Let’s Be Mates Podcast – Chisel, creative production agency

Let's Be Mates Podcast | MATE | 8 January 2020

In this weeks episode we are talking to a local Aussie small business that produces beautiful visuals and engaging stories for some of Australia’s largest brands.

Content is a crucial tool in the Marketers toolkit, and at MATE we are always looking for content that puts a smile on our customers face, brightens up their day, or gives them knowledge that empowers them

Today we are speaking with Zak and Pat, two of the co-founders of Chisel Productions. They describe themselves as an evolving creative production company that believes in being bold, daring and honest.

Built by 3 mates with a dream of doing things better, we can really resonate with their story of making that dream a reality.

To learn more about Chisel or see what they can do for your business, head to www.chisel.productions or email [email protected] or [email protected]

To find out more about Mate’s no contract Internet and Mobile plans with all Aussie support, visit www.LetsBeMates.com.au

Subscribe to hear the latest episode each week on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast player

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Transcript:

Faz: Welcome Australia. It’s that time again for another podcast, from the Mate team where we try and get into your head with stuff that makes us sound smart. Sit back and relax. It’s time for us to be Mates.

Dom: Hi Australia.

Welcome to another. Let’s be mates podcast from the team at mate. In this week’s episode, we’re talking to a local Aussie small business that produces beautiful visuals and engaging stories for some of Australia’s largest brands. Content is a crucial tool in the Marketers toolkit, and at Mate, we’re always looking for content that puts a smile on our customer’s face, brightens up the die, or give them knowledge that empowers them today.

We’re speaking with Zak and Pat, the co-founders of Chisel productions. They describe themselves as an evolving creative production company that believes in being bold, daring, and honest, built by three mates with the dream of doing things better, we can really resonate with this story of making that dream a reality, Pat, Zak, welcome to the Lightspeed mates podcast.

Pat: Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

Zak: Yeah. Cheers guys. Thank you.

Dom: I go, as, do you want to just give us a quick intro of who each of you are, what your role is at chisel and sort of what your background before starting the business as well?

Pat: Yeah. Cool. yeah, I’m a executive producer, one of the partners at chisel with the one with Zak and Steve and my background was in post-production.

I had a little post-production company, which ended up getting merging with these other two guys. when we set up. yeah, I

Zak: met, I met Pat in a job. We were, Pat was running a production for, for another Client. and, yeah, we just hit it off. And I think over a few coffees and a few beers in that first month or so after we met, we, we kind of decided that there was a little gap in the market.

And, I had some skills that complimented Pat’s and stave, our other partner, had some skills that complimented as well, and we kind of decided that it would be. A good idea for the kind of brands we want at the time. And some of our existing clients, if we all kind of jumped into a room together and started, Chisel, just to be able to kind of serve some in different ways and, and kind of be able to feel a few little gaps that they had, in their wheelhouse.

And also just, to have a bit of fun as well. We were, at the time I was working personally, I was working as a freelancer, so I was kind of the alienated on my art and, There’s only so much, there’s only so much you can do as one person. You know, you need to like kind of build a team and build an army of, of amazing people to kind of do really cool stuff.

And, and that’s kind of, you know, the inspiration for me to start chisel with, with these guys.

Faz: And so it’s a good thing that he bring up, right? I mean, you, you met Pat Zak and Pat Met. Yeah, as strangers, you know, on a, on a, in a different situation, you know, I, I resemble a lot of that too Dom and I, where we were, we’ve worked together for 10 years and we met as strangers at a job and we built respect in a, in a, in a work environment.

And, you know, from that we became friends and obviously well respected in the, in the business world as well. But I mean, we always say that you could a partner with. People to grow a business effectively. And I mean, and we always, we always say that, we need to have a complete trust with the people that we work with.

Now, tell us about your, your journey as into get to the point where you decided to work together. Right? I mean, you didn’t know each other from a bar of soap, but what are the things that you thought about? And this is where we get a lot of questions from our listeners about. have they start businesses?

Like I know my part, I need to find somebody that knows their part. And how do you come together? And so you guys not having history as such. what are some of the things that you thought about when you decided to partner together?

Zak: I think I’ll get First, you know, I’m, I’m heading, I think for me it was like, I found it easier to just try and talk business and start a business with someone who wasn’t my best friend yet.

if that makes sense, but by now we spend every day together for the last two years, pretty much inseparable, but I think at the time it’s focused on what the kind of role of, of our like intended roles were and what the clients wanted and all that kind of stuff at the very start that it made it really easy to start a business and.

One of the things that made me, like, just gravitate towards wanting to do with Pat was that if I tell you why, if you have any pets, well, he’s the he’s a man is, I think, I think the conversation started with, Oh,

maybe we should

have a crack at this. And he was like, yeah, let’s go bang,

giddy up. Like,

because thing of all time, it was a conversation in the month later, it was an ABN and ACN.

a trademark. We just spent thousands of dollars on an office and, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, I’m fitting it out and all this kind of stuff and hiring people. It was just like a really kind of quick thing. and yeah, I just feel like, you know, we’re obviously really good friends now, but we just, well, for me, anyway, I really respected Pat’s professionalism, he’s creativity and all those kinds of things he brought on set and, and to a job and, and the way he dealt with clients and them, you know, at the time, the kinds of people we were working with and all that kind of thing.

So it seems like a no brainer to me. But

Pat: yeah. Other than that, like I obviously hate Zak now, man. It’s so funny. A good partner though, right? Like, yeah. It’s actually about meeting someone who can definitely tell you when to say no to something, dry ideas, particularly creative, you know, you can run away and get a headache selves and having a relationship.

Wait, I’m sure you guys have it as well, where you’ve had an idea. You think you flesh it out and then you throw it out there. And in a really like professional manner, someone can say, I think we need to cook this a bit more. And you know,

your personal feelings are

taken out a bit because ultimately we’re just trying to do what’s best for our business and best for our clients.

Right. At the same time, same as finding a really good personal partner, I guess, is that it’s someone who tells you when you’re doing something really good and then kind of steer you through and guide you through when you’re messing up and not doing things. Right. I think that’s what we really found, within the three partners of the company.

Yeah. It’s also something we’ve really tried to pass on to our staff as

well. And like, I

know when I’ve been around you guys exactly the same way, of course there’s a hierarchy within the business. But it’s all about creating environments where you can speak up when you want to speak up with, you know, no, idea’s a bad idea and no feedback, bad feedback.

And I think just like I say, in your Mate office, that’s, what’s really. Allowed us to grow and really retain some great assets, you know?

Faz: Yeah. And I think we resonate with that because you mentioned a couple of things in there that, that you said there was a gap in the market with what you, what you’re choosing to provide to people.

but was it, was it more of a, approach of build it and they will come or was it more, you know, you know what people need this now? And so we just, we’re just formalizing it and getting out there. you know, w does that make sense or what

Pat: does make sense? Probably that’s probably 50% of all. I like, I’ll tell you something now, which would probably tell them no one before, right?

Yeah. yeah. And I’ve done if we’re going to let you even put this in the podcast. It’s telling me when we set up Zak and I knew we were really good at what we did and the gap in the market we saw, what’s kind of like making cinema grade content, right. And where content and, you know, the landscape changed so much.

That content can be absolutely incredible and look as good as TVC, but not cost a couple of hundred K because those budgets don’t exist anymore for lots of lots of brands. Right. And we could see that happening. So here’s our story though. When we set up, we had a lot of content under our belt and we wanted to make a splash.

So we approached Western Sydney Wanderers and said to them, let us pay to make you guys a TVC. That was literally how we launched ourselves. We didn’t have a big enough credit to just go in, cannot work straight away. So we just went and said, let us make you a TVC we’re going to fund it.

So our first

job we ever produced.

Which was

got nominated for Mumbrella award. we just literally self-funded ourselves and we wrote it ourselves is funded ourselves and we’ve launched out brand with that ad. Right.

Zak: so yeah, yeah, we did a lot of PR around it and a lot of the, a lot of the PR and the way we approached making that, it was more than just a TAVI say in the end, it was like six or seven stories.

Of different, players, members, fans, juniors, all that kind of thing in the, at the footy club. And it was during a time when they weren’t doing so well on the pitch. you know, they, there was in the process of, you know, moving stadiums and they didn’t really have that kind of a, that umph that I had couple years previous, I suppose, and that kind of like.

Infectious kind of, attitude towards the club. Wasn’t there from, from their existing members that were kind of disengaged, but at the same time, as you know, you guys are at footy fans and stuff, like, even for me, like I’m an Adelaide crows man, and they’ve lost nine games on the trot You and I still am obsessed with them, even though I hate their guts at the moment.

So it’s that thing of reigniting that passion in a positive way. And we just kind of thought. You know, if we go in and say to them, Hey guys, like rather than just, doing what you’ve w what you’re traditionally doing over the last few years, which is cutting some highlights reels together of the championship, you know, that.

You know, Asian Champion’s cup being held up and then, buy memberships now for the next season kind of thing, we could just tell something, the stories and, that, that was one of the things that we really liked doing. And it’s just, it’s just kind of tapping into the authenticity of the club. Yeah.

The brand and the people there and all that kind of thing. And yeah. yeah, as Pat said, that was kind of the launch of Chisel. It kind of was a combination of those two things, Mark. We, we thought, you know, in, for a penny and for a pound risky for a biscuit and, it’s the kind of opportunity we probably wouldn’t have got as a new company without the experience under our belt.

So we kind of created it for ourselves

Pat: definitely

to answer your question. It was. Build it and they will come. That was kind of that part of it. But of course we had previous companies before. So we did bring a couple of clients across, which we knew would be fundamental in early business. You know, how hard cashflow is a hundred percent growth stage

and, you know, you’ve got your business plans and your

projections.

So of course we did have enough capital from those existing clients to make sure that we could.

Start

and start hiring and hiring. Right.

Bosco: You guys are, you mentioned, you mentioned a bit about, that the, the, the money or the, you know, the big, clients, you know, paying hundreds of thousands up is maybe not as prevalent as it was a couple of years ago.

So, tell us a bit more about how you compete with big agencies and big production companies. Cause obviously you guys are a boutique. offering, so yeah. Tell us a bit more about how you sort of compete with the bigger,

Pat: I might start that off with, it’s a hard one because we don’t, we don’t really do ourselves that we do compete with the agencies or big production companies, because

so often we

partner with them.

Right. And I think that that’s part of how the landscape changed as well, where we all take. But, you know, we work with voted agents and still we run the creative and we do the execution. The, what we’re called now

is a

creative production company, which means. No, that’s the actual term for it now, which is that we also do direct to client and act as kind of an agency in terms of we offer creative.

They might specialize in video, but we also have a whole realm of strategy around digital Marketing as well. Right. and in terms of, yeah, so I guess we, we don’t compete with them in that way. And then at the same time, even when we are course when a tender to goes out, I think the way we have pledged it and said, What we kind of offer and how we, you know, we have kind of different pricing structure

means that

we don’t have to, we don’t have to compete because we don’t think there’s necessarily an exact price point or way of producing that other agencies or companies do.

And that’s because we actually do offer forms of retainers. For production, not just for creative, which is pretty much unheard of within yeah. Within production, to be honest.

Zak: Yeah. The, I mean, the landscape of like the big agencies, full servicing a client, for absolutely everything, is, is kind of changing a bit or, you know, bigger companies are kind of happy to use them for the massive rebrand or the, you know, once every five years.

Mega thing they do. But when with the content kind of landscape, the audiences are hungrier than ever before. It’s for information, and entertainment from the brands that they trust and love. So it’s just not, to be honest, even for massive brands with huge marketing budgets, it’s probably not feasible to have to go to there.

You know, big one-stop-shop agency all the time. just from a resource perspective and, and also just like a creative perspective, like I know they’ve got like this there’s eight of us full time that work at Chisel or nine of us now. Sorry. and I know they’ve probably got teams of 50 on some accounts.

However, if you’re getting bombarded by one brand, For 10 briefs for 10 different content things. I’m constantly like you’re going to eventually just have one kind of opinion, I suppose, in one kind of creative. Yeah. It’s kind of our outlook on it. So I think by mixing it up and, and trying, you know, smaller agencies and trying, you know, different things is, is, is probably something that big brands have wanted to do for that reason.

I dunno. I kinda, I kind of look at it like, In some ways we do compete. Cause we, you know, we do global campaigns for some of our, some of the clients. and we know for sure, we’ve definitely won them over, over global. agencies with offices in 10 cities, which is kind of cool, but you know, we’re really chuffed about that.

But at the same time time, I’m not gonna pretend that where the, you know, the absolute bees knees when it comes to really advanced, integrated, campaigns that span multiple continents and all at the same time, you know what I mean? It’s not, we just, we’re not, we’re not that. so yeah, but anyway, apart from that, like, yeah, we just love partnering with anyone.

Who’s happy to do something authentic and maybe try something a bit different. That’s that’s where the whole Bold, Daring and honest thing comes from.

Faz: I mean, I come back, I come from a Microsoft background for the last seven years in going through tenders and procurement and having retainers based on bullshit.

And, you know, I’ll probably my Microsoft friends will probably con you know, hit me over the head for saying that. But I mean, there was a lot of, there was no feeling in, in regards to the people that we work with. Right. It was, it was more about a transaction versus a result. And I think there’s a, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a lot of valid reasons for that because.

People are so far away from what the end goal needs to be. Plus. So many people own so many different parts of it. Right. You know, like in my role, as I was in retail, sort of marketing, consumer marketing, but the headline creative or message was done by somebody in America who had their vision. And I had to copy him.

And try and copy that and put that into our market. That potentially that message had no made no sense to what was happening on a global scale and all those different things. And, you know, in this business, the one thing we wanted to do was make sure that if we did stuff, it was about feeding and about the people that we were working with.

Completely connected with our brand and our philosophy and what we were trying to achieve to deliver the right result. And I think, you know, the Chisel,  Zak and Pat, your approach, and, you know, the personalization you put around understanding who we are, what we’re trying to achieve has delivered us.

The result that we, that we’ve, we’ve got at the moment that we’re going to get moving forward. And I think that’s something you should guys should put the, you know, I was gonna say, Pat, Pat your back, but,

Zak: on that point, Faz like, I think it’s about really understanding, not just the brand and what they’re about and what the fabric is of their whole makeup and the way they want, the way that they come across to the customer.

But it’s understanding the customer as well. And not assuming, not assuming too much. And just, and just really trying to get to know what that viewer and user experience is going to be like at different touch points and how, and how those different demographics are going to interact with the brand.

Because obviously when you guys, for example, Your brand is, is an really interesting one because it’s a, it’s a service, that everyone basically has. So it, the demographic is far and wide, but at the same time that those different demographics really want to be spoken to, you know, not in a general way that they want to be communicated to directly about and feel like when they’re seeing messaging from brands or entertainment or information or whatever it is.

They want to, they want to feel like it’s to them and not for everyone. And that’s, and that’s something that’s really important. It’s almost a lump sum. Sometimes I think it’s a lot easier selling something really specific because, because you’re only saying one message to one group of people potentially.

Whereas if you’re trying to, if you’re, if you’re trying to communicate with, with a potential customer for a mobile phone, plan or service, obviously that’s a massive, massive amount of people, all walking different lifestyles. you know, different socioeconomic groups, different interests, different hobbies, and different levels of how and why, and what they like to communicate about and what platforms they use.

So it’s, it’s common. It’s a really complicated, kind of a weld out there with digital communication. And I think. Like for us anyway, if you’re, if your brand is willing to be authentic, but at the same time, speak the language of all of your consumer or your user, you’re going to have way more success.

Pat: I think we asked you guys from one of them first chats we’ll haven’t got said, who’s your target audience.

He tells me about it. And he’s getting something like 18 year old’s to 70 year old boys and girls. Remember Zak kind of hit me under the table, like, Oh,

we’re going to do a bit of digging.

Everyone uses your product, right. Which is all I know you’re talking about their faz is obviously, we have that problem a lot way.

We work with, we do work. It’s a global clients and it’s just the global headquarters making the work. And then they’re trying to syndicate these assets to North America, to Europe, to Australia, and your point that is so valid. If the assets are localized and the messaging isn’t localized. They might have the best result in Europe where everyone buys a product.

Then in Australia, no one gets, it gets the content being made. They get no clips or no soldier, because the message is just way off or that part of world understands. Right. Or

Zak: totally, totally diluted in generalized because they’re trying to cater for a global audience or something like that.

Faz: Yeah. Yeah.

But 70% of telco right. Is the same shit. right , we’re selling MBM, we’re selling mobile services. There’s obviously 30% that we change. We tweak our network. We tweak our offering. We offer better service, all those different things. But the ultimate thing that attracts you first is the brand and how you resonate with consumers.

That’s why it’s so important. That’s why content and you know what you guys do for us around video and messaging and all these different things need to. Relate to people because that’s what ultimately, that’s the first choice they make, you know, what they, how they visualize you. And in that, then they, once they, once you, once they, if they see you and, and likely, then, then they double click their gut and listen to reviews and all these different things.

And we know we’ve got all these parts sorted. It’s the first, it’s the, you know, the first impressions last. Right. And so I think it goes with brand. It goes with everything that we do. I mean, Yeah, you guys, I mean, you guys get that obviously. And that’s how I see it. We’ve succeeded in our business, right? I mean, how do we make ourselves?

