all right so i'm gonna hit an angle on world building how to world build in today's landscape so one of the things that i'm seeing that's that just that's another shift that i don't think enough people are talking about is this idea of and you've probably noticed it because you've been talking about some brands that are are doing this uh i forget what brand it was it's like an i don't know if it's an italian brand the french one yeah french one yeah where brands are taking they're taking a route of more higher productions but doing it at scale right and and when we were building rare air and even what we're adding like layering in with us it's putting on these larger
productions but not coming out with like one or two hero pieces you're coming out with 20 pieces of content 25 pieces of content and you have to shift how you actually do the production so that you can pull out that much content right and so you have to think about telling 15 second stories versus a one minute story with 30 40 50 different shots and lighting each thing lighting each shot perfectly and all of that and so i'm gonna talk about the idea of world building really get into like the nuts and bolts of it and then even how like we're doing some of these productions how we're
thinking about character building and all this and so the reason for this is i you and i would just talk about i've three or four weeks of just like absolute chaos and in great chaos like chaos i want to be a part right where a ton of campaigns a ton of social shoots but they're all like it's i have to build world building decks for each one of these right for each one of these uh like social campaigns and so i'm gonna run through it i'm gonna run through the process how i'm thinking about it how brands could essentially take this run with it and kind of do their own on a budget or you
know uh you do it also at a higher uh production value so definitely given the scrappy version i feel like people a lot of the times world building feels a little bit intimidating for folks and it's like you could do it on a 20k budget you can do it on a 3k budget it just depends on like you're kind of talking about the scope and the planning aspect um what i'm gonna do is i'll start at like what i'm doing with the brands so that i can communicate it better and then i'll like come back to okay if you're doing this on a smaller budget like here's how here's how you can do this so um
the first layer to this is you have to have your concept right you have to have the central theme for for all of this right um what is the central story what story are the characters going to play into how do you find a setting that then matches that story how do you find aesthetics and art direction that bring that concept to life all of that and so i typically with all these campaigns i have to write it in two sentences i have to be able to get into a meeting pitch it in two sentences and essentially get it to the point where your higher ups or the founders the ceos the marketing directors whoever
you're working with they nod in the greens right like they they have to be able to see the vision within those two sentences and so your concept when it comes to you know scripting a video it's almost like your hook right like this is you have to give clarity context and enough curiosity but you're really like leaning on to clarity and context when you're developing the the concept now the second piece that i i've been doing that i haven't really heard anybody talk about is when i'm developing this world and i'm thinking about the campaigns i've been actually trying to find movies that i imagine what movie can this campaign be a part of where it's easy to
really visualize it if i talk about like you know if we're putting together a a campaign around um like retro sports we you might think of like invincible you know what i mean uh the movie with mark walberg or whatever like back in the 80s like you might think anything yeah you might think like like that and then if you're thinking of like a more comical theme uh but still retro then it's like yeah okay longest yard because then you could look at all the layers within that movie and see how you can leverage that and so where i think about that is i start taking sound effects i start taking
what music are they playing how how are they dressed um how are they acting and it really helps give you a good base for actual world building and developing your um your whole set and scene for for this world and for a campaign and like this is something that any brand on any budget can do right if i have a sci-fi idea it's like okay do i look at like alien versus predator do i look at like what movies am i looking at that kind of fall into that sci-fi theme and then go like legitimately i'm giving you homework to go watch the movie and write sites sounds settings locations colors all those elements because it's going
to give you the best base of oh here's how i'm going to package this all together and so look at the uh a movie finding the movie that you can plug this campaign into is key and then and then you even go a step further at looking at reference shots looking at some of the behind the scenes of how it's filmed and then looking at posters like posters for the movies will do it like if you're talking sci-fi and you look at alien versus predator posters it's very like dark blues um cool colors cool tones or uh you're looking at these these different colors and tones and so it could really help you
conceptualize the world and then in a pitch too it's really easy to say like imagine if this campaign took place in alien versus predator or it took place in the longest yard it helps that we talk about this in in scripting right like that familiarity where if you can leverage that within in your hook it makes it so much easier for people to understand it it makes sense because it's two things people are pattern matching as soon as they want to see a piece of content and so if you can help them recall it's almost like they see the familiar thing and so psychologically they are like oh i know this but
then you make their brain reach a little bit to be like where did i see that from yeah you know like is that the longest yard like is that like a joke about the longest and it's like it's it's a way to kind of like brain hack them a little bit yeah versus if you don't have a reference and you're going straight off rip then i do think you're leaving some attention on the table um because people like that irony you know they they like the oh haha like i've seen this movie before yeah um they're doing they're doing this like one of the best ways to uh stress test an idea is always like you know ask
someone completely out of our world like what do you think of this you know how would you describe this right someone would look at our podcast and be like they talk about marketing you know i don't think they would say they talk about brand social content pillars for sure buzzwords keywords that we talk about and they wouldn't be like okay talk about world building yeah they would say they just talk about marketing and so it's like similarly like oh they made like a harry potter joke or like you know it's like a harry potter theme one or like you're saying alien versus predator um and it's like how would
a normal person speak on this how would a normal person summarize this to their friend 100 this brand did like an alien versus predator thing or is like this brand used a western motif to signify it's like no it did they will just say something really basic couldn't agree more once you get that and like you kind of determine literally the world direction and how and what you're matching it to you start looking at location and world building and how you're going to leverage your location to start building the world right so are you shooting in the salt flats of utah are you shooting in if it's like retro
um you know are you shooting or are you shooting in france are you shooting in the the in like nice like are you where are you being able to shoot you have to pick that location to really set the tone of okay i have here now how do i start layering in everything around here with my art direction my product art direction the characters because your location could determine your characters so like completely different right like it could be so different based on on the location if it's like a mansion in beverly hills versus a just a suburban home in in california right like those call for two very
different looks and in feels and and vibes so location's huge and like i spent a lot of time finding the perfect location and even trying to find shots to see like can this happen in this this location the next and i promise you i'm gonna get on on charles's ass we're gonna put pictures we have to put especially for this one like we have to put we're just gonna make you all raw dog and visualize it's crazy it's crazy the next thing that people bang on your door long enough eventually you'll you'll let them in you know it's like for sure yeah we we've been slacking on the pictures for
sure yeah i just gotta i gotta start linking people to it um or sorry linking charles to it so the next is i take the location and i do locations plus character looks so i try to find imagery with a similar location where like hey can i pull off this image in that location again so if it's the salt flats even if in one thing i'll stress too is if you are picking a location try to find that location in with lighting or work with someone to try to manipulate it to see if it's doable so when i was pitching i was going between a few locations and i was using salt flats i wasn't just putting a random
picture of the salt flats here i found a picture of the salt flats like at the end of a blue hour when it was like it's like this dark royal ish blue um almost like before night like right before nighttime where like these jeeps and and like land rovers land cruisers whatever are driving at night where it feels like a this undisclosed area right i found another one where it's lit up in a way where it feels futuristic another one at blue hour where like you can see that it it feels kind of alien like and so you want to find the right imagery because world building is all about perception and
you influence that perception with the visuals you show so when you find these reference images either a you have to find them or b you have to make them right like there's a enough ai tools now where i can put the salt flats at night you know i can prompt it right to find the exact imagery if i'm not going to get on here and talk about ai but i might later you might yeah and and yeah but you're going to use some choice words probably well we'll see depending on how you feel yeah spicy yeah and but the great thing about ai is that you can use it to create amazing reference photos like i will never not never
right now i will not use it for actual content but i will use it to create a storyboard i don't want to draw i suck at drawing yeah but if i could just give it a prompt and it gives me enough of a a shot to look at and show a producer or show a videographer that they could then produce it or show a ceo or um a marketing director like hey this is what we're going for and they can now visualize it and conceptualize it in their head that's a win for me so i'm looking at those locations and i'm now finding the the characters and how those characters look within those locations so like you want that next
slide to feel like an extension but i just placed a person in it and i'm trying to match motions and in essentially like lookbook like what if if this place had a magazine around this product what would it look like if i'm going through the pages and so i look at it like that all these images and i should share this with you all these images feel like they could be the same campaign but they're all different brands from like a solomon to a nike to whoever like they're all different brands but the characters from this perception um again feel like they're part of the same campaign the next thing
