Video Marketing - Value vs. Volume
Episode 14
Tom and Curtis are joined by Alan Borman, a video producer and content marketer, to discuss the importance of video in the modern marketing landscape. They explore the balance between volume and value of video content, considering factors such as budget and the lifespan of assets. They also delve into the analytics of video performance and the power of authenticity in connecting with audiences.
Takeaways:
- Video is as critical as ever in today’s marketing ecosystem, as it allows for better retention of information and engages audiences more deeply than other forms of content.
- When creating video content, it is important to strike a balance between volume and value, considering the budget and the intended lifespan of the assets.
- Analyzing video performance through metrics such as view time and engagement can help identify areas for improvement and ways to optimize content.
- Authenticity is key in video marketing, as it allows for a personal connection with the audience and sets brands apart from AI-generated content.
- The future of video lies in the integration of AI, but human presence and connection will continue to be valued by audiences.
Tom Nixon (00:01.707)
Curtis, we are back with another episode of Bullhorns and Bullseyes. How are you, my friend?
Curtis Hays (00:06.362)
I’m doing well. How are you? Back from vacation, I see.
Tom Nixon (00:09.813)
Yeah. Can you see how tan I am on the video? I’m showing my Irish blood. We got nothing but sun, but I’m nothing but Irish and English, so I don’t get it. And when I do, I turned pink and I’ve got a scar here to show that I have had cancer cells removed. So I’m just going to stay, you know, white as a ghost the rest of my life and I’m fine with that.
Curtis Hays (00:12.09)
Very tan. Did you get sun down there in Florida?
Alan Borman (00:26.482)
Okay.
Curtis Hays (00:29.466)
Did you take your cowboy hat down there then? Because if you wore the cowboy hat, you would not get the sunburn on the forehead.
Tom Nixon (00:36.533)
It’s right there. It’s waiting for me. Yes, it went down with me. So, I had a rootin’ good time, which we’re gonna do today as well. The third person you see in the video, if you’re watching, is the man behind the curtain. And if you’re listening via podcast, we will soon introduce and you will hear his voice because he is not only a good friend of the podcast, he is the video producer for Bullhorns and Bullseyes. And let’s welcome to the show, Alan Bowman. Alan.
Curtis Hays (00:39.218)
Perfect.
Tom Nixon (01:05.387)
Thank you for being on this side of the camera for a change.
Alan Borman (01:08.934)
Thanks, Tom. It is very uncomfortable for me, but I’m going to get through it. And since you’re so willing to share so much personal information about yourself, it makes me feel a lot more comfortable here.
Tom Nixon (01:21.707)
Absolutely. Well, tell people who don’t know anything more than what I just told them about your background and what you do professionally.
Alan Borman (01:29.298)
Sure. So I’m a producer. So I like this kind of sum it up in a simple way to say I’m a connector of people, creative developers, business management, everything and anything that’s marketing or advertising. I’m kind of the surge protector for your important projects, right? I know where everything’s going. I know where everything is. And I’m kind of hoping to keep everything at an even level.
So when big things kind of surge, there’s consistency throughout your, you know, expensive project. Cause usually those are the ones that need the kick gloves.
Tom Nixon (02:12.491)
Absolutely. So, Curtis, thank you for introducing me to Alan. I’ve used you primarily as a video producer. You may do well, myriad other things, I’m sure. But we’re going to focus a lot of today’s conversation around the concept of video. But Curtis, as we’ve spoken about, we’re going to talk about consistency. We’re going to talk about strategy. And a lot of this applies to whether you’re talking about a podcast, an article, a website.
Speaking engagements or video, doesn’t it?
Curtis Hays (02:44.954)
Oh yeah, definitely. And Alan’s a great person to talk about for that. So, uh, Alan and I met close to 10 years ago. Uh, actually we had our kids in T ball together and Alan and I were both coaches and, uh, we had some, some similar friends. And, uh, so that’s kind of how we got connected through those, those friends. And then, uh, with the type of business Alan does and the type of stuff that I was doing then at Kaleidoscope, we started collaborating on projects together and kind of been working together ever since. And so.
When we came up with this idea for the podcast and wanted to do video, he was the first person I turned to to say, Hey, you know, uh, what can we do with this? How can we improve our production value on video? Um, how could we make this sort of work on YouTube? How could we improve, uh, the quality and, you the editing and speed to editing and all those different types of things. So Alan’s definitely been collaborating with us on the backend as we’ve been going through this project and, um,
He also sent us a really nice surprise. I’m going to tell a quick story back in Christmas time as all these presents were arriving. I’m ordering on Amazon for my wife and kids. My wife’s ordering for me and the kids and other people. All these packages are coming to the house and I get these strange packages delivered and here’s this box. I look at it. I opened it up. It says it’s a megaphone. And I’m like, who ordered a megaphone?
And there was no like if receipt or anything. It was like, what is this? And then the next day another box comes and it’s this awesome dart board. And I could not put it together. And so we put these things up on the shelf and we were going to try and return them to Amazon. And then I’m talking to Alan, like almost a month later and he goes, Hey, did you get any packages delivered to your house? And I mean, instantly it clicked.
Tom Nixon (04:18.699)
Looks like a bullhorn to me.
Alan Borman (04:25.22)
Yeah.
Curtis Hays (04:42.266)
You son of a gun, you’re the one that sent the bullhorn and bull’s eyes. So Tom, I do need to get the bullhorn over to you because that belongs over on, uh, on your desk. And then I’ve got a white space on the wall here. I need to put the, uh, I need to put the dartboard up on. So appreciate that Alan. It was a, it was a very thoughtful gift.
Alan Borman (05:02.61)
As we build the podcast, I figured you could build the environment that you do it in.
Curtis Hays (05:08.182)
Yep, yep, no, it’s perfect. Well, next thing you know, I’ll be riding in on a horse, you know, as you just… Full immersive.
Alan Borman (05:14.066)
We can make that happen, Curtis. We can do that. Yeah, we can do it.
Tom Nixon (05:21.227)
Well, Alan, let’s talk if you don’t mind. I wanted to ask you where just sort of a high level question about video because you’ve been in the industry for a while. I’m sure you’ve seen the evolution of video from its beginnings in the marketing sort of toolbox. Where is in your opinion, marketing in the ecosystem of content marketing in the year 2024 and where is it going going forward?
Alan Borman (05:46.928)
Um, so I have no statistics to back my statements up. I just think a lot of things. And I know Curtis does have the statistics to back this up, but let’s be honest. Video is very important right now. People don’t want to read the human brains wired as such to be able to watch content, retain the content better than somebody is able to read and retain that information. So.
content and video, catchy things that stay within people’s brain is more important today than it was yesterday. And each day forward, it will become more and more important and more and more integrated into our lives.
Curtis Hays (06:32.218)
Yeah, so from a data perspective, I looked up some stats earlier. It looks like the average US person is spending just shy of 50 minutes per day on YouTube. And what I’ve heard is that the average session though on YouTube, so when a user comes, opens up YouTube, the amount of time they spend during that one stint is at around 19 minutes. So just shy of 20. So you figure two.
two and a half of those times per day that somebody’s on YouTube, the majority of which are happening on mobile phones, though we have, we have mobile phones, we’re watching YouTube on our desktop. And then we also have a generation of people who are, let’s call it cutting the cord from cable. And we’ve got YouTube on our smart TVs and they’re streaming content. There was bad storms going through Illinois last night.
We watched our favorite streamer, Ryan Hall y ‘all. I’ll give a plug to Ryan Hall. Great streamer on YouTube if you’re into weather. And we watched these storms for two hours go across Illinois streaming from YouTube on our TV. It was great. So, if you compare that statistic to how much time people spend on a website, which you’re lucky if you get 60 seconds for a user session on your website, I mean, it’s just drastically different. So I think that.
You know, leads right to your point there, Alan, that consumers today are consuming more video content than they are necessarily reading, at least from a digital perspective.
Alan Borman (08:09.97)
And you gave a secret away because you’ve mentioned it a few times. You kept on saying YouTube and YouTube. And I know we’re going to talk about publishing your content later in this conversation, but I do people know that the secret is to put this on YouTube, that YouTube is Google and that’s the biggest pond to swim in. And we, you want to be there and that’s really important. So, um, start there and, and work your way out.
rather than work your way in.