How do we make people attracted to us when all the big guys are out there? Like, I mean, look at Aussie broadband spent $4 million in over two months and TPG are literally on every billboard and all these different things. When we haven’t gotten any.

I’d love to, I would love to, I mean, these guys would be working for free for a long time, but, but I mean, it same as me obviously, but, but I think like we just cut the time that the time that we get with the consumer, whether it be any other, the money that we spend, has to. It has to cut through over our competitors instantly because we haven’t got the dollars to keep telling them and telling them and tell them again.

Yeah.

Dom: And I think our approach there is to well, be authentic overall, but then either inform or give them something to brighten their day or put a smile on their face and share with their mates and like, you know, we. We’ve tried a whole bunch of different stuff and we’ve got some new stuff coming, courtesy of you guys, but you know, if you, if you’ve touched on a lot, but if you had to say, what are the key things that client comes to you and says, what do I do with my content?

What are those three or four, two things that you say, well, you have to be X and Y to make good content to make an effective.

Zak: Yeah, I think you pretty much just said it mate like essentially authenticity. But to the brand and to the consumer. No, no. Consumer consumers are smart. That’s the main day, right?

I’ll say through both, they’ll say they’ll say it through bullshit. So that’s the main thing. And then apart from that being entertaining and speak

to them in their language.

You know, whether or not that’s a visual, language or radio ads or whatever it is, speak, speak to them in a way and about what they want to hear, or if you’re informing them of new things, to speak to them in a way that they want to be talked to.

And they’re used to being taught there as well and just speak their language. That’s, that’s the main thing. And in terms of like the more kind of granular level, like if you own. if you’re talking about making a splash on digital content, video content, animation, that kind of thing, like it needs to be

good.

It just

needs to people that used to watching. Entertainment. that’s better than it’s ever been before we’re in we’re in 2020, and the amount of content that’s out there is massive. So it, you know, if we’re going to make something that needs to visually engage people, it needs to visually look impressive.

you know, that’s kind of where we start our business from as, you know, two years ago, we were like, we just want to make cinema grade. content really cinema grade production value and a content based landscape. So if you’re watching it on your phone, we still want it to look like it could have been shot in Hollywood or, you know, something that’s eye catching enough.

and then that said, you know, even if it isn’t isn’t that, and it’s more like a user generated content look and feel like it just needs to be super authentic and needs to be fun. it needs to, you know, it just needs to engage people, just to cut through the noise and, and that’s, and that’s the main thing.

And then, you know, the million dollar question is how, you know, how do we do that? Well, it’s just, it’s just, I have a bit of a rule here, which is a one line. Once, you know, once again, you don’t always have these luxuries, but if you don’t have money, you need time. If you don’t have time, you need money. So that’s, I’m not saying money fixes all problems last minute, but what I’m saying is.

If you don’t have a massive budget to go out and market your business, or even if it’s a personal thing, like you’re selling stuff that you’re making on the weekends on Etsy or a new brewery or whatever, it is just put a little bit of time into thinking about creative. and, and it’ll go a much longer way.

And the more time in pre production and creative, usually the better the outcome.

Pat: Definitely. And so I got to call a spade, a spade advertising, you know, it can be a pretty putrid industry sometimes. Right. And when you’re respecting customer people, people don’t love being sold to. Right. None of us do. So there’s a space.

There’s a really fine line when you’re making content and paid content, which you want to be between the line of like, Does this fit the channel? You know, if it’s an Instagram story, there’s a kind of look organic, does it fuel organic? Could this just be one of my friends speaking to me about this product?

and then if you tow that line, right, and you don’t go too hard into

like making it

look real, but so obviously an ad. That people are going to kind of reject it, you know, and that, that’s the line that, you know, I think some, some agencies, I think us included a gang really good at telling of knowing when to, when to sell to people and when to pull back and just kind of present something, you know,

Zak: At the end of the day, you kind of like we were talking about it before you kind of want to attract consumers to a brand, especially if you’re a new brand or a newish brand, you want to attract customers by entertaining them and resonating them at like a top level.

Right. So, you know, you guys are you guys, I was about to say, you’re lucky, not lucky. It was obviously really well thought out, but then the brand name itself, it, it, it resonates with every Aussie because it seemed the common vernacular, like. Most people would say that word 50 times a day. So main thing is to kind of like, you know, you want to attract those people and entertain them so that the purchasing decision or, you know, the cell or whatever it is, isn’t really required in a way you just don’t need of informing them about your products, but they already resonate with your brand so much that they trust you enough to provide them with whatever it is they need.

because that, that kind of brings me into my last point, Dom, about, You kind of need credible value, right? Like it doesn’t matter what you’re advertising needs a product and the service isn’t good. And doesn’t fit. Doesn’t get the the great review use and people talking about how fantastic it is.

