of different stuff and you can go into detail about stuff. When else does that happen? Let's say you're talking to a customer, doing a 45- minute conversation with a customer about what they're doing in their realm, hopefully talking about your product too. You can set up a customer story with them or you can set up a separate interview, record that and, that could be source material too. But what if the source material itself is something that you can directly share? And then of course you can extract all the value from that and turn it into other things.
So talking about two-for-ones, three-for-ones, suddenly you have not only a podcast, hopefully you can produce it regularly, get it out there, but you're able to use this source and turn it into all sorts of different things.
Dan: This makes me think about one project you made, which was when we filmed Ironclad Live and there was a keynote with the CEO, but then you took that keynote and turned it into a 30- second commercial about the new AI product that Ironclad was launching. I thought that was so cool because it was just a totally different piece of content.
John: Exactly that. And we're doing paid ads on that (keynote). We're doing five different cutdowns. And so it was the source material, our CEO talking for 15 minutes about why Ironclad is important and what we're doing. That is gold when it comes to source material; get that, get it in good quality if you can, and then you can do a lot of different things with it because it is the truth.
It's about the message first, not the medium.
What are some of the trends in video that you're paying really close attention to now that you think either have really changed things lately or are going to change things in the future?
John: So like I mentioned, the Buffalo, the source material, the podcast. I think we're just getting started with that. It's kind of letting go of the preciousness or the trappings around a traditional video production and thinking about it more as just straightforward communication with your audience.
It’s certainly inspired by TikTok. We're not talking about TikTok videos necessarily, but it's inspired by the fact that it’s just somebody talking to you about something that they care about, getting it out there, and then and then using the power of technology and AI to make it really fast and easy to create a whole bunch of different videos from this source material from your subject matter experts.
It's a little bit delicate because people are like, “Brand is important. Don't we need every video to look like a commercial to be super polished?” I would argue not. If you look at the most successful videos on YouTube, a lot of them are filmed with iPhones with decent-quality audio. It's really just more about the editing and selecting the right content at the right time and having a person in there who your audience likes and trusts.
So, I think that's the biggest trend that I'm anticipating and I think it'll continue growing; a lot more video, with a lot more of that UGC or creator-style production value, that's able to scale and really hit tons of different audiences, be refreshed constantly, and is really easy to produce thanks to tech.
Dan: That's really interesting. One of the other people we interviewed for this series said, “It used to be that you would make the big fancy commercial, cut it into little pieces, and distribute that into the channels. Now, you make all the UGC stuff, you cut it into little pieces and make the broadcast commercial (out of it).”
John: Exactly. Our audiences are ready for that. That's what they anticipate. It's about credibility. It's about talking to them, not talking at them. I think we're going to see more and more of that as smaller companies catch up with that consumer trend.
Anything else before we wrap up? Any other thoughts?
John: I think it's important to stay close on AI. If you apply AI LLMs (Large Language Models) to the source material that I'm talking about, whether it's your long keynote, podcast, or your CEO's talk, you can turn it into anything.
It's a transformer. So if you start applying that, you can start doing things you never thought possible or practical with your budget.
Dan: It’s not expensive either so there’s a lot of opportunity to experiment with all that.
John: Yeah exactly. You gotta get in the arena, start playing with it, and get ahead because things are changing fast and it’s really cool what you’re able to do.
Dan: Awesome. Well thanks for taking the time, John.
John: Happy to chat.
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FAQ
What is Notes From Video Village?
On a film set, a “Video Village” is more than just a corner of the set where clients watch their vision come to life—it’s a space where ideas spark and partnerships flourish. Over the years, it’s also become an unexpected hub for video marketing insights, especially for B2B. Inspired by these conversations, we’ve launched Notes from Video Village, our first-ever podcast.
Join Dan Lichtenberg, Founder and Creative Director at Slow Clap Productions, as he sits down with marketers to share insights on all things video. From personal career journeys and content strategy to tips on producing everything from broadcast commercials to social media reels, we dive into what makes video an unparalleled marketing tool. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, join us to level up your video marketing game.
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Slow Clap is a San Francisco Bay Area based creative video production company united by a desire to create short-form web content with staying power.
We are filmmakers that came of age in the internet era. And we apply the same rigor to web video that the filmmakers we most admire apply to their films. We want viewers to watch our content over and over, the way they would with their favorite movie or TV show.
We team with brands, artists, and agencies that are willing to take creative risks, in the belief that an audience will follow.
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