Tom Nixon (08:42.219)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, or work your way backwards to your website, right? So, but we’ll come back to that. I wanted to talk, though, this evolution of because I’m old enough to have been in the marketing business to remember when if you wanted a corporate video made, you would have to hire a crew. It would be really expensive. It would be take a long time. That was sometimes cost prohibitive for, say, a small business. And then.
Fast forward to the era of the mobile phone and now everyone’s got a high def phone or camera in their pocket and they could just take it out at any time and create a video. They might not have the skill to do that, but they have the ability to do it just technologically. So now we’re in the space where there’s this range that still exists where you can still hire a crew and get it very well done, very high production quality.
You could also shoot a 30 second video and post it within an additional 30 seconds and get it up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or whatever. So there’s this balance that we have to, to, I think, find between volume, you know, where you can just crank out the videos in value, which is the impact that a video is going to have. So how do you, is there a methodology Alan for when you work with a client to say, um, what’s the best approach here? Should we invest $50 ,000 in one
great video and have it forever or should we invest a thousand dollars in 50 videos and just get them out there and spray and pray? How do you approach that calculus with a client?
Alan Borman (10:16.626)
Sure. You know, I would say it’s usually a reflection of how expensive the product is, right? If it’s a house or if it’s a car or if it’s a large item that needs a lot of attention to be shown, obviously you’re only going to get so much scale for your time, right? But it also is the creative idea and how that creative idea works with the brand.
And, you know, with, with what you do, Tom, and with what you do, Curtis, it all is that ecosystem of, um, what’s going to get people interested in what you’re selling. And if that’s 10 videos to explain your product, if that’s, uh, one video to do a deep dive, two minute tutorial on whatever your product is, it’s going to vary.
uh, based on your business and what you need. It would be great if everybody had the budgets to always do the biggest and best things. But I think if you have that conversation with the client and kind of, uh, as a connector kind of work between the lines of the Toms and the Curtis’s and be that gray area and help them see both the benefit technically from it and the need for it creatively for it. Uh, there’s always a middle ground.
Tom Nixon (11:46.923)
Hey, Curtis, what does the aside from what you already shared? Is there data that backs up or that you would use to guide somebody and say, this is a video that’s going to have a very short lifespan, but maybe we can get wide reach. And so maybe we don’t, you don’t break the bank on it or something that’s going to be a permanent asset that we’re going to fix to a home page, say that we want everybody to see for now for the next 24 months. Do you look at data? Do you look at?
website design? What sort of guides you in terms of knowing what sort of video assets you might need, whether it’s on a website or marketing campaign?
Curtis Hays (12:23.834)
Yeah. So I do think it similar to Alan’s response there. It comes down to the goals of the organization. What are they, what are they trying to do selling a product, generating a lead and where maybe are they stuck in telling that unique story about the brand or their unique value proposition to consumers who are visiting them? One of the.
Areas that we’ve seen most successful recently has been in creating a video content to use on YouTube in remarketing campaigns. So remarketing still is probably the cheapest of, of any campaigns that you can run on Google. Oftentimes we have customers that are paying, we’ve talked about this before, maybe $50 a click to get somebody to their website, but to think that that one touch point.
that consumer is going to convert on. You’re lucky if you have a two to five, maybe 7 % conversion rate. But if you’ve done the nurturing or post bringing that person in, you can do the nurturing. Video is a really good way to do that because we can get eyeballs of people who have been on your website viewing video content, a 15 second, 30 second video clip, say on YouTube for like two cents of you.
three cents of you at the most. So now it becomes really inexpensive to, uh, to communicate the value of the brand to a target audience. That’s very targeted again, because there are people who have come to the website and we can segment that audience. So we’re not getting maybe everybody that’s been there. We want to get, uh, only users who are there for at least the average amount of time, right? The actual engaged users who are engaging with the website, but didn’t convert.
Let’s remarket to them. So that’s been very effective. And I’ll add to say that like we’ve been successful in doing this in both like larger production where clients have spent a budget to have a film crew come out, uh, you know, do a day of filming. Uh, you know, there’s a lot of costs that’s associated with that, but we’ve had clients who have assets, but those assets were created maybe a few years ago, but their messaging has changed that we could take assets.
Curtis Hays (14:50.682)
and get that re -scripted, re -created, that can be pretty inexpensive, even if you just have photos. It doesn’t have to be raw video content that, you know, you could get a video created simply from photos.
Alan Borman (14:58.546)
Right.
Alan Borman (15:04.53)
Right. And it comes to down to the usage too. Um, you know, if you publish your content, right, that piece of content is evergreen and in perpetuity. So what is the value of a really good marketing asset for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, because if it’s done right. And, you know, depending on how much the product changes and how many rebrands you have and how many pivots in business you have, you could.
absolutely get somewhere between five and eight years out of a really strong asset. And if your brand is strong at that point, to have an archival is, you know, only behooves you. You know, look at the old brands. They still go to their archival footage.
Curtis Hays (15:52.634)
Yeah, I just to put that to numbers, my average client probably spends, let’s say $3 ,500 a month in Google ads. And let’s just say you invested 10 to $12 ,000 into a couple of videos, you know, some thirties, which shouldn’t be unreasonable to get, you know, some filming and a couple of 30 seconds. Like in Google ads, I’m through that $10 ,000, $12 ,000 budget in two, three months.
But what you just said in that video, living in perpetuity, you could make that same investment and have a commercial you could use for the next five years easily. Right? So sometimes it’s just putting in a perspective that they see that big number and it’s like, Oh, wow. I don’t know if I can do that. But actually when I crunch the numbers, I’m like, that’s a really good investment. The other big number that we have in this.
Alan Borman (16:31.762)
Right.
Curtis Hays (16:45.178)
Um, and I think we’ll have a future episode talking about performance max campaigns. So performance max Google combined all their different ad types into one campaign search display and video. It’s very AI driven, very much algorithm driven in almost every case, specifically with lead Jen, uh, type campaigns. When we’ve done performance max and inserted a commercial to do remarketing.
And allow Google to go out and either do remarketing or find users who are in the target audience who haven’t experienced the brand yet. Those performance max campaigns are far outperforming everything else far outperforming. So where we’ve taken C cost per acquisition numbers, like good numbers at like 130, $120 cost per acquisition down to 30 to $40. So, I mean, it’s just.
Tom Nixon (17:38.579)
Wow.
Curtis Hays (17:40.644)
shows the power potentially in the video. Unfortunately, Google’s not giving us the data and the Performance Max campaigns to really know how effective that video is. But I have no doubt that it’s definitely assisting in the performance of those campaigns and what we’re doing.
Alan Borman (18:02.974)
Right, and you can really understand your customer from what ads are placed in front of them, what they’re resonating, you know, what’s resonating with them. You know, you can definitely do an A and a B creative very simply. You can put multiple phone numbers or, you know, information on the ad to really see where people are coming from in that respect as well.
Curtis Hays (18:24.122)
Yeah.
Tom Nixon (18:25.367)
Alan, do you think through when you’re approaching a new video project, there’s this whole life cycle from pre planning to planning to production to ultimately publishing and then even beyond that. Are you thinking through that entire life cycle from the very beginning or do you take it in phases? Like, what’s the smart approach to do some of the analysis that Curtis just talked about from a data standpoint, which is how are we going to use this? What’s it going to cost us? What’s the return going to be? How’s it going to help us in our marketing?
Alan Borman (18:56.028)
Absolutely. Um, I guess the easiest thing to say is working backwards, right? Where is this piece of content playing? What are we making this piece of content for? Where is it going to be seen? So we’re publishing comes last because that’s where you put your ad live or put your content live. Um, you need to know where that’s going to be. If it’s Facebook exclusive, if it’s Instagram and Facebook, both, is it, you know, hopefully YouTube.
Uh, do you need to change anything for the various platforms? So, um, I think when you make your planning and do your pre -production work, you really have to have an idea of the publishing and where it’s going for that process. So, um, understanding the publishing, working backwards. Now you’re, you’re pre -planning and you’ve hopefully made a good plan. And then you throw the dice.
across the table and you do your production, right? And you hope that no one gets too messy. And then you finish that day, which is, or days, right? And those are the most costly days. Those are the most pressure days. And then you have time to shape it and finesse that content. And if you planned it well and the production went well,
You don’t have too much to do in the edit in that respect. You’ve really thought about what you were going to make and you’ve made it and you just need to kind of simply follow the Lego, put it together pages. And then from there, obviously the daisy chain goes to publishing and how are people going to see this and where are they going to see this?
And then we get into, I guess, the next step, which is the analytics, which Curtis obviously knows a lot about, but to have the successful analytics, everything links itself back to that planning, that pre -production, that understanding of the platform and the audience in that platform.
Tom Nixon (21:08.619)
What can Curtis, what can you do from an analytic standpoint? If let’s pretend I know this never happens to you, but let’s pretend somebody’s video asset is underperforming. So what are some of the things that you could do that don’t require Alan to start all over, you know, replan, hire a crew, do another shoot, you know, what are some of the things that you can tweak along the margins to say, well, maybe it’s not the video. Maybe it’s something else.
Curtis Hays (21:34.49)
Yeah, a few things from a website perspective. If people are viewing it on the website, we could look at heat maps or even click tracking to see if people are actually watching the video. I mean, one quick thing to see just if people aren’t clicking and watching it is do we have a good cover image, a good thumbnail? Like, is it a thumbnail that makes somebody want to click and watch the video or is it just some random, you know, still of the video? So.
Yeah, that’s something that you want to make sure as part of the production is depending on how we’re going to use it, even if you’re going to use it in YouTube and it’s going to be in the feed, uh, do we have a good thumbnail? Uh, if it’s just part of an ad, you don’t need a thumbnail. If we’re just running this as a 30 second, you know, sort of bumper ad or it’s 30 seconds on TV. Certainly don’t need that thumbnail because it’s going to autoplay somebody’s not clicking to play when it comes to, uh, actual.
playtime, we want to look at the analytics, which we can in Google Analytics, if it’s on a website or inside of YouTube, we can look at how long people are watching the video. And so that’s something to pay attention to, to see if your message maybe at the start isn’t resonating. Say, okay, we’ve developed four videos here and everybody’s dropping off after 30 seconds. What could we do to
do an edit to maybe increase their view time and keep them on a little bit longer. I think one thing I’d like to experiment with our podcast is to, instead of starting with our intro video, which we do, and that’s, I think, 50 seconds is how long our intro video is, to actually put maybe a minute of our conversation, then do the intro.
Alan Borman (23:30.874)
upfront.
Curtis Hays (23:32.09)
And then the rest of the podcast. So it’s going to repeat whatever that first 60 seconds was, but that is a purposeful hook that in that first 60 seconds, I’ve grabbed the attention of somebody who’s in my target audience, who’s interested in the topic we’re covering, who then says, yeah, I want to invest in this. Um, so again, just.
just some things to data points to look at there that you could go back and revise and do a test, say, hey, that change, did it work or not?
Alan Borman (24:07.73)
Yeah, I like that idea that, you know, everything, you know, is just a small change can make a big difference. Right. And, uh, you know, I know the idea that you guys talked about in your last episode of being consistent with the content you make and how important that is. Um, this is similar to that idea of consistency, right? This is another form of that. And I’d also like to mention also, as you’re talking about publishing Curtis,
Even if you’re not doing an ad and you’re just doing a channel or it’s just organic, uh, Google YouTube is aware of how long and how good your titling is of your content and how good of a tags you have associated with it. Uh, obviously you mentioned the thumbnail. There are, it’s like a Olympic, uh, figure skating judging, right? Like the smallest little things are little marks.
that gets you up higher and higher. And so there’s a checklist of a variety of things that Google YouTube really likes for you to do in your publishing and your posting of your videos to, you know, help with that organic boost where, you know, you don’t have to spend that money in ad space if you didn’t want to.
Tom Nixon (25:29.355)
Yeah. Alright. Well, the last thing I wanted to talk about in terms of the value of video or the value of anything that’s in real time or shows the personal side of the brand. I wanted to quote the great philosopher Woody Allen, who said 80 % of success is showing up and I was sitting in on a talk recently and it really resonated with me. The point that was being made was that in this era of deep fakes,
chat GPT writing articles, all this AI generated content out there. Um as people are trying to get their own views, opinions, pitches and out that sort of thing into the universe, you’re competing now with a lot of what I would consider fake content, you know, not fake news, but fake content. Um that has no human side to it. Video allows you to literally show up that 80 % of success that Woody Allen was talking about. Something like this even if you’re just listening to a podcast.
people could actually hear Alan Bowman wax intelligently about video or Curtis on analytics. And you can demonstrate expertise via video and via live audio or even recorded audio in a way that maybe you won’t be able to as easily with the written word, because there’s always this in the back of your mind. I think more and more people are going to be questioning the time, right? That did Alan write that or did some chat bot write it? So what are you seeing, uh, Alan, in terms of video where.