It doesn’t matter how good the ads are. Well, I mean, if someone I know wants to, it doesn’t matter how good the audience you make for a football club, if they losing. You know, it’s going to be really difficult to make people resonate. And that’s because the product at the end of the day, isn’t up to scratch.

Faz: It all works hand in hand. And I think during COVID, there was a lot of smoke and mirrors. We’ve we’ve companies and people and everything like that. And I think a content and. And advertising is now about feel versus what people say it’s, you could either have to feel it versus just right. And I think, especially during COVID and all the bullshit, yeah.

People have put up with we support services, especially in our space. I think one thing that’s made us successful in this time is that we have delivered exactly on what we’ve said we were going to do. And we’ve allowed people to feel the, the, the work that we do through the way we talk to them.

Well, we communicate and the way we get to the bottom of what they need. And, and I think COVID is really high. To net feel versus say sort of, I guess, environment, especially when it comes to content.

Dom: I think there’s still a bit of a shift change around, you know, the big, especially the whole brands way, a 30 second TVC in 16:9

isn’t it doesn’t cut it these days. Right. You need to be and make sure you’re a fit for the platform. You’re got different versions. You’re telling the same story and beating the same drum, but it’s got to work where your customer is.

Pat:  Absolutely. It’s just going to be start channel specific, right? Like, you know, But the campaign of course, is to go to spending and get a big TV spot

and it looks beautiful and, you know, that’s it,

there’s still a big market there.

Right. And, that’s definitely a big part of the attract phase. And you know, when I was saying, cause we know we’ve cost make TV ads as well. Right. But you align to yourself. If you thinking better TV advertising is going to stay in the same spot and

that. Putting a big TV

spot out is the best way to get customers.

Cause not only your customers are there anymore and that market, no matter how you look at the strings of incidence, it’s going to get smaller

and smaller, you know?

And so you’re exactly why, like we have this conversation all the time, right? Where

I think we go into making films as a.

Bit of an art form.

And, you know, we will want to do a two 35, one wide screen edit, but you know, devices and technology end up dictating what we make. Right. We make 9:16 videos now because everyone’s holding a phone and that’s a way the phone looks,

Zak: right. Trying to change the way we started to shoot certain things. Like if we don’t need to do a widescreen and output, sometimes we’ll flip the camera and shoot a vertical.

just to maximize the quality of getting into vertical output, which is really kind of, I mean, exhibit all schools, student or graduate or whatever, you’re probably hating life, but, I, you know, I kind of find those kinds of technical, you know, you know, innovations and stuff that changed the way we make things interesting and challenging and kind of like it.

we kind of did this thing recently for another client, which is like an endless. Vertical, kind of, yeah, digital experience, more so than a film, but it was essentially a series of films, all kind of interlaced together. so that you were kind of constantly swiping and scrolling and, and that’s kind of the white paper consume media now and, you know, like go out to the smoko and, you’ve got your phone.

Yeah. Your hand. And you just smashing your thumb down or down the screen, just trying to absorb as much info and content as you can. You’re writing. You know, you’re reading the byline and the top, then the headline, and then you first read minds or an article, and then moving on and you’re watching the first three or four seconds of the video moving on.

So you’ve really got to captivate people to get them to do anything. much longer than that. So we’re finding that it’s, you can take people engaged by giving them something new, or even if it was something different to look at every five or eight seconds. you’re doing pretty well.

Bosco: So guys, mate, at mate, we partner with people, or we like to say we partner with people to fill our skill and knowledge gaps.

so your industry relies heavily on freelancers and specialists. so in your opinion, how do you choose who to work with and. What gets someone rehired for more work?

Pat: That’s a great question. That’s a really good question, because I know before you said, you know, you’re not a big production company, but you know, some big production companies at some of the really big ones in Australia will still maybe have a full time staff at six people.

Right. And there’ll be one of the biggest production companies in the country.

so

this is where we always try separate a little bit as well. Remember producing content sometimes,

and then producing

a little bit above the line or campaign for the stock. So if the content we’ve definitely built an amazing chain new, where we actually can have a lot of internal resources control that.

