Congratulations! You’ve produced a video you’re really happy with. Now all that’s left to do is upload it to your preferred streaming platform and forget about it, right? Well, not quite. Uploading it to one platform and moving on is a missed opportunity. A single video can generate weeks or even months of marketing content when used as part of a structured video marketing strategy.
There’s a much better way to maximise your investment, and it’s far less expensive than you might think…
As video becomes more and more important in buying decisions (don’t just take our word for it) making the most of your content has become essential. The aim is to maximise the number of opportunities to engage with your audience and that means translating your content into the most eye-catching formats and showcasing it on the most relevant platforms.
Ensuring the consistency of your brand’s look and feel across each touch point is also key to helping build trust and recognition. Plus, it means you can have content that can more easily be used at a later date.
This is where the strategy of producing one main film and cleverly repurposing it with mini edits comes into play. Where appropriate, you can also use it to create micro content (films or animations). Extracting key moments and insights from the hero video means marketers can tailor their content to suit different platforms and audience preferences.
So how is it done? There are 3 main ‘Ms’ to bear in mind.
(view image in the original article here)
The first M (Main) is pretty straight forward, so we won’t spend too much time here. Your Main is the complete film you’ve put all your effort and time into. A tight script, some fun effects and clever camera work and you’re good to go.
As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to put this on YouTube or your preferred streaming platform etc. YouTube is perhaps the best know and makes your videos very discoverable, but you might benefit from the additional insights a platform such as TwentyThree can provide. This allows you to continue refining how you position your content and helps you attract more views.
*Don’t forget that you might want to hype your main film using your shorter pieces of content first, so hang fire on posting it until you’ve released a few canny ‘teaser’ edits.
We’ve used an example from the TOUGHBOOK campaign we produced for technology pioneers, Panasonic, highlighting how we maximised the video assets – from the primary film to short clips and teaser content.
(view the video in the original article here)
The second M (Mini) is where you start to create shorter, more focused edits of your Main film. A Mini edit’s purpose can either be to build a queue of people ready to watch your main film OR highlight unique parts of your offering.
For example, your Main film may be about your complete suite of products or services, but your Mini edits might break it down into your specialism in individual sectors. Equally, you might have produced a tutorial on how to use your product and found that people are most often searching for (and watching) one particular step of the process. Creating a Mini edit focused on that one step, packed with quality SEO, can increase your discoverability to new prospects.
The key here is not to create lots of new content, you should be aiming to recycle, reuse and reformat as much as possible into new edits.
Here’s a quick shorthand for how you might define those different types of edit.
These give the audience a reason to watch your main video. What are you audience going to find out? Does it give a glimpse of a new product or service? Are you announcing a particular date or event? Perhaps your interview had a nugget of gold in, you can create a short edit that leads up to that point, encouraging viewers to watch your main film to find out more.
Think of this as a short snappy edit that sets everything else up. This will come out in advance of your main video, so the goal is to create a queue of people ready and waiting for when the main video launches.
Here’s a little teaser video from the Panasonic Toughbook campaign.
(view the video in the original article here)
These combine as many hooks as possible to pull people towards your main film OR provide another CTA i.e. to a landing page or sign-up form.
By condensing the most compelling moments and messages from the core video into shorter formats, marketers can deliver targeted edits that resonate with different segments of their audience.
Now’s the time to think social media: using LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok etc. With these platforms, your audience often wants smaller bite-size content.
Whether it’s a brief teaser, a highlight reel, or a quick tutorial, each edit serves to capture attention and drive engagement, ultimately leading viewers back to the full video for a deeper dive into the content.
Check out this short snippet from the Toughbook campaign- a quick example of how a single core video can evolve into engaging mini content that grabs the attention of the viewer.
(view the video in the original article here)
This most often refers to content such as Gifs, presentations or web animations. Think of them as small single-issue messages, or very brief statements. Examples could be:
The key here is to keep it concise. If someone asked you to explain your micro edit, could you sum it up in one sentence? You’re giving potential customers clarity in seconds, and for the time-poor that’s a compelling reason to click.
The outputs for Micro tend to fall into gifs, MP4s, or Lotties and Rives, and the use cases are the broadest:
Here’s an example of how we make the most of one explainer video. This is our Atomic Design explainer video. We use the complete video to kick off pitches, giving the audience a quick overview of the methodology.
(view the videos in the original article here)
Video marketing remains a powerful tool for brands looking to engage audiences and drive meaningful interactions. By creating one full video and repurposing it into shorter edits, marketers can maximise the reach and impact of their content across various platforms –without drastically increasing the total cost.
A well thought out video marketing plan should guide your production of the video. It lets you know up-front exactly what the strategy is and the exact content you’ll need to produce. For example, when you animate that icon, is it also going to be needed for a Lottie? And, if so, what steps do you need to take to minimise additional work?
By combining compelling visuals with strategic messaging, and getting under the right noses, brands can create memorable experiences that resonate with their audience and drive tangible results.
If you’re wondering how to squeeze even more value out of your video content, or just want to talk through your ideas, get in touch at [email protected].
In-person meetings might be the gold standard when it comes to fostering familiarity with your clients, but self-shot videos of you and your company might just run them a close second. Why? Because it’s a medium that works really well at capturing who you are, giving people a little sneak peek behind the scenes, and fostering brand loyalty.
We do appreciate that introducing yourself to the world can be a slightly strange experience, we’ve been there! But there are a number of compelling reasons to consider going for it:
Viewers are now far more forgiving of self-shot content than they were even a few years ago, so don’t worry if your budget doesn’t stretch to perfectly lit, noise-treated studios. Authenticity is the keyword here: you’re the experts, you’re the people current or potential clients will be speaking to.
‘Before you start filming, it is absolutely essential to plan down to the finest of details, and then you get on set and rip it up on day one.’
Niko Pueringer – Corridor Digital
We’ve put together a step-by-step guide to getting the most out of the filming kit you probably already own, leaving you to concentrate on what it is you really want to say.
Phone cameras and webcams struggle to capture complex or small-print patterns. This results in a visual distortion (known as moiré) that makes it appear as if your clothing is jittering or jumping.
It can also soften the overall image thanks to the available bandwidth being taken up in attempting to capture the patterns. It’s safest to stick to plain colours. Sorry to those with a love of jazzy shirts!
Cameras can struggle to capture the full dynamic range (this is the difference between the brightest and darkest parts of an image that our eyes can see). Filming with a window behind you will create a very large bright object with a shady silhouette of you in the middle. Atmospheric but not very informative.
Cameras love light, the brighter and more evenly lit your shot, the better it will look. Aim to shoot with any windows behind the camera, this way you are nicely lit with the brightest light available to you.
Try to shoot during the day when there is plenty of natural light. Shooting at night using household lights will force the camera to ‘work harder’. In a similar way to what happens when you turn up the volume on a stereo, this will create more distortion in the image.
If in any doubt, record a little segment and watch it back. You may notice that lamp behind you is appearing much brighter than you were expecting. Not a problem, just move it out of shot while you’re filming.
Don’t be afraid of using your phone, if it was good enough for Danny Boyle then it’s ok with me. Yes, I love the footage from our professional-grade cameras, but sometimes the ability to whip a phone out and start filming in a matter of seconds, all to a good enough standard, is the best option.
Viewers may be relatively relaxed about the visual quality of a video, but they do expect good quality sound. Think about what time you’re going to shoot: if you know the 10:15 to Cardiff always passes your window promptly, why not push filming back to 10:30 onwards?
You can massively improve the quality of your video by buying a cheap lavalier (clip-on) mic. Something like a Rode Lavalier Go is cheap, sounds much better than the audio captured on a camera mic, and is really straightforward to use. Most phones will have a free audio notes app and these are also a great option as portable audio recorders.
Deciding what format your video will take is a great start; is it going to be an interview or open discussion for example? Writing a rough script in advance can help clarify your thoughts. Go through and highlight the key phrases that remind you what you want to say, then write down just the highlighted phrases and use this as a prompt.
Equally, you may feel more comfortable just discussing the subject on the spot, and this often leads to the best outcomes: not overthinking answers can result in more natural footage.
It may be helpful to ask someone to sit behind the camera and deliver your answers to them. For most people it feels more natural speaking to a person rather than a camera.
If you’re anything like me on camera, I tend to relax a bit after the first couple of minutes (apologies in advance for the pre-prepared bad jokes I have stashed to cover those first-minute nerves!).
The lesson? Record a couple of takes. Sure, 80% of them will be similar, but occasionally you’ll nail a particular section that bit better and FGTOLOCAO (Finally Get That Overly Long Overly Complicated Acronym Out).
Planning on editing a few people together? A mix of answers can prove invaluable. A longer speech is great for covering a topic in more detail. A short sound bite is great to quickly reaffirm another person’s view or offer the counter narrative.
Compared to how we write, we speak and act very differently. We have a habit of adding ‘ummms’ and ‘ahhs’ (it’s a natural way our body creates some breathing space to recall and form the next statement). You might also have noticed that people often blink after finishing a sentence, editors often describe this as the body’s way of editing the world around it and creating some order (we’re very much artists, not scientists).
Viewers tend to prefer a well thought out answer to a perfectly polished one. If you want to re-shoot then, by all means, feel free but don’t worry about perfection: sincerity is the key here.
Our Video Toolkits give you the tools to brand your videos consistently, but more importantly, they’re super easy to implement. We’ve talked about these before, but it’s well worth a look!
Most importantly, don’t forget you can do as many takes as you feel comfortable with. And you might just enjoy it!
If this has left you with burning questions about self-shooting, or any other video-related stuff, then please do feel free to get in touch at [email protected]
A new podcast series, Nothing, Something Nothing, has launched from Nine Tree Studios, Bristol.
The series explores how people approach creativity, are inspired, and develop their creative practice.
It’s about the creative moments you didn’t know you missed. It’s about the space between ideas, and the highs and lows that shape creative work.
It’s sector-agnostic with some high-calibre guests from the worlds of music, food, art, business and design.
Season 1’s guests include Lee Kiernan (Guitarist, IDLES), Calum Franklin (Restaurateur, Harrods), and Alex Rodrigues (Producer/Director, Channel 4).
And – as a Bristol Creative Industries exclusive – the podcast will also be dropping an episode with Mike Bailey (Actor/Teacher), known for his role as Sid in Skins.
New episodes drop every Wednesday on your favourite platform; visit www.nsnpodcast.com to listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, as well as on social.
The podcast has launched from production company JonesMillbank and Nine Tree Studios, with recording currently taking place in Bristol.
***
JonesMillbank are a full-service production company based at Nine Tree Studios, their 10,000sq ft film studio.
Producing branded content, TV ads and social content their clients include local, global and household brands such as Dyson, Freixenet, DHL, Oxfam, Pukka and Vax.
jonesmillbank.com
01173706372
[email protected]
I got lost lost in this project. In a good way.
I was approached by Tom Abba of the University of the West of England in September 2025 with the working demo, and I was captivated from first listen…
🎹 What you hear below is the Kickstarter campaign introduction video to which I recorded Tom’s narration, wrote the score, sound design, mixed and mastered the track for headphone playback.
🎼 I also wrote the score to accompany the playable teaser, which you can try for yourself here: https://lnkd.in/eaY5_4ds
🎧 NOTE: Wear headphones to get the fully immersed experience 🎧
If you get into it as much as I did and would like to help build its creation, then you can do that here: https://lnkd.in/e6SiGx-r
The primary goal of any filming day is the final polished video. But the true story of innovation, teamwork, and expertise often lies in what happens between the takes. This is the power of a well-executed Behind-the-Scenes (BTS) strategy.
BTS content delivers three key advantages:
– It showcases your people. BTS content captures the personalities and passion behind your brand. It’s about trust, collaboration, and the shared goal of creating something great.
– It builds audience trust by offering a transparent look at your process, showcasing the technical skill and planning involved.
– It fuels your marketing. A single filming day can provide a treasure trove of authentic photos and video clips to keep your social media channels buzzing for weeks.
Case study in action: Our recent shoot with Hot Robotics and the University of Bristol for their Cerberus robot project is a perfect example.
The accompanying BTS film (shared below) goes far beyond a simple “making-of.” It captures the reality of a complex shoot: setting up the master interview ‘studio’, coordinating drone on drone aerial sequences, fun with smoke pellets and, of course, the obligatory trip to Greggs! All the while maintaining a fantastic team dynamic.
This footage becomes an invaluable asset, demonstrating both technical capability and a strong collaborative culture.
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Why reach beyond English?
Everybody sort of knows about translation: books by international authors, certificates and diplomas for immigration purposes, even those cheap electronic gadget user manuals that sound like they were written by aliens from outer space… But what about business?
If your company is based in an English-speaking country, it feels natural to use English in business and to target English-speaking markets. As for creatives, so much of their work is tied with culture and words, that they feel more at ease operating in their mother tongue.
And yet, there is a world out there. So, gaining more visibility, and more customers, is worth the effort to reach beyond English.
Visibility abroad and new client profiles
While still using English in day-to-day business relations, all kinds and sizes of businesses can use translation to reach a bigger audience. Let’s look at a few examples:
An independent travel writer can pitch their articles for publication in more travel and in-flight magazines if they can also include the destination countries they write about.
Video game devs will get more players by having their games localized into key market languages. Or if sticking to English for the in-game content, there’s multilingual community management.
In film and video, foreign subtitles and dubbing open up new audience bases.
For artists, photographers, musicians, production companies, applying for an international award or exhibiting at a festival abroad will be a real visibility booster.
And agencies that are translation-capable are able to compete on a bigger stage: a lot of international groups and global charities need to work with PR, web and marketing agencies that can handle copy in multiple languages.
How best to approach your translation project
Once you’re clear on why you want to use translation, comes the how? question.
Choosing the best fit between a translation agency and freelance translators will depend on your project’s specifics: do you need a lot of different languages or only one/a couple? Is consistency in quality and tone of voice important? Do you need additional services like DTP and graphic design? High volumes translated with a short turnaround time? Or shorter, recurring pieces of copy where a long-term relationship will help?
Whatever the form your translation team takes, keep in mind these three essential tips.
Need translation help?
For help adapting your public-facing content for a French audience, or defining the scope and workflow of your translation project, get in touch for a chat (in English or in French): https://bristolcreativeindustries.com/members/sandra-mouton-french-translator/
Weston College recently delivered a highly successful series of online apprenticeship preparation workshops in collaboration with Channel 4, delivered in partnership with their 4Skills team. These sessions were specifically designed to support learners in advance of the Channel 4 Apprenticeship Programme, which is due to launch in January 2026, and to demystify the application and recruitment process for a highly competitive creative employer.
The workshops were well attended, with over 120 learners taking part from a wide range of curriculum areas, including Media, Creative, A Levels, Digital, Business, The King’s Trust, and SEND pathways. This broad engagement highlights both the strong interest in creative industry opportunities and the accessibility of the sessions across diverse learner groups.
Throughout the workshops, learners gained valuable and practical insight into the Channel 4 recruitment journey. This included guidance on completing high-quality applications, preparing for interviews, and approaching project-based assessment tasks with confidence. Particular emphasis was placed on the importance of values, behaviours, and transferable skills, alongside the attributes Channel 4 seek in aspiring apprentices entering the creative industries.
A key highlight of the sessions was the opportunity for learners to hear directly from current Channel 4 apprentices. Their first-hand experiences provided an authentic and relatable perspective on routes into the organisation, offering honest insights into day-to-day working life, progression opportunities, and what differentiates successful applicants. This peer-to-peer element proved especially impactful in building learner confidence and aspiration.
The positive impact of the workshops has been immediate and tangible. A number of learners have already submitted apprenticeship applications following the sessions, demonstrating increased confidence, motivation, and readiness to progress to the next stage of their career journey.
Overall, this collaboration showcases the strength and effectiveness of our wider Career Excellence employer partnerships and reinforces the value of targeted, employer-led enrichment activity in supporting learner progression into high-profile apprenticeship opportunities. Further collaborative activity with Channel 4 is planned for 2026, ensuring continued engagement and sustained impact for future cohorts.
With an estimated 5.6 billion people using social media worldwide, you’re probably aware that maintaining your brand’s presence across multiple platforms is critical if you want to compete in this ever-progressing digital landscape.
A strong social media presence not only offers new opportunities for leads and sales, but also strengthens customer loyalty, enhances your networking, and opens the door for more partnerships and customer feedback – all the while driving traffic to your website and raising awareness of your brand.
However, the steps needed to assert or improve your presence on socials may feel unclear. Many businesses assume that social media management is easy to take on at first, due to the deceptively simple user experience on most platforms.
But in actual fact, it’s a very different, more intricate experience than managing a personal account. And, if handled incorrectly, it can even have a detrimental impact on your brand.
So here are seven steps that any modern business can take to ensure their brand is making the most of social media.
By monitoring the performance data of your competitors, you can gain insights into what works and what doesn’t, driving smarter decision-making and building a more robust strategy.
Researching and analysing competitor behaviour means you can stay one step ahead and be inspired by new ideas. You can detect any threats to your business by identifying gaps in your strategy, emerging trends, and missed opportunities.
After all, why reinvent when you can circumvent?
There are a number of social competitor analysis tools you can use to do this, including FanPageKarma, Awario, Brandwatch, and Iconosquare. You then need to decide which audience, engagement, and content metrics are useful to you.
Some of those metrics might be percentage of engagement per media, followers gained, follower growth, comments, likes, the most used hashtags, average posts per day and so on – whichever insights will help you define your own goals.
If you don’t know who your social media audience is, how can you serve them the content they want to see? It’s important to learn your audience’s needs and motivations, as well as their behaviours. What social media platforms do they use? When and why do they use them? And what are they looking for?
With the answers, you can tailor your content to ensure you are serving the right message, at the right time, in the right place.
Different audience demographics – for example age, gender, geographical location – will exhibit different behaviour online. So knowing who uses which platform aids your researching, advertising and marketing decisions, and ensures you’re providing the most relevant content to achieve your business goals.
Once you have an understanding of your audience’s needs and preferences, as well as those of your competitors, it’s time to select which social media channels are most suited to your audience, products/services and business needs.
Each social network provides unique delivery opportunities for you to entice your audience. For example, Instagram is a highly visual, creative platform. It can be a great place to showcase your products and services in a more imaginative or artistic manner.
It’s also considered to be less formal than other platforms– perfect for showing off your brand personality and company culture. Similar with TikTok: this is a platform popular with Gen Z, so it’s a great place to share fun, short videos.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is arguably the most useful social platform for B2B marketing or targeting a professional demographic.
Consider your channel selection carefully to ensure your messaging is broadcast in the most effective way, reaching the right prospects and generating leads.
It’s common for marketers to spread themselves too thin, so bear in mind your staff resources as part of the selection process. If you have only one team member, attempting to establish a brand presence across six different social media channels may be unrealistic.
Your presence on social media is an extension of your brand. It should, therefore, align with all your other brand messaging. Maintaining a consistent voice across every platform helps your brand strengthen its trust and reliability, creating a distinct personality among your competitors.
To help you adhere to this, developing brand guidelines can be a helpful tool when maintaining consistency in your tone of voice. Consider why your brand exists, what its values are, and how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand.
The overuse of internet terms or trendy slang can actually damage your reputation, making you appear out of touch or ‘cheap’, and subsequently hurting engagement.
In your guidelines, you may consider creating an emoji palette or limit their use if your tone of voice is less playful. Without such consistency, there’s a lot of room for error.
A content calendar is also a good way to ensure you’re maintaining consistency. Viewing all your upcoming posts at once will give you a sense of how they fit together. Plus, it ensures you’re posting regularly enough that your audience (and, importantly, the algorithm) don’t forget about you.
Arguably the most important aspect of social media strategy is your willingness (or availability) to engage with your audience.
Posting regularly and capitalising on customer interest is a necessity in today’s social climate if you want to keep your followers invested in your brand – and it’s crucial for the growth of your business. As we all get more and more used to interacting with generative AI and chatbots, human to human engagement and community building will help brands stand out and retain share of voice.
No one wants to receive an automated message or talk to a robot. So, interacting with customers and responding to them quickly is essential if you want to humanise your brand, nurture relationships and increase customer loyalty.
Ensure your account looks active with real-time updates, through Instagram stories or updated YouTube videos, for example. Avoid cheesy iStock imagery, and instead opt for authentic, original content that reinforces your brand personality and culture.
In order to remain active and engage, you’ll need to monitor your channels as often as possible, at least daily, and post regularly. There are plenty of social media management tools that can help you do just this. Pre-scheduling social posts is a huge time-saver, rescuing you from posting manually at all hours of the day.
It’s also good practice to keep your ear to the ground, through social listening. Social listening is the process of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, product, competitors, and more, providing the opportunity to track, analyse and respond to conversations.
Understanding how people feel about your brand helps you keep your marketing and product/service development efforts on track.
Without social listening, you might be missing out on a big piece of insight about your brand or industry that people are talking about.
It also allows you to outline pain points, and better your crisis management tactics by responding right away to negative posts (should there be any). It can also help you identify social influencers, providing opportunities for partnerships and advertising.
The final step in any digital marketing campaign is measurement. As with your initial data-gathering exercises, measuring the effectiveness of your social media marketing activity will help you to optimise your approach and guarantee ongoing success. And luckily, there are a range of analytics tools you can use to gain these insights.
Social media is a vital tool that all businesses should take advantage of in order to maintain optimum brand loyalty, reach, and engagement.
If you would like to fine-tune your business’s social media activity, boost your reach and get noticed, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Over the last year Meta has been gradually rolling out their new algorithm called ‘Andromeda’. As of October this should be fully deployed to all active advertisers across Meta.
Over the last year Meta has been gradually rolling out their new algorithm called ‘Andromeda’. As of October this should be fully deployed to all active advertisers across Meta.
Described in Meta’s own terms as “A personalized ads retrieval engine that leverages the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip, to enable cutting edge innovation in the Ads retrieval stage to drive efficiency and advertiser performance.”
The Andromeda upgrade has improved efficiency by 10,000x compared to its predecessor. This allows it to process far more ad creative data and make much more sophisticated decisions about which creative will resonate with each individual.
Meta also mentions sequence learning which “enables our ads systems to consider the sequence of actions a person takes before and after seeing an ad.” This means the system can understand where someone is in the purchase journey, such as (awareness, consideration or conversion).
In practice, this is likely to mean a fundamental shift in Meta’s ad selection process. Rather than selecting a specific winner from a shortlist of ads, the new algorithm offers the potential to serve ads sequentially to lead to a conversion.
This shift is a move from audience targeting to “creative diversification”. This is a new buzzword for the Meta Ads space and refers to “the practice of creating a wide range of ad creatives with different themes, messages, and visuals to cater to diverse audience segments.”
For advertisers, this means moving away from targeting specific demographics, interests and behaviours, and instead focusing ads on different target audiences leveraging Meta’s AI/advantage+ campaign* types to do so. There is still the feature to add traditional audiences such as “interest”and 1st party data into these campaigns as a “suggestion”, but adding audience constraints can prevent learning and hinder performance.
The ultimate aim of this new approach is that advertisers will be able to access broader, more relevant audiences, including potential customers that the previous algorithm may have ignored. This will be delivered through a combination of allowing Meta to control the audience, testing different sorts of creative, with Andromeda being the tool connecting these to the right person at the right time.
*Advantage+ sales campaigns use Meta’s AI to automatically find and target the most relevant audiences, eliminating the need for manual audience setup. The system learns and optimises based on who actually converts.
With Meta Andromeda representing a fundamental change in how ads are delivered across Meta, advertisers need to consider the following.
With Meta claiming real-world results of an 8% improvement in ad quality there are real benefits to be had. However, performance still relies on the quality of your ads and this should remain a primary focus to create audience engagement.
The shift to creative-led Meta advertising requires new skills and strategic thinking. If your Meta performance has declined or you’re unsure how to adapt, get in touch with Fanatic and we’ll have a conversation on how to update your Meta Ads strategy.
Sources:
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