How We Set Up Video Production at Blinkist for the “Always-On”​ Iterative Cycle of Digital Advertising

In early 2017, my team lead Sarah came to me and said we need to create videos for user acquisition and asked if I would be willing to take this on. Now, to give you some context, I come from a business background and the last time I was filming and editing stuff was probably 15 years prior to that moment when I would make little videos of our dog using a very basic digital camera and edit it on my Windows computer.

The beginnings of video at Blinkist are almost just as humble. Until we had a team, it was just me with an iPhone filming ads of myself and other colleagues in the kitchen at Blinkist. Since then, we’ve come a long way and our success is due in part to a solid process that keeps us focused and sane in the fast-paced world of digital advertising. The process has 3 basic steps, and although in this case I’m focusing on video, the takeaways will be useful for the production of any type of content, whether you’re a one-person team or working with many collaborators.

First, a little context:

Blinkist is an app for lifelong learners. We offer key ideas from nonfiction books in 15-minute audio and text versions, helping more than 10 million people all over the world fit more learning into their lives.

The video team’s role within Blinkist is to help us grow by producing creatives that convert, primarily for paid social marketing. We’re a small but extremely efficient team consisting of Kaleb, the team lead and a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to video production and filmmaking, Gloria, our motion graphics designer, and me as the project manager and producer. We also work closely with Blinkist’s design team, especially our Art Director, Natalia and Marketing Designer, Yerang.

To give you an idea of what our reality looks like and the environment in which we need to produce quickly, here are some numbers:

Last trimester our goal was to produce 4 iterations and 1 new creative every week. This meant a total of 50 creatives in 4 months. And this with just 3 people!

On top of this, my team also leads the ideation, concept grooming, copy work, and storyboarding that go into each brief and video creative.

Why these high output goals? Well, advertising on Facebook is a bit of a numbers game and there’s no exact science for what makes one creative work and another not. A rule of thumb is that out of all creatives tested on Facebook, 95% fail, so the more creative concepts you are able to put into the Facebook machine, the more successful ones you can expect.

In other words, we need to be able to create, launch, and iterate on video ads quickly, and swiftly respond to test results to keep our campaigns performing well and our engine for growth running.

In this “always on” iterative cycle — you’re never really done. So how do you plan your production in a way that doesn’t burnout creatives but manages to deliver results?

Solution: Lean Video Production Process

The overall challenge for us was to set up a system that would allow people from different teams with different goals to collaborate effectively with a short turnaround.

The general solution that we found was to create a transparent video production process that allowed everyone to understand how to:

• brief a creative
• follow our production process
• access and understand feedback and decisions
• facilitate easy delivery of the final creative

Since we use Asana, Slack, and Google Drive at work, it was important for us that the process we introduced made use of tools each team was already familiar with and that fit with their existing work processes.

Step 1 — The Briefing Stage

Everything starts with a good brief in the right place. All briefs are standardized and collected through one single inbox. The briefing stage is a key part of our process because spending extra time here helps us be faster in the production stage.

But first: What problem were we trying to solve with this?

Before we had a standardized way of writing and collecting briefs, requests for video content would show up all over the place. They would be mentioned in a 1:1, dm’d over Slack, posted in the #random channel, brought up in a meeting or in passing, and to each of us in the video team separately. Even though we had made it clear to get in touch with me as the producer for any new requests, there wasn’t a clear enough process, and we weren’t educating people about or holding them to it.

This would lead to situations in which someone on our team would agree to do a project for someone who asked nicely, even though we were struggling to make sure we delivered on our promises to another team.

As you can probably imagine, this was a mess to manage and keep track of. It was also impossible to judge the validity, expected outcome, and priority of projects proposed.

To solve this, we created a standard brief template and ran workshops with collaborators on how to write a good brief. We also created a central collection box in Asana for any and all requests, and refused to consider anything that had not been added to this box. If someone made a request outside of this, we decided that we would always, no matter how small and easy the task, direct them to the brief template and video inbox.

Introducing the collection box has dramatically reduced the time I, as a producer, spend planning and organizing projects, as well as helped the creative team focus on producing the creatives rather than fielding requests.

We’ve also noticed that when the brief is well thought through and includes all necessary information, it’s easy for collaborators down the line to move things forward and make decisions without having to go through endless feedback loops. So the time that I save on project management, I now spend helping collaborators with their briefs, to ensure that creatives can work largely without obstructions once a brief is assigned to them.

Step 2 — Production

When it comes to production it was important for us to visualize our production process so that channel managers would always know the status of new creatives.

We were also looking for a way to quickly assess the amount of work that we have lined up and to spot bottlenecks in the process.

And thirdly, just as we wanted only one collection method for briefs, we wanted only one place for feedback, to avoid comments getting lost or any miscommunication.

Therefore, we use boards that help us both plan resources internally for the video team by giving us an immediate overview of the amount of projects coming up, and what’s keeping projects from being finalized. If things are piling up in the feedback column, for example, I know that I need to remind the channel managers to review and approve creatives so that we can finish them and move on to the next project.

The board also does the work of visualizing and informing external team members about the status of projects and allow creatives a certain amount of freedom in how to plan their work.

Our projects usually involve at least one person from video, one from design, and one from performance marketing, and to keep everyone aligned we needed all communication around one project to be in one place. Therefore we only consider feedback that is directly attached to each creative’s specific task, and any decision re: a creative should be noted down in this way.

To streamline feedback we work with a temp-folder on Google Drive that only has WIP videos in it, and only the latest version. This way we don’t need to send videos back and forth and we ensure that everyone involved always has access to the latest and most relevant version. No “version 2”, “final version”, “final final version”, “this is really final now” or anything of that kind.

Step 3 — Delivery

Our board for video production planning is a living document and functions as a snapshot of the projects we are currently working on, and will be working on next. When a creative is finalized it moves to a permanent location on Google Drive. We use one specific folder for all final deliveries—that way, everyone knows that anything in this folder is good to go and has been approved.

Uploading to this folder also triggers a zap that automatically adds the name of the video with a link to a spreadsheet, giving us a clear overview of produced ads and allowing us to add more information to each creative based on test results etc. This way, all videos we’ve ever delivered can be accessed from one point. It also functions as a point of reference for creatives and is really useful when bringing new team members on board.

Key takeaways:

1. Spend a lot of time on the brief and make sure everything (design, copy) is reviewed and approved before assigning it — as I mentioned before, this will save a lot of time down the line.

2. Use only one channel for requests and be vigilant about people following the process — this has probably been the number one time-saver and sanity-keeping mechanism that we’ve introduced to our process. Having one super clear process articulated also makes it easier for people to learn it.

3. Keep all communication around a project in one place to ensure that everyone is aligned and avoid miscommunication — we do not consider feedback given in any other forum.

4. Treat the process as evolutionary and iterative. If something is not working, stop doing it. I regularly ask all collaborators for feedback on the process and constantly look for ways to improve the way we work together. My core focus is whether the process helps us meet our goals efficiently. If it does not, it’s useless. Just because you’ve found a process that works doesn’t mean that the job is done, so keep iterating.

We started with an iPhone as a proof of concept, and then iterated on the process from there to what it is today. And we’ll keep iterating and adapting the way we work to meet the new challenges and opportunities that come with growth.