The only platform where a polished
advertisement is a handicap.

We first check that your offering has something to show. This channel is visual and demonstrative: a product you handle, a before and after, a skilled movement, a place. An abstract service that cannot be filmed starts there with a serious handicap.

Then we build a production rhythm rather than a campaign. Formats wear out faster here than elsewhere and what worked six months ago no longer does. The question is not to find the right video, it is to establish a rhythm that allows regular testing.

Finally we measure carefully, because the journey there is rarely direct: many people discover you on the platform and buy elsewhere, later, through a search for your name.

It is the point that surprises most, and the one that creates the most friction with art-direction expectations.

People come here to watch videos made by people, not by brands. Anything that signals a production budget, professional lighting, a perfect frame or a commercial voice-over triggers an immediate avoidance reflex. The gesture is learned, it takes no thought.

A video shot on a phone, in ordinary light, where somebody talks plainly about what they do, often holds attention better than an expensive production. This is not praise for amateurism: the video has to be sharp, audible, and say something. It is an observation about the context in which it is seen.

The budget consequence, which is rather good news: the money is better spent on the number of attempts than on the care given to each.

We advise against this channel fairly often, for three reasons visible at the first meeting.

When nothing can be shown

An intellectual service with no visual support can exist there, but it starts with a disadvantage the budget does not make up for.

When nobody wants to appear

The formats that work almost always involve a face and a voice. If nobody in the company is available for that, and bringing in an outside presenter is not considered, the material will run out within weeks.

When the buying decision is long and collective

An entertainment platform watched on the commute is not where an investment requiring three internal approvals gets triggered. It can contribute upstream, by making you known. It will not close.

In those situations, we point towards another channel. An engagement started on an unsuitable channel fails slowly and expensively.

The production rhythm naturally pushes the spend upwards, which makes the question of how we are paid all the more legitimate.

Three rules apply across the whole division. The media budget does not pass through us and we take no percentage of it: our fee is fixed. The account is created in your name, and the history as well as the audiences stay with you if we stop working together. And there is no minimum term on advertising management. The detail of those three points is on the division’s page.

A contractual subject, not exciting, that nonetheless causes most of the unpleasant surprises on this channel.

A video shot by a creator, an employee or a supplier does not automatically belong to you, and the right to turn it into a paid advertisement is something else again. A video published organically in perfectly good spirit may not be usable in advertising without explicit agreement.

Two points are settled in writing, before filming. The period during which you may run the video as an advertisement, which is often limited to a few months in standard creator contracts. And the agreement of the people appearing on camera, including your own employees, whose consent to feature in an advertisement cannot be inferred from their employment contract.

We check both points before putting budget behind a video. Discovering that an advertisement that works has to be pulled is the kind of incident prevented in ten minutes and repaired with difficulty.

This channel produces an effect measurement tools capture badly, and you need that in mind before reading the first report.

The typical journey is not a click followed by a purchase. It is a video watched on the commute, a name remembered, and a search made that evening or the following week from another device. To a measurement tool, that sale comes from a search engine, or from nowhere.

Two practical consequences. The first is that the direct return shown almost always understates the real effect. The second is that you must not comfort yourself with that argument, which conveniently justifies any spend.

Our method is to watch what happens elsewhere when we switch on and when we switch off: searches for your name, direct traffic, overall visits. If nothing moves anywhere, the invisible effect does not exist.