My Favorite Way to do Brand Deals as an Artist

In the world of ads, there's a spectrum of time/effort/cost. On the high end is multi-million dollar TV commercials and on the lower end is someone talking to their phone camera.

As an artist whose job is to create ads for brands, I'm often torn along this spectrum. The artist in me wants to make the highest quality, creative work. While the marketer in me recognizes that candid, lower-lift content can actually perform better on social media.

Here's my favorite way to structure brand deals so that everyone wins - I'm fulfilled as an artist, the brand is happy with the content, and the audience has something enjoyable to watch.

Three Videos in One

I've included a campaign that I did with Intel (below). There are three videos:

• The Ad

• The Behind-the-scenes

• The Clip

• (I smell an acronym. ABC?)

With the ad, I'm flexing my creative muscles with little care for how it will 'perform' on social media and the most care for the brand/campaign.

The behind-the-scenes is an engaging, two-minute look into how the ad was made. I film a bunch of clips on my phone during production and then sort out a script/edit later on. Bonus points for getting to sneak in some ad read for the brand/product.

The clip is a captivating, no-thought-necessary peek behind the curtain. In my case, a timelapse bringing the ad animation to life.

Why I Like it

On the back end of social media apps, brands can take your post and 'run it as an ad' (there are technical steps to giving them access). So I post the ad, then the brand can serve it to a targeted audience.

The brand wins because they're getting a video that's professional enough to represent the campaign, yet handmade enough to feel right on social media.

And that means I win. I get to do what I do best with success meaning the brand gets a great video asset. However, I do want to gently nudge as much attention as possible toward the campaign.

Within a day or two after posting the ad, I'll post the behind-the-scenes and clip. I like to think of these as 'on ramps' to the main ad. Viewers barely recognize they're watching sponsored content and I'm encouraging them to 'check out the final animation' on my page.

The numbers don't lie. On this specific Intel campaign, the clip has twice as many views (7.1M) as the behind-the-scenes, which has twice as many views (3.2M) as the ad (1.2M). The funnel works.

Conclusion

Ditch the pressure of making one video asset and defining it's success on performance metrics.

Focus your creativity and skill on the main ad, which the brand can put media spend behind (negotiated in contract). Then expand the scope of work to include some supporting assets for you to organically drive attention to the campaign.

Ad:

Behind-the-scenes:

Clip: