Organic/Natural or Not?

When working with new clients at Flixr, we often get the request for videos to be “organic/natural”. It is also the request we most commonly get wrong. With new clients, in almost every stage of the production process, we’ve had feedback of things not being “organic/natural”, even though clients have specifically requested it.

This has made us think about it at a deeper level to understand why we’ve gotten it wrong so many times. After all, we work with clients like Dream Games, Jam City, Zynga and many more on creative projects every single month. If they keep coming back again and again, we must be doing something right. So, where’s the disconnect with new clients?

We didn’t get very far when asking people what “organic/natural” meant to them, largely because it feels obvious to different people. The key question that got us somewhere was asking “what is the opposite of “organic/natural” creatives to you?”

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Just talk to people

We learnt that the answer was actually right in front of us all along (and thus, should have been obvious); it’s different for everyone! We don’t know how it took us this long to conclude something that we so actively talk about when it comes to other factors, but then again, the best conclusions are often obvious in hindsight! 

Understanding these different answers has allowed us to have clearer and more sophisticated conversations about it with clients. Our goal is ultimately to match our clients’ expectations, so understanding those expectations is crucial. 

We believe that this exercise will help us serve our clients better, we will understand their visions and deliver upon them with higher accuracy! 

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So what factors go into “organic/natural”

If we understand which of the following things are important to someone when they say “organic/natural”, we can deliver what they’re hoping for. Focusing on the wrong factor, can lead to a bad creative. Aligning expectations is important. 

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Energy Levels

There’s a scale from “normal talking like you’re talking to your friend on the phone” to “ad-like sales-y high energy”.

Some people would only consider the former side of that scale “organic/natural”, while others would consider it boring and unengaging! 

There is no right answer here, just preference and expectations, that we need to understand, so we can deliver upon them.

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Production Level

There are two main choices here:

• Creator made: This is made by a creator at home, usually filmed on a phone with a phone’s mic. It has a relatable and homemade feel.
• Studio produced: A professional director films in a studio, usually with a handheld 4K camera (or using a gimbal). This has more polish and luxury-feel than creator made, and is often preferred by more premium brands.

Some would say only “creator made” can be considered “organic/natural”, while others find that looks cheap and low effort. There’s no right or wrong answer, we just need to understand what someone is envisioning.

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Matching Script

When we film, we mostly have actors follow our scripts word-for-word. It is one of the crucial things we look at when QA’ing footage that our actors send us as matching scripts is one of the main advantages to working with actors over influencers. But, some think footage can sound unnatural if sentences are used that an actor wouldn’t normally say. 

When actors record a script, we have them do two takes; one that matches the script word for word, and one where they can use their own words for each sentence. This gives us flexibility when editing to go either direction (or, what we suspect will become the most common outcome over time, a mix of the two)    

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Acting Ability/Style

Meryl Streep is a phenomenal actress. Our CEO, Chris, is a terrible actor. I’m confident in saying those are not controversial statements. But, unless we’re working with Meryl Streep/CEO Chris, someone’s acting ability becomes more subjective. 

Two people can see the same clip and have wildly different judgements of a person’s acting abilities. So, instead of trying to be objective about someone’s acting ability (because that’s impossible in the non-Meryl Streep productions we sometimes have), we call this ‘acting style’, as that correctly classifies someone’s abilities in a more subjective light. 

We currently send an introductory video from our actors to clients when suggesting them for a video, but we’re working on getting them to do a sample ad-script read instead. This will showcase their acting style (in a comparable way, if they all do a similar ad script read), rather than only showcase their talking abilities when comfortable (like when introducing themselves).

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Set and Props

If someone’s filming on a phone, but showing a second phone in a shot, that can feel like a professional set to some people. We need to identify as many set and prop factors that we can take into consideration, to have ads hit the right level of “organic/natural”.

So what now?

The key point for us is to talk to our partners about what “organic/natural” means to them? Which of the above factors are important? We do hundreds of ads a month, so we can help educate our new business clients on what “organic/natural” can potentially look like, and how these different factors can be adjusted to give ads a different feel. 

We're committed to delivering exceptional results and will keep you informed of our progress!

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