is you want to describe this to a t um is should this feel beautiful should this feel relaxing should this feel something that's scary or enlightening you want to really figure out like that emotion that you're trying to tell through the visuals right and then sometimes it's a combination of of things um i i legally can't exactly talk about what it is here but it's a mix where i'm going for a mix of two emotions right where it helps take that that character which i'll get into in a second and position them not as like an influencer or not as an athlete but positioning them as like a peer
yeah a specific kind of of subject and character within this so characters and looks huge i like to go first looking for wide angle shots and i'll start with wide angle shots and then i'll move towards more like portrait shots in action shots again very dependent on the campaign um uh another campaign that i'm i'm looking at like they were taking characters from other campaigns similar to i did here and matching them to the to the different locations but those looks are just so they were so different right the next thing that i i do is i start looking at product focus and direction because i want to be able to say hey if we're going wide angles and we're looking at
locations and character looks here what happens when we're actually zoning in on the product this is where art direction is key are we going again are we going sci-fi are we going larger than life is if we're showing product is it with a human or not human but is it with a person or is it not is it in a lab or is it in a store like you have to think about how you want the product to perceive if we're thinking about brian like jumping is the jumping in a gym is it my hidden star formation in the jump yeah how my leg are is it alien like is a monograph like you have to think about all the different ways that it
could be perceived right because the rex arms yeah you know just dehumanize me you have to think about all that and so there's actually a campaign of kobe and adidas back before like kobe signed with nike that it gives you like this larger than life almost like alien like poster that i fell in love with for for one of the reference shots um but we want to think about the product and the editorial and how it all needs to feel the same again like we're world building like we have to figure out how if we're pushing product even put the parts that push product feel like just an extension or a
continuation of that story the next layer is then you want to find the characters you know if you work with athletes creators influencers you have to find the right ones you have to make sure that they fit this story or that you can mold them in a way that it fits the story and are there other characters like this has uh one of these campaigns has a completely different character that's honestly like leading the entire story and then the athletes the creators and whatnot that are coming into it they're seen in a completely different way and so i had to write that like hey we're not looking at
these individuals like this person and this person that everybody knows as them as we're seeing them as like this character in this movie it just happens to be that individual and that is that is key and so another thing that is like i had the design team take imagery from uh those two athletes and essentially like manipulate the images so it matched the colors and the vibes of and tones of like the location and and and the reference images and stuff because again like you when you're world building like you have to be able to see all elements of it you can't use a regular photo of like you and just plug it in
and be like okay imagine if this was like dark or very bright or like brian's chilling in in france like i i have to be able to visually show you that and so with characters you know who actually does a really good job of this is like emma chamberlain like she does a really good job of playing a scientist then playing and like and playing into like these different characters when they're doing new drops and they do a phenomenal job of it like of their world building there was one i watched recently where like she was in the lab like they're doing all these tight shots of like her pouring things it was
it was amazing now where it could get interesting with characters is then you're thinking if if you have essentially different settings within a location that you're going to use for the shoot that i'm going to do next week we have multiple settings for the characters like different characters for different settings right and so that can be a plumber that could be a you know somebody fixing the roof that could be and you have to think about that as well and if you go that route then you have to think about reference images aesthetics all of that for each character based on the action that they're going to
be doing right because somebody on a roof versus a plumber you have to take it back to that world and think about how you're matching all the sx and in the shots and the in the reference shots and so like for somebody on the roof it could be and like you have to get like the the a nighttime look that's hard to do right like and so it really like all i'm saying is like this really comes down to putting together a puzzle yeah that you have to formulate when you're when you're world building and you're thinking about these characters and how you put them in these settings properly and how
they're all cohesively working together in the story um so that's that's the other part like there's multiple characters and they're all and they're doing different things and you have to start looking for reference images for those individuals um and then think about how i can shoot the the person on the the roof the same or in a different way as the plumber but it's still telling the same story so that may be hey we're shooting both at blue hour right we're going to use these kind of strobe lights we're going to use uh this kind of camera with these iso settings like all of these
different layers so that it feels the same the next layer then we have is now what stories are being told right the one of the campaigns that we're working on social campaigns we're working on is like there's two stories like it's going to happen in one setting and then it's going to move over to a different setting that but it's like an extension of the story it's like hey we can only get here by being here right and with the the other people shooting next week it's like it starts in this setting and once we get here we're now telling this larger narrative by the thing the different things that
the characters are doing to tell this overarching story and so the storytelling is is huge and now what's interesting is if it's for a product launch you may have different stories that you tell for teasing and hyping and then as you get into a different location it's like okay pushing and pulling that's a different story yeah or that's a different setting because now we're telling a completely different story that has to tug on emotions versus like like anticipation over here right and so the the last part that i like to do and this is maybe this is like extra on on mine but is i've been pulling sound effects
because at the end i want to just have a good amount of sound effects in songs that i'm like if i play the sound effects you could visualize almost if you close your eyes like you could visualize it getting filmed and you could kind of look at a reference shot and like imagine it so if it's running or if it's um yeah like let's say it's trail running for example and we're around the salt flats it's like you could hear you hear the step yeah you could hear the step but like you could hear some gravel crunching or like you know like like some salt crunching this place like sand yeah and if we want to tell the story of
like wind yes if you want to tell the story of like the runner who's like in the wilderness running by himself 5 a.m it's like do you hear an animal in the background do you hear just like the wind and like the the like they're running so you want to be able to hear it so that you could look at a reference shot and literally see if you're a very visual person like you can see it in your in your head that okay this is that that story we're trying to tell and so there's a lot of layers to to world building you eventually have to then put this in the deck and be able to walk somebody through it the key to that
then is the execution you have to have the right team you have to have the right lighting you have to have the right uh reference shots shot lists um and team to to be able to execute this because obviously it's easy putting these things on paper but then going down and actually executing this and being able to nail this down to a tee that's where the work really begins um the last thing i'll say about this is i think the next thing that you're going to start seeing from brands is they're going to world build like like i just described and then they're going to essentially tell a large story on
their feed where in the past you know you'd post a few things and it'll get interrupted by two posts and then you post something else i think you're going to start seeing it as like 15 posts or 18 posts or 21 posts or whatever it is where the first post is the beginning of the story and nothing's going to interrupt it until the end and so you should be able to watch from the first story to the last uh or sorry the first post to the last post and it tells this long continuous story for 12 15 18 and then you look at the grid and the grid is going to be literally that that world that you built in the
deck is going to live exist right there um so yeah i think it's it's super interesting i'm gonna make you like the video that i made uh i don't know last week or maybe it was early earlier this week i'm gonna make a lot of videos like that for these campaigns where i think it's gonna be super interesting and i talk to the brands about like i'm i could talk about it after you know they go live um to break it down but i think it's gonna be super interesting i also think it's gonna be some like forward thinking within the space that not many people are are doing obviously some of the brands we
talk about on the pod are are doing but yeah man i'm excited for it this it's cool man i like i love adding like the art direction that's not something i've we've talked about enough on here um especially with like the brands we talk about where art direction creative direction like it plays such a valuable piece in ideation i think it's all part of a broader trend of performance versus brands and how they've become one because of all the tools shifting towards ai you know it used to be that it was a great media buyer someone that was buying your paid ads right for a brand was like extremely critical
in the growth marketing function and more and more that's becoming you know a person that has good taste and can curate a world or whatever it is that you want your brand to be presented as and that person is your differentiator rather than media buying you guys media buying has become so commoditized everyone's trying to get the same ad inventory on meta google whatever experimental channels tiktok shop you name it and so it's like finding those you know instead of focusing on crunching numbers now it's like art direction is having a renaissance you know a lot of this stuff is kind of coming back
whereas i think maybe the few years before the pandemic and particularly the two two issues after it was like dude if you just you know put some good ads into meta like you should be good right and you have a good product um but you know and and this also applies to uh supplements this applies to cpg like all this world building stuff it's like where do you want your people to live you know like you you talked about vacation uh sunscreen a long time ago and their product expansion is all kind of been it's like resort where yeah but for you know topicals right it almost feels like they should
have an apparel brand on dipto you know the they're not doing it should yeah so i i think it's crucial um for people to you know focus on this stuff and the the playbook is very like i think one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is how much taste does play a role in this yeah um which is why it's hard to do you know we we get a lot of submissions from a guy who'll be like or not not a unique guy but um you know we get a lot of submissions from people who they'll send a video and i'll be like i don't want to do it to you bro like i don't want to tell you why this is whack because it's you should know
