Case Study: How Agile Marketing Revolutionized Our Video Creation Process
Case Study: Successful Story Telling the Agile Marketing Way
Background
3Pillar is a software product development company focused on delivering compelling experiences that drive business results. Their philosophy, approach, and culture are not only embedded in the way they work with their clients but also in the way they deliver software products with true business impact. Capturing the essence of who they are, what they do and how they do it was critically important to showcase but wasn’t being fully brought to life in just text and visuals.
Objective
Our goal was to collaboratively create a new approach and format to 1) communicate how they have been successful in servicing their clients and 2) get this out to market quickly.
Together with 3Pillar, we quickly established that video would be the most effective medium for telling a more in-depth story.
Approach
1. Identifying The Opportunity
Following 3Pillar’s existing formula for case-study development, we started by writing the initial script based on our conversations with key stakeholders involved in the strategy and delivery process.
Crafting this story was done over frequent and collaborative in-person working sessions with 3Pillar. Yet after several iterations of the script and then trying a whiteboard animation execution based on the script, we collectively saw that the narrative as well as this type of execution wasn’t quite hitting the mark.
To solve this problem, we needed to be agile.
So we took another approach that would marry visual development and copy development in parallel to really get at the heart of what makes their process unique.
2. Applying Agile Marketing Process
By applying the agile marketing principles of collaboratively of testing, learning, and iterating, we shifted gears by first developing hand-written sketches against the content to determine where the gaps and opportunities were in order to improve the overall story.
We then posted these sketches on their conference room wall so they could visualize the flow of this rough storyboard. Soon one series of sketches resulted in several iterations of the visual storyline as we met twice weekly with key stakeholders to work through the narrative together and to nail down the right sequence.
We then started to design and develop low fidelity designs based on a style template 3Pillar had already been using to bring an initial video prototype to life.
3. Optimizing The Approach
We continued to iterate in a sequence of agile marketing sprints. By developing, optimizing and then piecing together the elements of the videos, which included overlaying the voiceover and audio to the prototype, it helped us find the right balance of tone, tempo, visual execution, and content in rapid time. Through this process, we also identified those core visuals that were important to convey across any story which in turn enabled us to build a library of assets in which to create future case studies.
Each step in this process required a joint effort between the Flywheel team and 3Pillar’s key stakeholders as we pulled from a combined knowledge/experience base and iterated based on group feedback versus individualized opinions.
Result
By 1)having in person client meetings on a frequent basis2) collectively shaping and editing the story and video from beginning to end 3) facilitating a transparent, open and agile environment that welcomed change, together we effectively captured the essence of the way 3Pillar works and delivers against their Client’s business goals.
Further, we were able to establish an operational framework that enabled us to move quickly with every new video developed and forge an even tighter working relationship in the end.
Client Testimonial
Here are some thoughts directly from our client:
It was definitely nice to see things come to life in a different way than they had before...And it was fun to be a part of it too and to have the ability to shape things as it went on.
It helped that we met face-to-face twice every week and went through everything. And that was for an hour and a half twice a week. I think that was certainly something that was different than our usual way of working on something where you usually ask a few questions, go off and write something, then wait for the reaction. And I think people need to realize there’s an element of them getting in the trenches and rolling up their sleeves and doing some of the actual work to really get what they want. If it’s going to be a collaborative process it needs to be a collaborative process.
View final products here: