We are not a video agency.
It's been more than a few months since we stopped using that word, and now I'm making it official. We're a video production studio, and I do feel there is a distinct difference. But why the change? Shifting market expectation? Perception? Pretension?!
A number of years ago, when social platforms started to put much more emphasis on the paid promotion business model, it became increasingly important to have an understanding of audience metrics. Of course, clearly identifying and knowing your intended audience has always been a core necessity of digital content provision, but now you also need a solid, data driven strategy to ensure your shiny content shimmers across the right eyeballs.
And so we started to offer strategy packages as a service, building a specific data dive and research piece into the front end, allowing this to guide the creative brief and distribution plan, then controlling multi-platform delivery with report monitoring, tweaking outputs as required. Since we'd moved on from 'just' production and post we became 'the video agency' to some of our clients, and so we adopted it.
All well and good, but over time it's become clear that video strategy as a service is only viable for the right client and project. As you might expect, more often than not this is wrapped up in the work of the creative agency in control of the entire client marketing account, agencies we regularly enjoy working alongside to deliver client content packages across the year.
In our case, we also found the word 'agency' could be misleading to some. It made the true service offering less clear. It also suggested we were producers leaning on a larger network of third party suppliers to pull projects together.
But we're not.
We're a full service production house working script to screen, specialising in multi-asset delivery packages across design and motion, wholly driven by the creative talent of the artists we're lucky enough to call colleagues. We have a house style. An address. A studio.
In an industry where it's becoming increasingly important to have a USP, we're hanging our hat on what we do, the way we do it. That might not be suitable for everyone, and that's totally fine. There are plenty of other amazing production companies that might be.
So, no longer an agency, if indeed we ever really were. It's just a word (and I do wonder how many people will actually even care) but it does help us to define who we are.
We are a studio; passionate, playful and proud of it.
#studio #notanagency