Navigating the Creative Landscape with Mike Vannelli of Think Envy

Jim Banks: [00:00:00] Mike Vannelli, is the creative director for, Think Envy, based in California. so Mike, great to have you on the show. thanks for coming and talking to me today.

Mike Vannelli: Thanks for having me.

Jim Banks: So, so I, I was, looking at your bio and stuff like that. you're, you're clearly working in one of the fastest growing sectors in, in creative design or creative video. so perhaps you can talk to me a little bit about your hero story in terms of how you got to where you are.

Mike Vannelli: Sure. Yeah.

So, so I've always wanted to, be in the film industry or, or, film related industry,ever since I was little. so, so once I, once I started kind of getting more of a footing, I realized that I did want to make a living doing it and it, it's kind of hard to do it.

It's in the really competitive industry. So, pretty much I was looking for what could I do that, that I could still have my hands on a camera, but people would pay me to, to, to film. so the, the easiest barrier to entry that I found, at [00:01:00] least at the time, was music videos. So when I was first starting out, I, this was, this was before, Facebook groups and things like that.

So mainly it was just, musicians. Posting on Craigslist, seeing if anybody could do their music video for free or for a really low budget. I didn't have a portfolio at the time, so, so I kind of was up front with them about that and said, yeah, I'll do it for free, but just to let you know that That,I'm doing this for the experience, but, also make sure I do a good job.

So, so I did that for, for years while having a day job at the same time. and then, I, I was getting, pretty, pretty high up doing that. by the time I stopped, I was doing music videos for some pretty big name artists, like Wiz Khalifa, Three 6 Mafia. And, I just, I wanted to do a change, it was just getting, not repetitive, but it, it was, it was a lot of the same that I felt, at least that I was doing.

So, I still [00:02:00] needed to make money, and I still, wanted to make sure that, Again, people were paying me to to to do videos, and so the only other thing that really made sense was advertising and doing,commercials. And so, so pretty much had to start over, didn't have a portfolio of that, but It did seem a little more lucrative, when it comes to the longevity of it.

So, thankfully this is when the iPhone app store started really booming and a lot of people were making apps. And so I reached out to a lot of people making those apps and I said, hey, do you need a video? And a lot of them wanted one. And so I started making app videos. And,the more I did, the more experience I got, the more I was able to charge.

And, and that was, that was, over 10 years ago. And, and yeah, then, then I just kept doing more and more and more until, I, I am where I am.

Jim Banks: So in [00:03:00] terms of, again, I mean, it's, it sounds like you've reinvented yourself a few times. Just to try and keep, keep sort of chugging away. I mean, what, I mean, obviously we, we're, we're in a sort of a, a situation now where, I mean, most of the podcast guests I've had on, we've, we've invariably talked about COVID and we talked about AI because those seem to be two kind of underpinning things that have almost like run through everyone's veins at some point in time over the last few years. 

So how did, how was your sort of work impacted by COVID and then obviously more up to date now, what's the impact of,AI in, in regards to, the impact that it's having in, in your business? 

Mike Vannelli: Sure. Yeah, so, so with COVID,I mean, it, it impacted us for, for a while just because we, we do have our own studio where we do our, all of our filming. So, for a while it was,thankfully we had enough of a backlog of projects that we didn't need to film that we had already filmed, so [00:04:00] that, when, when people turned to work from home, specifically our, our editing team, they were able to work from home just fine.

We had to outfit them a little bit to be able to work from home, but, we thankfully were in the Los Angeles area, which was kind of the best place to be when it comes to the industry that we're in, because we really only had to go maybe about a month or so working from home before before the California and Los Angeles kind of opened up, being able to go and do in person filming, obviously with a lot of restrictions, but well, all the rest of the country that wasn't allowed because that's kind of the bread and butter of the Los Angeles area.

it was, it was lifted pretty quickly. So thankfully,we only had to kind of be at home without filming for about a month. Clients did understand that we had to push back filming. But we were able to get, up and running, pretty quickly after that, and so we're thankful for that. 

Jim Banks: Just lost sanitizer and [00:05:00] masks.

Mike Vannelli: yep, exactly, yeah, we, we actually still have our, our social distancing stickers on our floor because they were there for so long that, that we can't really get them off, so, but yeah, so, with, with AI, we, because we do commercials specifically where it's an actual, one of our actors holding a product or talking about a product, when it comes to like video generation AI, things like that, we always keep up on it, we always want to see what the latest and greatest is, and usually when a new, Video AI generator comes out.

We always want to try it to see kind of how far off they are. And, so far, so far so good, at least for us. we, we try to, we try to, try it out with, say, like, just sample products that we have. Like, if this was a client video and somebody was holding the product, how would it look like in an AI generated video?

And thankfully, they're still not there yet. It's still not, not very good at that. 

Jim Banks: they'll get there eventually? Do you think it'll eventually [00:06:00] get to the point where? AI is kind of on a par with this type of work you do. Cause I mean, I, I, I, again, I think, I think because you're a creative, shop, There's so much more to it than just the actual, the end output, right?

It's, it's the, there's an, an awful lot about the ideation, the scripting, the, the kind of an, an, the analysis of, what does the actual talent need to be in terms of gender, age group, all that sort of stuff. which again, I think a, a lot of people just kind of go to ai, throw in a, a kind of prompt and go, oh yeah, that's fine.

That's great. But I think I, I mean, I know, I know that sometimes it's kind of good to just. Get things out of the blocks. I mean, almost like use a kind of like a, an MVP to just say, well, let's just see a little bit of what it's like. And then from there we can kind of go on to full on production.

So, yeah, I just wanted to, whether you think we'll get to that point and if so, will it be a year, five years, 10 years? I mean, what, what are your thoughts? 

Mike Vannelli: I mean, I, maybe, I guess, like I said, there, there [00:07:00] have been a lot of advancements in video ai specifically, when it comes to generating video. but I, I think it's, I think it's a pretty long way off to get to the same, I guess quality and, consistency that you would get out of like a live action production.

One thing that we actually do use AI for is in our script writing. So, we, we write all the scripts ourselves, but we do like to use AI when it comes to either writer's block or maybe,thinking of jokes. So, for instance, we were doing a commercial for this, bicycle company and we wanted to do, we wanted to have a bunch of, bicycle related jokes sprinkled throughout the video.

So And, our script writers just, they were, they were just having a hard time thinking up just bicycle related jokes. And so, and so that's when, that's like one instance where, where we do use AI, saying, here's, here's the [00:08:00] scenario, give me a bunch of bicycle related jokes. And, yeah, and, and it helps a lot for stuff like that, one of them was like, oh, this really grinds my gears, and blah.

So yeah, so, so when it comes to stuff like that, AI really helps, but,it, there's only, there's only so much that AI can do when it comes to, at least in our industry and in our business, like talking to a client, understanding their needs. If it's a physical product, we receive the product.

We're looking at the product, and we're able to, kind of write the script and make the videos that way.

Jim Banks: So.

I mean, again, like if you've got your own studio, I, I, I always find like a, I know from my own experience of, if you're like reinventing myself because of COVID, I mean, I had this sort of situation where I used to travel probably two or three months of the year, to various countries around the world, doing workshops, presentations, then obviously COVID happened that completely put the kibosh on that. So I found myself kind of like having to do a lot more. stuff from home. so, I [00:09:00] ended up investing in lighting and cameras and, and that's equipment. again, I, I don't know about you, it's one of my pet peeves. Whenever I sit and watch somebody being interviewed on the news or something like that, I always look at the lighting, audio, right, to see

just how kind of, How good it is, right?

And obviously video as well. And I'm, I'm just stunned at how many people they, they kind of take the trouble to put on a shirt and a tie and, make their hair look good and everything, but the audio is horrible. The video is horrible. The lighting's horrible. And for me, I just, I just dial out and I don't know, like, I guess what I'm trying to, the point I'm trying to make is, have you thought with With your production studio, have you thought about, like, renting it out for, people that may want to do podcasting?