you know it's like the the frames you're choosing are showing me a critical failure in your decision the frames the fonts the the effects you don't see the vision that people are you're not creating a vision that people want to be a part of um but what you just talked about is like an example of how deep it goes right you're pulling out kobe adidas commercials as a reference point to get an idea for what you want people to feel like if you don't go through those exercises chances are if you're just going off rip your idea wouldn't be as good right maybe maybe our ideas wouldn't be bad if we
didn't use those reference points and i think one of the reasons a marketer becomes good is because they have so many reference points already built in yeah you know if you have good taste it means you've been exposed to a million good things already and now you kind of know what good looks like it's like steak right you have a great steak you don't know what a shitty steak tastes like or does that say that right i don't know if you have if you've had great steak then you know would add state yeah you know a bad one but if you haven't then you think like you know cooking that thing on medium getting a sirloin from walmart is going to hit you this happened to me this is
actually a funny i'll take a funny short story where this is before i moved to before i moved to texas and i and i lived in south florida there was a place called rib city strip club it sounds like strip club doesn't it yeah no it's legit like workplace i mean don't hate on the food and so establishments and not that i've ever but now that i know like it's it's like a waffle house for like ribs it was what it feels like so before moving rib city rib city i thought you said rip city no no like portland trail no rib rib okay and and dude bro went to golden corral and was like why isn't this
very so i i would we would get the ribs all the time like if we go on vacations we buy the beach whatever like if we were having rib city it was like you just knew you're about to have the best rack of baby back ribs and for the longest time right for like five years that was that was what i thought and then i go to i moved to texas and i started having real ribs right salt lick um uh was it terry blacks i mean even rudy's or roadhouse texas roadhouse yeah like puts out amazing amazing smoked amazing amazing ribs yeah and so when you have kind of this this manufactured story in your
head you forget i was playing up rib city like it was the best thing in the world right but i just had had all of these trips because i've been in in texas for a few years now i take vanessa home and we go to rib city and i'm telling them like these are about to be the best rooms you ever had like so much better than all the shit we had back back home even though it was good bro i take the first bite of rib city with vanessa and i was like oh no this is like this ain't even it this is not even close yeah yeah um it's a good awakening it was terrible bro i felt so ashamed i was so proud to bring her here and then it was like oh this this is not it yeah um and i remember
another time we were at texas roadhouse and we were getting ribs and i was like and i was talking about rib city and go like these aren't even fall off the bone ribs and i pick up the rib i swear on everything all of the meat came right off the bone without me touching it and that's when i knew like oh i'm stepping into a terry territory i know nothing about it right now it's so different um yeah so i mean go you know before you start putting out where you start putting out campaigns make sure your taste is is right you know and i still think a great stress test for that is putting it in front of you know
some random people that aren't necessarily in the entrepreneurial startup you know world that aren't as familiar with it and just get that gut reaction what do they think it is what do they think it represents you know maybe two three questions but um yeah i think world building is it's critical you know and it's such a differentiator like i i we see uh i was talking to my team there's this a german brand i'm i'm really curious they're they're kind of like it's it's hard to even distinguish them from new shoots you know um they have a really big following it's like 700 000
followers called vicinity and uh they i'm over here trying to be like i came across y'all and i think your stuff is cool but i actually just have no idea how you got big because i don't see anything genius like i'm struggling to find the angle with them and i think they do some they do like all the good blocking and tackling but they don't go the next layer with like their shoots is known for being hilarious yeah they they are known for like their content team being funny and these guys kind of like they just do more cool brand stuff i think joel de monstor is known for like is very distinct
like european summer style right like european aristocrat style like that's what it's trying to make you feel like um which i guess i just outed myself for wanting to be a european aristocrat might have to scrub that from the internet but uh and i don't know what vicinity's you know i don't know what they're trying to make you feel and it's really noticeable to us i think because we're like where's the storytelling who's it for right those are the questions we're asking whereas you know i think normies probably no god normies but uh see there's your bad word yeah let me drop the normies today um the average person is seeing that and thinking this is cool
oh these these jeans are baggy that's cool that's in style right now and so they're able to ride those trends you know and so that's why nude nude project great example they have not to talk about them again we know in the comments people are like stop freaking talking it's been a minute though we haven't talked about them we almost have to resurface some of the brands that we talked about in the past yeah yeah have y'all forgotten yeah hell the ones we have for like three months straight two jays is really on a tear um no it's uh it's like new project has that cult following because they lean into the things
we're talking about i don't think the sanity has the cult following because i don't know who the founder is there's no storytelling no world building none of that they're just hitting trends at the right time with performance marketing so which one would you bet on to be long-term more successful which one would you bet on to have a higher lifetime value per customer you know these these numbers don't necessarily show up in the immediate pnl and this is such a good litmus test i'm sure you go through this all the time talking to clients but it's like how are you viewing this investment right well i need
to make it profitable on month two yeah like hydro go kick rocks man like that's not it that is just marketing as a tool itself is that the only place where you can do months to profitability is meta with like the right product mix yeah right and that's why it's so popular or amazon you know or any of these and there's outliers where things work in month one or two i've had many of them but i would say the average is like month three to four is when you start seeing real results from stuff similarly it's like okay you run a great campaign world build do whatever you're about to do for your clients
campaign goes live in july what where where are you going to see those lagging indicators start to show up in the pno it's going to be august september because you collected more subscribers because you have more marketing touch points in july and august because your ads are now more efficient because people are more familiar with your brand they're more likely to purchase multiple items your aov might tick up they might look forward to your next drop more because they missed out on this one so you create fomo like those are the downstream impacts of this stuff it is not oh we dropped this campaign
and we sold out we're rich yeah and the drop shipping ai gurus will tell you differently right they'll tell you like oh no bro just throwing some aigc get a supplier off piatra like you do your thing man like and like dude don't get me wrong if you want to sell widgets your whole life and then go eventually sell a course about how many widgets are sold like that's cool but you know this is for real brand building yeah um and i think you know that it's it's worth anyone's time agreed agreed i i think you're hitting on the head where it's like these are the people that are invested in building for the next
10 years next 20 years like they care about the brand that they're building they can't care about their their perception and you know the the opening line that i think i want to hit youtube with when i make this video is you know when you're world building you have to build it in a way where the the person buying can see them as the character that's in that world yeah right like when we use a runner when we use the plumber when we use like they want us the guy or like the the blue collar worker like you want to be your customer to not make a decision based off this is 20 or 15 and i'm saving
a buck you want to see them as like i i want to be that individual like i see myself as that individual and therefore that's why i'm buying like you're using this as like to create that emotional connection to to your brand so uh and yeah and i'm fully aligned on the i what i do think you get from drop shipping is you do get a you do gain the skill and like i've done drop i did drop shipping real early on like minor nothing crazy everyone has done it because it's like why why wouldn't you you develop skills where you're like oh i could i could sell you know i could write copy that could get
somebody to buy this crazy little thing and that is an interesting interesting play um i used to do one where i went to some like conference this was i don't know how if i was in middle school maybe a seventh or eighth grade or like maybe ninth grade like in you know freshman high school i went to some conference like tony robbins type thing but for drop shipping and for like building an online business i remember i built some like guitar blog because there was some way of finding like keywords and what was getting searched and what had opportunities and i started something like guitar blog and like it
and like had affiliate deals on guitars electric guitars amps and uh like guitar picks and like all these small things and as crazy as it is that taught me how to build funnels you know 10 12 15 years ago however long oh a long long time ago taught me how to build falls taught me how to write copy it was such an interesting era but there was nothing in that other than i thought i was going to get rich and make a ton of money it's and i barely made any money like i made money but like i already make it on drop shipping it like um i had a lot of drop shipping graveyard products and you know in retrospect man i actually
really really really really fucked up because i probably you had the one right that like had all the potential in the world i i had a drop shipping store called ideal setup dot dot home and it was uh i was going to be trapped saunas and cold plunges in 2022. oh you would have made a lick i would have had such a lick problem is my broke ass i was terrified to put 10k into google app because i was like yo what if this doesn't work like and just classic shiny object syndrome you know i had all these different things i was early on a trend but i was like consulting at this one company running grind
like whatever i couldn't actually you know lock in and like go do a programmatic google ads yeah um and uh i man i would have timed the freaking sonic cold punch way perfect perfectly 23 would have hit a leg and uh you would have made tens of millions of dollars and i would be selling a course on how to do it yeah and there that's how you got to 100 mil yeah well cool um this is a two-parter so why don't we cut it here uh and uh we'll we'll see y'all next week on the follow-up peace