Antoine, let’s start with getting to know Shootsta.
Shootsta is a subscription-based scalable video production platform that empowers brands to create quality video content at scale.
At Shootsta we enable our clients to tell their own stories in ways they know best. We do this by providing our clients with the equipment, training and strategies to film their own content themselves. They then can upload the raw footage onto Shootsta’s cloud platform which our teams of editors turn into professional-quality content, all within 24 hours.
Shootsta was founded by Mike Pritchett and Tim Moylan in Australia in 2015 and has since expanded to service clients around the world, from our five offices in Sydney, London, California, Hong Kong and Singapore.
You are the Vice President, Asia for Shootsta. Tell us about you, Antoine.
I joined Shootsta back in May 2017 to lead and grow the business across Asia. I launched Shootsta’s first Asian office in Singapore and built out a team to service this market. We saw tremendous growth and potential in Asia, and in 2018, I launched Shootsta’s second Asian office in Hong Kong.
Before I joined Shootsta in 2017, I had been working in Singapore for the past 7 years, so you could say I’m pretty much local now! I think Asia is a fantastic place to be in right now, given the abundance of opportunity for innovative tech companies to grow and flourish.
That’s why our biggest Shootsta office, after Sydney, is Singapore. Last year, our CEO Mike Pritchett decided to move out here as well, and we’re excited to call Singapore home.
It is always a pleasure talking to disruptors; so many things to unravel and explore. Shootsta has been named ‘Disruptor of The Year’ recently. Walk us through how this title got bestowed to the Company.
Over the years, we’ve seen brands push for more videos across their various channels, both internal and external, but are wary of the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take for traditional production agencies to produce videos at scale.
Shootsta was born out of natural demand for more video, faster, and at scale, as a disruptor to traditional video production.
Today, we’re the first vid tech company in the world that empowers brands to produce high-quality video at such an impressive scale and cost. Essentially, this means that we’re disrupting the traditional perspective of video production as an expensive, time-intensive endeavour for companies.
As part of a wider digital transformation, customer expectations are rapidly shifting towards greater agility, speed and transparency, and our business model is tailored to deliver exactly that.
A disruptor sets new trends, standards and also one that sets themselves apart from the rest. Being a disruptor, can you give some pointers, how a company can disrupt their way in 2020 and beyond?
Innovation is taking a process and making it more efficient, while disruption corresponds with a cultural shift in beliefs and processes.
Our approach is to view our clients’ challenges through the lens of digital transformation, enabling them to integrate digital technology into their business and fundamentally changing how they bring value to customers, through the power of video.
Disruption requires companies to continually challenge the status quo, and get comfortable with experimenting. At Shootsta, we believe disruption isn’t a destination or even a tagline, but a journey that runs through our business.
Antoine, you were the first Shootsta employee and have since expanded Shootsta Asia into diverse teams across offices in Singapore and Hong Kong. I have also heard that the company’s expansion in Asia had been rapid. How was this possible?
We ventured into Asia following a demand from our Australia-based clients to extend our offering into this region. We chose to make Singapore our first Asian base, because of the ease of launching and operating a business, and the accessibility to connect with brands across the region.
Following that, our growth in Asia was entirely organic. Our amazing clients are big advocates of our business model and eagerly referred us to their network. We have a team of people who love what they do and work closely with our clients on a daily basis to make sure they create great video content.
In 2020, we will be seeing further expansion into new markets in Asia, and again this is because our existing clients are expressing a demand for our services across other regions in Asia.
What had been your marketing strategies during the initial years of Shootsta?
In the beginning, building awareness was crucial, and our approach was to sponsor relevant industry events and secure speaking engagements at key conferences around the region.
Over the years as our company grew and the business model was further refined, our marketing strategies needed to change in tandem with our evolution from start-up to scale-up.
Our marketing strategy evolved to position Shootsta as experts in digital transformation through video, and we place a huge emphasis on educating the wider industry through participating in events, creating specialist content and thought leadership, and hosting workshops.
We strongly believe in practising what we preach, and we sharpened our own content marketing strategy. We encouraged every single person in Shootsta offices around the world to become a content creator, sharing their opinions and expertise on platforms such as LinkedIn.
Between marketing and branding; if you were to only have one – which one will it be and why?
Any good marketer worth their salt will tell you that marketing and branding can’t exist without each other. How you brand yourself will usually determine what audiences you’ll resonate with. And the way you market yourself will determine how you reach them.
That being said, your marketing is exponentially more effective once you spend some time establishing your brand. At Shootsta, we work with our clients to figure out their marketing strategies through video, and having a strong brand enables us to come up with concepts so much better.
Videos are known to attract more engagement than say, text or even pictures. Shootsta has been touted as being experts on how to plan a business strategy in 2020 by using video contents. Share with us, Antoine, what constitutes a well-made video.
In a well-made video, the subject needs to ensure their message is relatable to viewers, and this involves defining who the audiences are. The subject also needs to be authentic in how they deliver it, establish a personal connection with the viewer through the camera, and hold the viewer’s attention till the end.
Good videos have a distinct objective and a direct message that can be picked up immediately by the viewer, and this can be attributed to having a detailed brief and a clear storyboard. The most important thing you can do when making a video is to plan.
How long more do you think this video-content phenomenon will be going on for, Antoine?
I think I speak for everyone when I say that video is here to stay.
Technological advances and better networks mean that sending and streaming video is quicker and easier than ever. Smartphone penetration is at its highest, in all markets, and video will soon be the preferred medium of communication across all geographies.
Plus more and more studies are demonstrating the impact video has on message retention.
As 2020 looms on the horizon, and video shows no signs of stasis, we’re looking forward to seeing what the next decade brings.