Because I mean, at the moment, I'm sort of podcasting on the cheap, right? But I'm sure at some point in time, I may well go, I need to kind of go have a proper podcast studio, proper lighting, the sort of, almost like the Joe Rogan, two microphones, two chairs, or whatever it might be,shooting the breeze and doing it in person. and I've, I know a lot [00:10:00] of people who have got, gone down the, they've invested money in gear. They've got a whole bunch of camera gears and lenses and everything else sitting, gathering dust. They, they may have kind of pivoted a little bit to, to do other things. But what they've done is they've reinvented themselves and they've turned themselves into production studios or podcast studios to enable them to, one, create their own podcast, but two, like, rent their space out for,for, for people that may want to use that.

Mike Vannelli: Yeah. Yeah. We've, we've actually done that, quite a bit. So, normally when, when, say, like a podcast or, or,somebody that wants to do a podcast comes to us and says, like, hey, can we, can we rent one of your sets to film our podcast? We say, sure. And they normally say, well, we have our own equipment.

Is that okay? And we go, yeah, that's totally fine. You can come in and use it. But normally they say, well, just curious, do you guys have equipment that we can use? And we say, yeah, we, we do. But we would be the ones handling the equipment. And so all you would need to do is just show up. [00:11:00] Tell us where you want and then we would set you up.

And so, kind of like, kind of like you, a lot of people are doing the, the audio and video of podcast. So because we have all the audio equipment, we have, we have a mixer, we have,multi cameras,pretty much they just come in and they say where they want to film and how many people, and then we just handle all the setup and, and all the microphones, so, what they do is they just bring in a hard drive and so they just leave with the footage files and the audio files and then, they, they just handle it from there.

So, so yeah, we, we've, we've definitely done that, but, and, I think it's a little bit easier for them because all they have to do is just show up. They don't really have any, Any other setup?

Jim Banks: Yeah, because I, I, I remember going to, I went, I went in the evening, I went to, a department store, in London, right in the middle of central London, and there's a road called Tottencourt Road, and, on this road, there's a, there's a department store, which is the oldest department store, I think, in the UK, I think it was like, First founded in [00:12:00] 1700 and something.

And the building that

they're in, they've been in since like 1700 and something. Right. So they've been there forever. so they, they don't have a mortgage on the place. It's kind of owned outright big, big, big place. but what they, what they found was that, they would, they were open as a department store from sort of nine in the morning till six o'clock in the evening.

Then they'd shut

the doors and then it opened them again at nine o'clock in the morning the next day. Right. And what they realized is that they were leaving a lot of money on the table. So. What they actually did was they, they, they had a great sort of canteen area with, chairs and tables and so on. And what they were able to do is they were able to rent out, right, the space that they had. So they, they, they'd rent the space out, a nominal fee for renting the space. They would pay for the, the, the kind of people to kind of serve drinks and snacks and, that sort of thing. And then, obviously, everyone that attended the, the, the workshop or whatever it might be, at the end of it, they got the opportunity to kind of wander around the store for a couple of hours or an hour afterwards, right?

And if they wanted to kind of buy something, they could, right? So, from, from the store [00:13:00] department perspective, it was, like, really good for them, incremental ancillary revenue that they wouldn't have been making otherwise, using 

Mike Vannelli: huh. 

Jim Banks: that was already kind of there. I mean, they didn't have to go out and spend any more money on, coffee making machines or anything like that.

It's all there. They may have just to order some extra pastries or whatever it might be to,to give people something to eat. But, from a cost perspective, minimal, but the benefit of, incrementally adding to their revenue was really clever. And I'm amazed at how many people are sitting on assets that are really not kind of taking advantage of, and, 

Mike Vannelli: exactly. 

Jim Banks: Yeah, we, 

sorry,

Karen. 

Mike Vannelli: only, we, we only film, one or two days a week in our studio, otherwise we're just doing You know, administrative and, and post production, pre production. And so, but yeah, so, it just kind of makes sense. Cause like, otherwise our, our sets are just kind of sitting there.

Jim Banks: 

And so, I mean, you, you mentioned obviously your, your kind of origins really was kind of TV and everything, how, how has kind of like the online [00:14:00] sort of, evolution impacted you, right? I mean, I see on your website, you obviously, you have your TV, but you also have UGC and, and creative videos for that. is that, is that something that you're seeing a fairly sort of significant uptick in terms of demand? I mean, is that, is that. Sort of something that's become more, more popular. 

Mike Vannelli: Yeah. So we've, we've been doing, Yeah, for, for years, we've been doing kind of the, the standard 30 second, 60 second,video spots, both, both TV and online, so, on, for YouTube pre roll and, and,just front page websites, things like that. But, it only happened a few years ago that, a lot of people really started asking for, vertical orientation, short form videos.

And we really tried to hold off for as long as we could, but we kind of had to jump on the bandwagon because, our clients were asking for it, so then we started offering it. we, they, they do see and we do tell them that it's not just, our actor holding up a, their, their iPhone [00:15:00] because, we do have like a camera rig that somebody is behind and that it does look like they're holding it, but it's actually just like a, a metal, handle that the actors are holding, so it looks like it.

But, our, our clients can tell because they're like, huh, this, this looks and sounds a lot better than just an iPhone. but, but yeah, so So,that's been going good, but it's, it's funny, actually, as of, I guess, today, this recording,there was, like, a little bit of a TikTok ban scare here in the U.

S., and, and it's funny that ever since that happened, just, a couple weeks ago, a lot of clients have been starting to, kind of, inquire more about the standard 30 second, normal video, not so much the, the vertical TikTok. I think that they're, I think they got a little spooked and they want kind of something that they know they can have,evergreen and long form instead of kind of relying off TikTok.

I think their marketing department got a little, Got a little scared that, they were [00:16:00] investing into these, these short form videos that, you know, who, who knows the, who knows the future of those. So,

Jim Banks: So if you, again, I always kind of say, if you're, sometimes the,the, the crystal ball gazing is the best way to try and establish kind of where things are heading, right. And I mean, I know that obviously TikTok has, is banned in the States for 12 hours or whatever it was,

right.

And then, and then there was a sort of stay of execution, but again, my understanding is that stay of execution is primarily, what is it, for 90 days or something, and then at the end of that

Mike Vannelli: Or something. 

Jim Banks: I, I, I keep looking at it, I keep thinking like there's, there's going to be this sort of like a, almost like a showdown, it'll be, the government will, in the US will basically say, you have to sell it to us and bite downs are going to go, there's absolutely zero chance of us selling it to you.

Right. So kind of like, what's, what's going to be the sort of stance at that point? Right. I mean, I think it's almost like everyone's going to try and call each other's bluff. And I think the reality of it is, is that, if, if, again, if I was a [00:17:00] betting person, I would, Probably predict, again, I know that the US is a big market for them compared to the rest of the world, it's not that big, right?

So there's, the, the, the kind of uptake of people in, in, Asia, Europe, is, is significant and ByteDance definitely don't need America on their platform in order for it to kind of work. And I think it'll, if anyone's going to lose out, it'll be probably the sort of, the millennials in the, in the US that will be the ones that will lose out. And all the people that probably have made a decent living on the back of, being able to do TikTok shop and things like that and advertisers. but I was, again, I was just kind of curious as to whether you think it'll be a permanent, like 90 days, it'll come, it'll, the bluff will be called again, it'll just be pushed another 90 days or whatever it might be, or whether they'll just go, okay, in that case, let's just forget about it.

Let's just. let it run and not worry about it.

Mike Vannelli: Yeah. I mean, you know, you, you kind of never know. I kind of think that they'll probably just keep pushing it, but. At the same [00:18:00] time, even if they don't,I know that a lot of, when that happened, a lot of creators on there, they saw,big, huge uptick in their subscribers on YouTube and their followers on Instagram and, and things like that.

So, so hopefully like, maybe that'll, that'll give creators like a little bit of a push, maybe not to put all their eggs in one basket and the TikTok basket and kind of start to diversify a little bit. because, because there's Instagram, because there's YouTube,a lot of people, they really do like TikTok, but, it's It's not, it's not the only player in town, so even if, even if it did go offline and the US didn't have it anymore, it's, it's not, it's not the end of the world.

There's still other options, that would be like if your favorite burger place went down, then, then, sad, because it was your favorite, but it's not like there aren't other burger places in town.

Jim Banks: I always remember when TikTok first launched, I kind of resisted going onto the platform for a long, long time

and 

Mike Vannelli: huh. 

Jim Banks: and then I [00:19:00] went on it and I always used to say to people, every time I watch TikTok, I always feel like I need to go and have a shower afterwards. I just felt Very dirty and like scummy, but I, I'm, I'm amazed at how eventually how quickly they're out, their algorithm really got a kind of feel for what I like and what I don't like 

Mike Vannelli: huh. 

Jim Banks: else, and started to present things in a way that, sort of suited my purpose.

Right. And,and again, in some, I think in some respects, I think it's because of that, that I think a lot of advertisers. they may have done well to begin with and started to do badly. And I think it's probably because a lot of advertisers felt that they needed to kind of, Try, try and sort of manipulate the algorithm in a way that the algorithm was never going to be manipulated. you know, again, I, I, I think, I've, I've always had this kind of contentious issue about UGC, right? So, to me, it's, it's always like a, this is very, very gray area. Right. Because I think so, so many of the people who are [00:20:00] using, like they sort of talk about the product, they're not using the product, they're just, Advertising the product.

And I think, in some, in some respects that's disingenuous. And I, I know that, that,certainly if you're an affiliate, I mean, I do a lot of affiliate marketing, if you don't disclose the fact that you're an affiliate, then you could get into trouble with the FCC. I'm just really surprised that it almost seems like.

content creators that do UGC seem to kind of get a pass, right? They don't have to kind of do any disclosure at all. It seems like they don't have to kind of say, by the way, I'm not actually using this product and just kind of showcasing the features of it.

I'm wondering, 

Mike Vannelli: I mean, I'll, yeah, in the past, it, it's funny in the past, maybe six months, we've actually seen kind of like a downtick in clients wanting UGC style videos for,for the vertical, the vertical platform. before they, they kind of wanted, our actors to do the, like, holding up the camera and talking to the camera, but,we, we try to keep up to date [00:21:00] with, all the platforms so that we know kind of what's going on and what's working and what's not.

And, well, 

Jim Banks: up to date with the platforms?

Mike Vannelli: we just have to use them all, unfortunately. that's the only way, really. we, we do have a couple podcasts. We do have a couple, like, podcasts and, and, YouTubers that we watch that, they kind of, kind of go in the nitty gritty about any updates that are happening, things like that, but otherwise,when it comes to, like, what's actually on the platforms, just, just using them.

But what we found is that, on, TikTok and, and Instagram Reels, things like that, it seems like every third or fourth video is an ad, and, it's just a sponsored video, an ad, and a lot of them are still the UGC style, and I think, I think our clients have kind of seen the, the fatigue that users are getting, where, you know, as soon as As soon as they see that, and they see it's an ad, they just scroll right by, and they don't want to, they don't want to hear about it, because they know they're getting marketed to.[00:22:00] 

So, like, for instance, one of my clients said, If, if we're gonna, we're gonna pay to get an ad done, we might as well make it look like an ad, and feel like an ad, and, and be creative like an ad. rather than just getting somebody talking to the camera, because that's what everybody's doing. And, yeah, like, like I said, in the past six months, we've kind of seen a lot of clients kind of going that way, where, where they, they figure, if we're going to be paying for an ad, we might as well make it entertaining and not look like every, every other one out there, so at least they're wanting to stay on the page and watch it a little more and, and not look like everybody 

Jim Banks: Yeah, I think, I think the thing that always kind of got me was that, again, I think, I think obviously you buy Instagram ads through the sort of meta or Facebook ad platform. and you can choose all your various placements and so on. So, and again, I think, I think Facebook have, Heavily, heavily doubled down on, you need to produce video, you need to produce video, you need to produce video. And I keep [00:23:00] thinking, like, is the reason for that because the the typical, because it's, it's pay for impressions, right? Again, if you go, if you go and buy programmatic advertising. Right? Let's say you wanted to kind of get connected TV, you'd probably pay a minimum, like a sort of, a sort of, entry level price of probably 20 to 25 CPM, right?

Whereas if you, if you just run sort of standard banner ads, you could probably get them for 2 or 3 CPM, right? So.

Clearly for Facebook, there's more of an incentive for them to promote heavily the video because their CPMs typically start at 25 and go up to sort of 45 plus, right? Whereas again, if you're doing images, then, the CPMs tend to be a lot lower.

So they say, oh, you want to get images. As much, exposure, you're not going to get as many impressions. And I look at it and go, well, I'd rather pay 5 CPM than 25 CPM. And, and even if I get less impressions, it's costing me less money. So, [00:24:00] but, but I think because they're, they're in charge of the platform, they can dictate, you And tell advertisers what they think should be done. Right. And I think, I think you're right. I think because every third kind of scroll is a, is an ad, right. People are becoming blind to it now. They're just going, don't want to, don't want to watch that anymore. and as you say, I think a lot more people are, again, I think more people are moving to smart TV.

So there's a lot more sort of. Stuff that's being watched on bigger screens, even though everything was kind of dumbed down to mobiles, I think more and more people are consuming their content, whether it's podcasts, whether it's, like social media, they're consuming it on, 75 inch TVs.

So, if you have like a really poorly made. Poorly audioed, piece of content is going to look really bad on a 75 inch TV, right? So, I think you need to kind of scale up rather than scale down. And,

and I think that's where a lot of 

Mike Vannelli: that real estate. 

Jim Banks: like, yeah, I think that's where so many advertisers are making mistakes.

They're trying to go down rather than going up. So I think that's quite an interesting point you [00:25:00] made about some of your clients kind of going, we're going to go back to almost like the old squad. 

I'm just going back is sometimes the best way of going forward. so in, in terms of the, the, the sort of the challenges, I mean, I, I think,one of, one of the, the, the, the things with sort of digital marketing agencies is the barrier to entry is incredibly low. Would you say in your sort of line of work, the barrier to entry is much, much higher because of the capital cost associated with setting up a business? Yes.

Mike Vannelli: sort of. It just depends on kind of what structure you want. So, I know, I know a guy that, that runs, I don't even, I don't even know if you would call it an agency. Pretty much he just does, all he does is UGC, video editing assembly pretty much. So, He finds, videos that, that other people have made, and, people, order stuff, or order, UGC videos from him, and he just assembles, kind of, edits and reels of what other [00:26:00] people have made, and, I've told him, like, hey, like, just be careful, because that's not your content, but Doesn't really care, but there's a lot of people that do that.

but you know, he just kind of works from home. He's a one man team and that's all he does and that's how he makes his living.we, We know other people that, that, they, they don't have like a, like a, physical, space. They just, again, they, they run their business from home, but anytime they need to film, either they have their own camera or they go rent their gear, they rent the location, they, they have the crew that, that shows up, things like that, and they do,custom castings for, for actors.

So they kind of, they, they work themselves, but then they bring in everything. So when it comes to stuff like that, there's, there's, there's a pretty low barrier to entry. you just kind of have to know what you're doing. for us at least, our kind of business model is, we, we have a, a little over 5, 000 square foot studio.

we have a lot of standing sets. So a lot of that you would find in commercials. over to my left here is a [00:27:00] cafe set. Back there you can kind of see there's like a house set and an office set. 

kind of just a lot of. 

Jim Banks: a green screen behind you then,

Mike Vannelli: No, that's, it's all real. but yeah, so we, we, we built out our studio so that,and we have, we have all of our lights are already hanging.

So, so we have our, we have all of our studio spaces, so we don't have to go rent locations. We own all of our, our own equipment, so we don't have to rent. And then we have a roster of actors that, are employees. So, they, we, we obviously vet them and make sure that they're good actors, but, but yeah, whenever we're doing filming, that's why a lot of the time when, when clients come to us, they see, the same handful of faces, but, but then that way we don't have to do castings for every time.

And we're able to kind of like bring, and, and, all of our post production, pre production and production, all of the crew and, and everything is done in house. So we really don't have to reach outside of our company unless we really, really need to. And that's kind of one way where we're able [00:28:00] to kind of bring costs down for the client because we're not, everything is pretty streamlined and, and we also have kind of a high, high bandwidth for projects.

So, but, but again, kind of big barrier to entry because you have, you have a lot of stuff that you need to do before you can even start. And,we, we didn't start with this, this is our, fourth studio, so we've just been, every time we outgrow one, we, we get a bigger one, so, 

so yeah, it just,

Jim Banks: into the kind of evolution.

Mike Vannelli: exactly, so, so if,it just kind of depends on On the business model and, and,how much you want to put in and, and,cause so that kind of dictates the barrier to entry.

Jim Banks: And in terms of like your, your, acquisition strategies for kind of finding clients. I mean, how, how do you kind of go about finding the people that, that, to work with?

Mike Vannelli: Yeah. So we just, we have ads all over the internet. we, we have, we have, kind of one, one thing that we did is we have a few different types of videos that we offer to [00:29:00] clients. That, some, some are more geared towards, reels and TikTok, and some are more geared towards, say,Amazon product pages and, the normal commercials.

So, what we've done is we kind of made videos, or promotional videos for those projects in the style of the project. So it explains what the, what the style is, while kind of showing you at the same time. And, we We, we have those ads, all over the place. So when they're watching the video, they not only learn about the service we offer, but they're kind of seeing an example of the service at the same time.

Jim Banks: You're very transparent with your pricing. I mean, again, I went to your website, you're very transparent with your pricing. How do you kind of like, again, one, one of the things that bugs me more than anything is. Scope creep, right, in terms

Mike Vannelli: Mm hmm. 

Jim Banks: in scope and what's out of scope, and when people kind of ask you to do things. Again, I think a lot of agencies will just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. Before you know it, you're kind of doing three times as much work for the same [00:30:00] money, and Yeah, I've got friends that basically say how they handle that is they would, they would go back to people and say, okay, well, that's kind of outside the scope.

What would you like to take out of kind of what we're doing for you now to incorporate that and they can decide themselves as to what they think is important or not, or they can pay more money, right? It's kind of like very

polite way of saying you need to pay more money. Do you find that as being an issue for you?

Mike Vannelli: sometimes. So, so we've, we've done over 5, 000 ads up to this point and by now we pretty much know exactly how much the ad will cost, based on what we include. We just call it our base pricing and so we just tell, we just tell our clients and, kind of like you said on our website, it kind of shows exactly what's included.

So, for instance, on our like commercial videos, you get script writing, you get up to three of our actors,you don't have to use all three, sometimes it just calls for one or two. it includes, our, our,our locations that we have in studio, so pretty much, we, we have what's included [00:31:00] in our base pricing.

A lot of the time, we do have clients that ask, well, can you do stuff outside of your base pricing? Yeah, sure, it's just gonna be additional, the, the base pricing is just kind of. What you're seeing the pricing, but I'd say like 80 percent of clients, they just stick to stick to our base pricing because they, they know exactly what they're going to get.

And, we just tried to make it, so we tried to make it as like Amazon as possible, where it's like. Click to, click to buy, you see what you're getting and, and, and you can just move forward right there. We used to do, we used to do contracts and custom invoices and this and that and, and, sometimes it would just take weeks to close a client, but You know, now it takes a day or two and it's mainly just them deciding if they want to, it's not, it's not us having to put stuff together and back and forth and blah blah blah, so. 

Jim Banks: And you've also, I think, again, I think one of the other things I looked at was your, the number of reviews [00:32:00] you've got on Fiverr seems like it's huge, huge number of reviews that you've got. Why is that? Why, why, why have you kind of like, it seems like you've embraced Fiverr in a way that I've seen not very few businesses in the creative space kind of do.