Right. And then for bigger productions, we might need a specialist DOP or director of photography to shoot from the water. Okay. Cause it’s the, you know, a surfing job, for example. So I guess

a big,

yeah, a big plus of any production company or creative production company, is that like any team you find people’s really good at what they

do.

And then

just like any relationship you have to get their trust. And they have to know that you’re going to give them the type of work which is going to help them in career. And they’re gonna, you’re gonna, they’re gonna give you the type of content, which looks amazing, right?

Zak: If the best spot, like it comes back down to the.

way, I guess the three words that kind of sum up Chisel right, be bold daring and honest, or two of the people that we’ve got on our full-time staff got jobs. Cause they asked for them, we didn’t even advertise for them. So they asked for jobs and we, we went out and advertise and then realized that that was the best person for the job in the first place.

so that was a waste of time. But anyway, but like essentially like we, you know, who do we pick and how do we pick him? Well, we work with awesome people who make awesome work for sure, but we really respect. They want to do something different, happy to, you know, like it’s, it’s a bit of an old school mentality of kind of like an, a big business mentality of people kind of operating in silos or staying in their lane, you know, respectful discussion across all aspects about.

Of all aspects of our project. I don’t care. Yeah. What position you are. If you’ve got an opinion on something, speak up, like there’s no idea that it’s a bad idea. And, you know, that that’s something that we’re really proud of too real collaborative kind of teamwork environment. So you have to have those kinds of skills, I think, to, to, to be a really successful freelancer, in the creative or production space.

but yeah, that’s, that’s basically it, we work with awesome people. Simple as,

Faz: so clients have, far more metrics than they ever have to this day and age, right. To measure performance. how do you measure your work and, and, how do you know you’re doing a good job

mate the best

Pat: thing? I think that ever happened to us, working as a, you know, a small agency or creative production company was.

How much more insights that clients have now to be perfectly honest, it makes our job way easier. Right? You guys, knowing what’s performing and what’s not performing and being able to do AB testing on your paid ads

Allows us to also get that insight easily.

Right.

Which is so good in terms of measuring like how we measure success.

Of course, we, you know, we look at the data, we ask our clients for the data, but then all of a sudden comes down to us that that is as important. but then a big thing for us as well that we measure is. The experience, right? Because if you, you guys say, could get a similar output maybe made by a different company, maybe for more money.

And if your experience with us was horrible, then it’s not really worth it either way. Right? Yeah.

Zak: He said it’s as much as the, the journey as it is the destination, maybe. Yeah. I don’t know the kinds of projects we work on. They spend, you know, sometimes six months. So, It’s about how you get there as much as it is getting there as well.

And we’re just trying to measure our success based on the processes as well as the output. but yeah, I think like general user experience with your experience and customer experience is a really important factor as much as kind of, you know, it depends on what the goals are. I think setting the goals early on is probably the best thing to do.

And then once, once they’re set, like Pat said, you just adapt. As, as you starting to say that the results come in, whether they, you know, data metrics from click-through or, just simple, kind of. You know, if it’s a TV, like that’s one of the other things, you know, with the traditional TV, say, it’s so hard to measure, whereas with, with what you can do online, now, you can, you can target so specifically and retarget.

So, you know, and you can adapt and evolve and change things. If things aren’t working, Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak no illusions,

Pat: right? Like, you know, all of our, repeat customers or customers, clients are that we have on retainers

as like

some of these guys are big data companies.

You know, we absolutely know that asking rehired or us signing it for another

year.

Retainer

is

purely not just based on Pat and Zak, we really love you, mate. It’s purely based on what we’re giving them, outperforming, what other people gave him or even what we gave them the year before, you know? And that’s, what’s such an exciting part of our job.

It’s exciting and horrible at the same time, they said

we

can make something for a client which works so well. But if we don’t do better the next time, then we know what the world’s like, you are only, as good as your last job. We know that that that’s basically how we have been.

Yeah. That’s how we’ve had to measure our work.

You know, is it performing. As,

you know, as good or better than anything else has been done. And that’s the standard we hold ourselves to. We know that you guys are going to hold us to that standard as well. So no drama,

Zak: that’s fine. That’s Client based work for sure. And, and you know, that those kinds of discussions are going to be ongoing, but as well as that, you know, we do our own projects and, and kind of make work that doesn’t, you know, isn’t fit or isn’t from a client brief from that kind of thing.

And the success of that, we kind of measure internally based on, you know, viewer response and. And, and, and, you know, I don’t know, like some of the work, I think, you know, if we’re proud of it, enough of what we’ve done, that’s kind of good enough for me, you know, with some of those passion projects.