Going back to the question I asked in the beginning where you could just grab a cell phone and you could videotape yourself and put it on LinkedIn. Are you seeing more applications for video that just are, uh, you’re using video to either humanize a brand or establish the human presence of the subject matter expert on camera.
Alan Borman (27:14.194)
Yeah, well, I’ll say this much. Live is very important to people, right? Like that high -speed chase, that moment of national live broadcast news, that is beyond water cooler talk. So those moments are usually negative, but when they’re positive, they’re great. But those are…
huge moments of being live, if you will. And moreover, it’s authentic, right? Like that’s what live is. And yeah, there’s obviously AI that helps you along the way. Obviously some of the generated stuff isn’t great. Some professionals are very easy to point out that something’s not real or made real. I guess.
As technology improves, we’ll see how the technology improves the quality and the fake, if you will. But there is no replacing authenticity. There is no replacing that human connection in most everything that’s made for humans.
Tom Nixon (28:34.763)
Yep. Curtis, do you have any thoughts on that topic as well?
Curtis Hays (28:37.146)
Well, I did hear a Joe listening to Joe Rogan recently. He had, uh, this guy, this bone yard is, is the guest who he had on this fascinating, uh, gentleman who’s a gold miner in Alaska. And it’s the second time he’s had him on, but he has this, uh, basically pit that he’s found full of ancient bones, woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers.
But this was found like a hundred years ago and nobody knew about it. And this is Smithsonian has had bones that this company has given. Now he’s not a hundred years old. He’s purchased the company, but this pity he has, it just literally keeps turning up bones. He keeps digging more bones. It’s, it’s insane. Some, some that are over 20 ,000 years old. Um, it’s almost like a burial ground. Cause it’s only, I think three miles square that he’s been digging and they’re all like right in this one central spot.
But in any way, he’s on his second podcast with Joe and says that, Hey, someday, Joe, you and I won’t be here. It’s going to be AI having this conversation for us. And Joe disagreed. He, you know, he just, there’s nothing that’s going to replace that authenticity and that connection that people want to have. And I think the, uh, maybe anticipation or sort of rawness that happens.
In a conversation, which is maybe why people are drawn into live because it’s like, what might happen? There’s maybe nothing exciting that’s going to happen between, you know, the three of our conversations, but the three of us, we’ll see. Um, but that’s what drew my daughter and I into watching the, this, the weather stream that I mentioned earlier, right? Like there’s chasers that are chasing and they’re streaming their live video from their cars and, and Ryan Hall, he’s got.
Alan Borman (30:14.834)
Right.
Curtis Hays (30:36.794)
A whole dashboard up. So he’s got the radar. He’s got the chasers video. He’s on Twitter. He’s sharing photos and you know, you’re, you’re immersed into, you know, what’s happening almost as if you’re there. And I think that immersement into it is really cool. And then it’s all documented. So my daughter’s doing, um, research on a tornado that happened, um, in Kentucky, Kentucky, a couple of years ago.
And she went back to Orion hall y ‘all broadcast, which is saved on YouTube and watched that three hour broadcast, this like 300 mile tornado that happened. And, um, you know, that was all live documented what happened basically. And, and she was able to, to, you know, consume all that content versus going to Wikipedia and reading about what happened. Right. Um, it was way more informational and way more interesting. So.
Yeah, I just, I think video’s here to stay. I think, um, as with the invent of chat GPT and a lot of content that’s being written that you can’t discern if somebody wrote it or if, uh, a chat bot wrote it that this, you know, human video, listening to a podcast, watching people, whether it’s live or not, I think people are, are going to stay interested in that.
Tom Nixon (32:04.011)
Yeah, I would agree with that. Another way to kind of look at what Joe Rogan said about, you know, will robots, let’s say, replace somebody like a Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is so unique. I don’t know that if you’re going to design a podcast host in a laboratory, it would look anything like Joe Rogan. But there’s something about Joe Rogan that attracts literally millions of people. Howard Stern’s the same way you could say anyone who’s made a name for themselves. It’s because of their personality, which.