Mike Vannelli: 

Yeah, so we, so one of the, one of the things that we did kind of early on is, is before So we kind of have our Fiverr side of the business, and, and a lot of the time if, and we haven't done it in a long time, but, what we used to do is we kind of used Fiverr as kind of a proof of concept, so if we were trying out like a new video style or a new,or a new service that we offer, we would, we would put it on Fiverr to see if it had any merit, to see if people would,would buy it.

Mike Vannelli: And, before we put money into like advertising, on Facebook or, or YouTube or, or any, anywhere else.it, it was kind of a, just a way for us to, to, just test a proof of concept. And some things worked, some [00:33:00] things didn't. So, but, being able to, to test things out on there kind of, allowed us to gain a lot of reviews, allowed us to kind of hone our pricing,what people were willing to pay for, what they weren't willing to pay for.

that's why we were able to kind of, really solidify like our base pricing and what's included and what people need, what they didn't. so, so yeah, but just over the years, because we've not only used it as kind of a proof of concept, if, if it was working, we would just keep it on there.

And. so, so we do get, a, a fair amount of business from Fiverr. but, we also get business directly from our website and it's just kind of, if, we, we have a similar checkout process to Fiverr if people order directly from our website. It's just like our client portal and they're kind of able to do the exact same thing.

But, sometimes clients, they already have a Fiverr account, they already maybe have some funds in there, and so they want to go that route, or if they just want to work with us directly, then, then, we [00:34:00] kind of give them two avenues to go with, though, it, it, kind of lowering their, barrier to entry, placing an order with us, because they have different options, they don't have to, kind of choose one. 

Jim Banks: I'm always amazed at how few businesses will, Use Fiverr or Upwork or places like that. And I, again, I've used them so many times for so many

different things. Cause again, I

think you can, you can obviously. Pay cheap and get poor quality, but equally you can pay like less, less money, but still get really, really good output, right?

There's so many people that are, that have a profile on, on Fiverr or Upwork, and they're not there because they're not very good at what they do. It's just. that's just something that they've found. They liked it, they stick with it, it works well. and they, they, again, in terms of you ask them to do something, if it's two day turnaround, they kind of usually deliver it within a day. The output's good, maybe some revisions if need be. but yeah, I'm always amazed at how few people will use somewhere like that and they go and spend a [00:35:00] ton of money on some very expensive solution that doesn't necessarily always kind of deliver what you want, right? So. 

Mike Vannelli: Yeah, I mean, thankfully, thankfully our pricing is the same on, on,whether it's on Fiverr or off of Fiverr, so, it's really up to the client at that point whether, what they want to do.

Jim Banks: If they like the convenience of Fiverr versus kind of going with you directly. 

So Mike, this has been, this has been phenomenal. I've really, really enjoyed, a conversation. I mean, like in terms of,I'd love to, if, if there's an opportunity for it to kind of have you on in the future to kind of talk a little bit more about the evolution of the creative side of things.

Cause yeah, and I think you're probably the first person I've had on the podcast that has come from more of a creative side of things rather than a sort of Tactical, sort of, ad buying

side of things. But I think to me it's like what you're offering in the discipline is just an integral part of the whole process.

I mean, you can, you can only be as good as the products that you're promoting. And sometimes again, I've, I've been presented with ads by [00:36:00] clients and I'm like, these are just horrible. We've got no chance. I mean, I've always said, we're not, we're not magicians, right? We can't

turn something that's horrible into amazing ad campaign just because they, you Decide they want to throw money at it.

Just no amount of money will make a poor ad a good ad. Right. So, so for me, again, I'm, I'm always looking for, who can I talk to that's got a view and an angle on a particular side of the business that is instrumental to all of us, but probably unknown by a lot. So I really appreciate you kind of taking time out your day to come on and talk to me today. 

Mike Vannelli: Sure.

Jim Banks: Okay. Thanks a lot.