Dom: Cause I got some of that big daughter is at odds with the creative process.

Right. And you can make something that’s really great. Even got a great idea, but you know, if the product’s not right, if the pricing’s not right, if the execution is poor from a client perspective, then that ends up looking bad on you. But not necessarily.

Zak: Sometimes there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of different.

variables as well. Like, you know, it there’s, it’s way to campaign. Anyway, there’s just so many different moving parts from media placement and strategy to even what the hell is going on in the world. Like, you know, taking COVID as an example, when Mark kind of touched on this before, about how certain brands are approaching it one way and other brands approach it in another

there’s no, there’s probably no right or wrong way. Until, you know, retrospectively you can say there is, but it’s, it’s pretty hard when, when the, you know, you’re trying to fit in with a, kind of a consciousness of admonish community who, you know, affected by other things around them as well, that are kind of outside of your country.

So, it’s about, you know, just going back to those crucial things like successful comments, you’re authentic. Create can create something that brings value to someone, in one way, shape or form it it’ll it’ll come. And it’s also

Pat: like, I just want to add that as well. Like, you know, that the course is so much data and this is where I like it.

All, all of our points kind of tend to bullshit as well. Right. And this is where I think every advertising has to be honest about here. So you can listen to all the metrics which we think might ruin, like you said, Dom, the clash to the credit vision could be, you know, we’ve got this. Long form pays and it’s beautiful.

And then client comes back to us and says, I want it only to go for six seconds, but I want the whole story to be told in that six seconds on the logo on the first three seconds. And you know, every, the data says, it’s gotta be 9:16, that’s what’s going to work. and you know, I’m sure big data does drive that we all then have to remember that brave brands and clever creative.

Sometimes we’ll come out with the like Aldi. Aldi is a great example of this, right? The most, one of my successful pre Wells a couple of years ago, I was a, I think it was a 10 minute video of a dude Washing up saying why you watching me wash it off?

Zak: Yeah. It was

Pat: Ikea

minutes and he was washing up Ikea stuff.

Right. So what we will have to remember is that yes, we close. We have to listen to big data, but it’s also always going to be a space that a really, really good ID can absolutely Trump any of that shit. And that’s, it’s just the fact

Zak: you say it, you say it happened all the time where something actually pops soon is different.

like a lot of the data suggests that. You know, people are only going to watch the first 3 seconds of a video online or something like that. And you’ve got eight seconds to properly engage in, but it’s like, yeah, they are only doing that because every brand is advertising their logo in the first 30 seconds.

Yeah. Maybe they’re skipping. Cause I know they are being advertised to.

Pat: Cause

then they’ll watch an hour long video of a car restoration. Uploaded by someone else. Right. So it’s just about timing them, getting into that interest and like Zak or then, you know, sometimes not selling to them so directly, but things look a bit more organic.

Zak: Yeah. entertain and the inform. And then, you know, once you’ve, once you’ve done that and they’re fans of you, you, your communication, you can talk to them about the things that you sell after.

Dom: Cool. Cool. On that note, then you guys have just launched the awesome new website. How can a businesses or people get in touch with you guys and work with you guys?

Zak: yeah, for sure. That’d be, that’d be amazing. Thanks for the plug Dom and you know, you can jump on www.chisel.productions , @chisel.tv on Instagram, or even better. Send us an email [email protected], or [email protected]. And, you know, so the, you know, when, things open up a bit more and, we’re not in this kind of pandemic, the best thing is to drop in as well and say goodbye to us.

And the team for our office is in Redfern and grab the info off our website.

Dom: Awesome. We’ll put all that, those details in the show notes so that people can look you up

Faz: for Zak and Pat. Thanks very much for your time. it’s very insightful. I think people give the Chisel guys that go check them out.

We’ll put all the details in the show notes as well. but you know, guys, thank you for joining. It’s been great. And you know what, we’ll have you on after we finish all the content that we’re going to launch as well. I think it will be good.

Pat: Mate!  Thanks so much buddy. And

like always like. You gotta make good stuff.

You can go to brave and exciting grand to work with.

Zak: So it’s been absolutely awesome besides thank you. Thank you.

Faz: Thanks.

Bosco: Thanks for listening to the Let’s Be Mates podcast by the team at MATE search for the Let’s Be Mates podcast on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and ate LetsBeMates.com.au make sure you hit subscribe to get the latest episode each week.

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Faz: See you soon, mate.