The Weekly Bev - 3rd Edition

🤝 Working With Brands

If you follow the vlog, you know I’ve recently been doing work with an incredible brand: The North Face. It’s an honor to be able to say that. For this week, I’d like to tell you more about how this opportunity came up, hopefully inspire some of you, and maybe even provide you with a little value!

So, in my experience, most of my work with large brands has come through agencies…The North Face is not an exception to that; however, it was a bit more serendipitous than normal.

My friend Max Simon, whose been featured in the vlog and runs challahdad, works at an agency. He happened to meet Steve from the Leisure fam one day at a random pop-up event, and your boy came up! Max got my number, and basically texted me, “We have this opportunity for North Face, they’re looking for some social-oriented content for an upcoming campaign, I’d love to jump on a Zoom and hear how you’d handle it.”

Naturally, I was stoked. The gig immediately checked a lot of my boxes:

1. Iconic brand ✅

2. Content for social ✅

3. Referred by good friend ✅

4. Willing to let me be in front of the camera like this 🟥 

When I jumped on the Zoom with Max, he provided a bit more context on the opportunity, and then I dove into my pitch. Early on in my freelancing career, I would pitch that I could do it all, but with experience I’ve learned to pitch my specific strengths and skillset. I think it comes across more genuine, because in reality no one can do it all at a high level. Here’s what that looked like for this pitch…

• One-man band - I don’t over complicate things, I shoot, I edit, I reflect notes with a quick turnaround

• I’m native to social - anything 60 seconds and under is my bread and butter, I make things look real (big green flashing arrow pointing towards 900+ episodes of the vlog)

• I’m good with a script - everyday I write a script for the voiceover on the vlog and I know how to map that against content I’ve captured

• I’m not a feature film director (yet hehe) - I’m not going to make something that looks overly polished, and I’m not going to command a team of 25+ or outsource for a TikTok video

In this instance, that was exactly what Max was looking for, and now we have done four shoots together for The North Face! Last November, I even had the pleasure of working with Alex Honnold for a day. He was super friendly and very professional. This was one of my favorite videos from that day. My learning from this whole experience has been: understand your strengths in comparison to other creatives and pitch on those strengths. That way when you land the gig, you will deliver exactly as you presented.

Following that initial Zoom call, Max and I discussed rates for the job. I have always been curious about how payment for gigs like this are structured, and I hope to peel back the curtain on that topic here in The Weekly Bev whenever I am able. Max actually came back to me with a broken down rate which was great, but here are some of the line items you can think about charging for on a shoot like the one I did for The North Face…

Pre-production calls, ½ day rate on travel days, full day rate on shoot days, and rate per deliverable. Of course the numbers here can fluctuate job-to-job.

Finally, I wanted to include my gear list:

• Sony FX30

• Sony E f1.8 11mm Lens, Sony E f4 18-105mm Lens

• Joby RangePod Tripod

• RODE Wireless Pro

• Simple :)

❓️ Mystery Links

un, deux, trois

🔦 Creator Spotlight

I am pumped about this section! We’re going to feature some incredible creators on The Weekly Bev, starting off with a bang: my good friend, Sam Snowden!

Jack: What has it been like working with Marcus, Shawn, and the Minted New York team? Tell us about the Saucony campaign you’re directing for them.

Sam: It’s been awesome to work with them for the past 6 months. What started as a four-part miniseries has progressed into a video every two weeks. They give me complete creative freedom and basically tell me to let it rip. They’re a tight knit group, people stop them on the street all the time, and then later that day they’ll be on runs with them. The Saucony campaign has been really fun. Frankly, it’s out of my normal comfort zone: it’s very intentional, I’m working with a shot list, a DP, so it’s different and exciting. The campaign will launch on May 11th and it’ll be my first campaign release as a director! I’m really excited for the shoe to come out, I think it’s going to crush.

Jack: Tell The Weekly Bev audience more about the style you’ve arrived at for your Minted videos.

Sam: The Minted brand and my style of filmmaking go very well together. I shoot in a “matter of fact” nature. No clickbait. No jump cuts. It is what it is. And that’s exactly how Marcus has built his community. I recently saw a comment on one of the videos that really struck a chord with me: “The quality of these videos matches the quality of the product.” I always focus on quality, and so do the Milione brothers. If you own a piece of Minted product, you know what I’m talking about.

Jack: How do you feel right now about your personal brand?

Sam: I feel like my personal brand is actually growing because my client work is becoming more signature. People come to my profile after seeing a client video and enjoy my other videos, which is awesome. On the flip side, I haven’t done a good job creating vlog-style content. I think the Minted content the Monte content, and all of my other client work is crucial to my career. My personal stuff has been put on the back burner for now, but I’ll pop out and make a video where I talk into the mic one of these days…

Jack: How do you decide to split your free-time? Does your relationship help emotionally balance things?

Sam: My relationship with Kay, my girlfriend, definitely helps balance things. She works in a similar industry in that it’s also scattered, people are winging a lot of stuff, and that can make your brain go crazy. Balancing that with other projects, health, wellness, etc. is difficult. There is no one to give you answers, no one’s telling you how long you should spend editing vs. working out. With all of that said, that’s also the most exciting part! I’m designing my own life. As a 25-year old, I obviously don’t have all of the answers, but I do know that I don’t have to know everything, I just have to give myself grace in times when I’m feeling that struggle.

🐝 beehiiv

I’ve received a ton of questions about what platform I’m using for The Weekly Bev, and the answer is beehiiv! It’s been great so far. It streamlines all of the set up work, so I can focus on writing. If you’re interested, create an account here 🙂