Curtis Hays (32:21.53)
Right, totally.
Tom Nixon (32:32.011)
Okay, you don’t need to be Joe Rogan, but the point that we’re making is a medium like video into a lesser degree podcast audio allows your personality to come out for better or for worse. And it’s going to attract the right type of people. It’s more immersive. It’s more naked. It’s more authentic. And that’s what we’re advocating for at the end of the day is to not stop writing articles because there’s a whole other argument of why that’s a effective thought leadership platform.
But to bring this all full circle, Alan will let you have the last word on this notion of authenticity because there’s nothing, you know, it’s not like I have a face for video, right? I have a face for podcasting, but here I am because I want people to know that this is really a conversation that the three of us had. It’s authentic. And hopefully people will get something out of it.
Alan Borman (33:04.59)
Right, right.
Alan Borman (33:17.298)
It’s, um, AI is the ultimate time capsule. It’s the fountain of youth, right? If you can, this moment, this podcast will always have this moment in time and it will be forever young in this, in this, in this podcast, right? And the idea that AI going forward is a fountain of youth. If you give it your data and you give it your information and you give it.
you know, how you speak and how you talk and it will eventually learn better or as good as you learn to be you, right? Like that is the hope for some people going forward. Our meat suits are going to expire one day and you know, we can all live on in some capacity. But you know, we do need someone to
Curtis Hays (34:08.218)
Hehehe.
Alan Borman (34:12.146)
you know, I guess go to the light and flick it on and say, you know, we need you here. You’re on, you’re off, you’re on, you’re off. But yeah, I mean, it’s an amazing future. That’s really what I would have to say to sum it up is the possibilities are endless. And I’m glad we’re talking because that good ideas come from that.
Tom Nixon (34:35.315)
Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Alright, Curtis, any final thoughts on your end before we wrap it up?
Curtis Hays (34:39.738)
Well, I don’t like Alan just to share maybe a couple of projects he’s worked on. I don’t know if there’s a place people could follow, but I know you did a car documentary recently. You know, you’ve, you’ve worked on some pretty significant projects in the past, but if somebody’s interested in finding some of your work, where could they find some of that Alan?
Alan Borman (34:59.278)
Yeah, you know, I have my website, AlanBorman .com. I’m always interested in a variety of productions. I was fortunate enough to freelance with an ad agency and we came up with a really cool project at the end of last year called, for MoonPie called Alien Customer Acquisition. We tried to acquire aliens as customers. It’s a really wild documentary.
that we shot about trying to communicate to aliens how they should be eating moon pies or buying moon pies, using moon pies in the galactic capitalism that they live in. So that was a really fun project. And, you know, varieties of projects in and around town. I’ve been lucky enough to work on some small business projects that recently and locally that
You know, they give you a different sense of accomplishment than, uh, some of the larger, you know, big agency work, if you will. So, uh, it’s been a great time and, uh, I’ve been loving working on this podcast because I get to learn so much.
Tom Nixon (36:14.955)
awesome. Well, we will link to all of that. Is that all on your website? EllenBorman .com, all of the projects you mentioned.
Alan Borman (36:21.202)
Yeah, you know, you know where to find me. I, I, uh, I’m not one to, to be under the radar or off the grid.
Tom Nixon (36:29.259)
Well, we’re thankful for that because not only do you help us on the podcast, you help us produce the podcast. So thank you very much, Alan, for being here. We will post everything available to all in the show notes and until next time, Curtis will see you on the next bull horns in bulls eyes.
Additional episodes:
Episode 13: A Podcast About Podcasting
Tom and Curtis "go meta" one more time, as they’ve devoted a whole podcast to talk about the art, science & business case for podcasting.
Episode 4: Going Meta on Bullhorns & Bullseyes
In a very "meta" episode, Curtis and Tom discuss the meaning behind "Bullhorns and Bullseyes." What are some examples of "bullhorn" tactics, and what are some examples of "bullseye" methodologies?
Episode 3:
Closing the Loop Between Sales & Marketing
Curtis and Tom are once again joined by Mario D'Aquila, Chief Operating Officer of Assisted Living Services, for Part Three of our multi-chapter success story.