My Social Video Greatest Hits

For those who follow me on social, you know I’m an avid bassist from the videos I share. I play bass the way others golf (with a lot of enthusiasm if not a ton of skill). When I want to improve, the first place I turn is YouTube for incredible tutorials.

Over the course of a decade, I’ve been conceiving, developing and selling creative visual content for brands, and I’ve learned a lot by trial and error. It’s a little like teaching yourself the bass. I hope that by sharing some of my video projects created for Olympus Imaging America, you can learn from the hits and misses, and perhaps become the Flea of social video.

Olympus was my client for 12 years at MullenLowe in Boston. I led the account from the early days of social media and grew their business into a fully integrated agency client. One reason why they eventually hired us to produce broadcast spots was the trust they gained from our producing short-form videos I conceived for them.

Stylus TOUGH

Based in Lehigh Valley, PA, the Olympus HQ had an onsite daycare, and I decided to take full advantage of this to showcase the virtually indestructible Stylus TOUGH camera in a series of videos starring the kids. They put them to the test, and we captured all the fun. Looking back, these videos feel a little cheesy, but they were designed to be shared with mom bloggers and the sales were incredible.

• Key Takeaway: Quality matters less than subject matter when working to tap into a niche audience. If budgets are constrained, focus on the context and how video can augment your storytelling.

Will It Blend?

Inspired by our success, I reached out to Blendtec, the company behind the Will It Blend? series. For not a lot of money, I partnered with them to produce two videos that showcased how the Olympus PEN digital SLR was a multimedia blend (because it shot video and stills and included in-camera filters). The resulting 1.2 million views was largely due to their subscribers. But since my strategy was to release the video with a PR push at launch, it appeared alongside press coverage coming out of the media launch event/video premiere from the penthouse of the Hotel Gansevoort.

• Key Takeaway: Draft off the popularity of known creators, and drive video embeds and social shares with media and event activations.

PEN Your Story Challenge

When Olympus released its successor PEN camera, they wanted to firmly cement its moviemaking capabilities in consumers’ minds. What better way than to partner with Erik Beck from Indy Mogul, a YouTube channel for aspiring filmmakers, for the creative contest call to action and paid ad support.

Working with YouTube, our team created a video carousel that could aggregate submissions that would then be voted on American Idol style. The finalists received the camera as well as the funds to create a short, and the winner’s video played on the jumbotron at Arthur Ashe Stadium during the Olympus-sponsored US Open Tennis Tournament.

As good as the finalists’ and winner’s videos were, the entry videos were actually pretty great too, and here’s one of my personal favorites from the Decimal Brothers.

Lest you think that I've only leveraged YouTube, I would recommended you check out the World Ski & Snowboard Festival 72-Hour Filmmaker Challenge I activated for Olympus on Vimeo with some very talented directors posting their work on the site that's known for the best premium content.

• Key Takeaway: Involve influencers as experts to inspire unsung talent to create content on your brand’s behalf, and benefit from the network effect of sharing to maximize awareness and engagement. Gamify the creation and voting process and make the prizes worth the effort.

PEN Ready Project

Having spearheaded the creation of an Augmented Reality camera to give away virtual versions of the Olympus PEN in WIRED magazine, I was pumped to convince Olympus to give away 1,000 real cameras to everyday people in 6 cities and one lucky jetBlue flight (Cue Oprah: You get a camera! You get a camera!).

We wouldn’t give away the cameras for free, though. In exchange for the camera, consumers had to post 20 pieces of content (videos, stills) to the Olympus PEN Ready Tumblr blog. I coordinated for 100 of the top Tumblr creators to receive the camera and post about it and share their art on their own blogs as well as on the Olympus Tumblr. All of this content was then available for Olympus to use in digital ads as proof of the camera’s capabilities.

• Key Takeaway: Trust the crowd to create authentic content for your brand and leverage it creatively across social and paid media. Partnerships and platform firsts drive innovation and intrigue.

This is just a sampling of some of the videos I’ve been fortunate enough to help produce for my former client, who sadly shuttered its digital camera division recently. While Olympus isn’t enabling video creation today, since working with them I’ve brought video campaigns to life for Bose, TJX Companies, ASOS, New Balance, Saucony, Reebok and many others on the Tumblr platform.

I'm proudest of having helped jetBlue release its first documentary there; developing an influencer-fueled content campaign for Dunkin’; and launching the Converse Chuck Taylor II weatherized sneaker.

Video is such a creative medium, and with livestreaming taking off in the COVID era, I feel we’ve only just scratched the surface of its potential. Reflecting back, it’s clear that with the evolution of deepfakes, VR, AR, and AI, what we’ll see in the next 10 years of video content will make the last decade feel quaint by comparison.

Personally, I can't wait for video (and my bass playing) to vastly improve.