Darren [00:15]
On this episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m going to do something completely different. And no, that’s not a Monty Python reference. I’m going to do something completely different. I’m going to be playing video clips that I’ve created using video AI software to create video for video ads because I’m going to be talking about Google Flow V3, which is the latest thing in creating video for your ads, for your Facebook ads, for your Instagram, for your TikTok.
Darren [00:47]
Now here’s the reason I’m doing this. I’ve got a massive itch to scratch in film because, as I’ve talked about in other podcast episodes, I wanted to be a film director. I’ve been to film school. I made a feature film. I won’t go into details about that. It’s all very boring. It’s on YouTube if you want to watch it. It’s called Cop on the Edge and Pray to Justice. I beg you, please don’t watch it. But it is on YouTube if you want to watch it.
Darren [01:20]
When I was just before film school, I did some work for a TV programme called Beadle’s Hot Shots. And I met a guy called Edgar Wright, famous film director of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, all those things there. He’s got Total Recall, the remake, coming out very soon. And he wanted to meet with me to work with me on the next series of Hot Shots. And I stood him up. I didn’t go and meet him. I didn’t think he was someone I should be bothering with. I was 17, he was 19, and I abandoned him. It’s the biggest mistake of my life. But that’s in the past.
Darren [01:56]
I keep wanting to make video. I keep wanting to do really cool video stuff. And I’ve had a few ideas over the last couple of months for ads I could do for Engage Web. The concept of these ads is that if you have a web designer, as most businesses who have a website do, and you want to get changes done on your website, it is almost impossible to get hold of your web designer because they don’t answer the phone.
Darren [02:30]
The way most web design businesses work is they take a lot of money from the client, they build the website, the website’s live, that’s it, they move on to another client. They’re not interested in doing updates or maintenance for that particular client. So if you want to try and get changes done, get pages added, get images swapped, it’s small fry to them. They’re not bothered about it.
Darren [02:58]
Whereas here at Engage Web, we have a monthly website package which includes your updates. So you don’t pay a lot of money up front. You just pay monthly. If you want updates to the website, you want new pages added, you want images added, you want stuff changed, you just email us in and we do it within five working days, guaranteed. And that’s all part of the price. That’s how our model works. And that’s why we are different to a lot of other web designers.
Darren [03:32]
So I put together a couple of ideas for video ads that I thought would emphasise this point. And the problem with these ideas was they were impossible to film.
Darren [03:45]
The first one was a psychic medium. One of those people with a crystal ball trying to contact the dead from the other side. She’s sat in her psychic medium’s booth or office or whatever you call it, and there’s a businessman sat next to her. She’s trying to raise somebody who we all think is dead, and as it transpires through the advert, that person isn’t dead at all. He’s this guy’s web designer and he can’t get hold of him any other way than to use a psychic. Very funny as you can imagine. But in order to film that, I would have had to take a couple of guys out of the office pretty much all day, get one of them to dress up in a wig and a dress and psychic outfit and get them to do strange voices.
Darren [04:32]
A lot of fun would have been had, but there’s no way it would have been that great from what I was imagining in my head. And it would have been quite expensive because I’d have to get people out of the office to do it. And obviously you’ve got opportunity cost and salary to consider. So, not a good idea.
Darren [04:50]
Then I had another idea which was to do an ad based on the film Jaws. Now, I love Jaws. Most people love Jaws. There’s a great scene in Jaws where Robert Shaw, who plays Quint, interrupts a meeting with all of the businesses in Amity Island who are complaining that they’ve got to shut the beach for 24 hours. He comes in, scratches his nails down the blackboard, and says, “You all know me. You know what I do for a living. I’ll catch that shark for you.” I thought that would be quite funny if we had it that they had to shut down their website because they couldn’t get hold of their web designer and it was only for 24 hours, and then someone came in and went, “I’ll catch this web designer for you.”
Darren [05:45]
But there’s no way I could film that because I would need a school setting because the scene is shot in a school. I would need probably about 10 to 15 people. I don’t have that many people unless I take the whole office out of the building for a whole day. That is a massive opportunity cost that, quite frankly, there’s no way I would have got past Leanne at Engage Web. She’d have said, “No, you’re not doing that.”
Darren [06:15]
And it wouldn’t have been as good anyway because the only person that could have played Quint would have been me, and I can’t do that and do the camera at the same time unless I hire a camera operator and bring one of them in, and that’s even more cost. So this whole thing was pushed to the back burner. It’s never going to work.
Darren [06:40]
And then we found Google Flow V3 AI video creation software. And it turns out you can pretty much do whatever you want. Whatever your imagination has, you can do it.
Darren [07:00]
Now I’m going to play both of these ads for you during this podcast. If you are not watching this on YouTube, if you’re on iTunes or Spotify or Audible or whatever, have a look at the YouTube version to see the visuals because it’s the visuals you’re going to want to see on these ads.
Darren [07:20]
On the blog, which is on The Engaging Marketeer website and has the transcript for this podcast, I’m going to put some of the prompts I used in Google Flow V3 so you can see what I told the AI to get the results I got, the descriptions I had to use, because that’s important.
Darren [07:45]
One of the big issues with Google Flow V3 is you can only create 8 seconds at a time. Eight seconds of video. If you’re trying to create an advert, one of them’s about 56 or 58 seconds, the other one’s about 1 minute 10. That’s a lot of cuts put together. It will not retain information from one shot to the next unless you use Google Flow V2, in which case you can save scenes and create video based on those. But Google Flow V2 cannot do audio.
Darren [08:20]
So I had to use Google Flow V3 limited to 8 seconds. It cannot maintain information from one shot to the next. So if you have, for example, the psychic from the psychic ad, you have to describe her in extreme detail. I had to describe what she was wearing, her earrings, the colour of her hair, how she was holding her hands, the crystal ball in front of her, the room that she was in. Because once I put that into the next shot, if I didn’t do all of that, it would completely regenerate her and she would be random.
Darren [08:55]
So every time you include a character in Google Flow V3, you have to describe it exactly the same each time to try and get consistency. But even then, it sometimes flips out completely. In the Jaws scene, for example, you’ll notice the sheriff — even though I described him as having short black hair — in a couple of shots is completely bald because Google thought, “Hell with it. Let’s make him bald.”
Darren [09:25]
So let’s have a look at the first ad, which is the psychic ad. Roll VT.
[Psychic Advert Playback] [09:35]
I’m looking for Steve. Are you there, Steve?
Tell me, how long ago did Steve cross over to the other side?
Cross over to the what now?
When did Steve die?
Oh, good God, no. He’s not dead. Steve’s my website designer.
He never answers my emails. I need you to contact him so I can get my website updated.
Does getting hold of your website designer sometimes feel like you’re trying to contact the dead?
You won’t need a psychic medium to reach us at Engage Web. Our guys are very much alive, with our support team ready to make your website changes for you, and it’s included in your price.
Steve, are you there? Steve?
Hello?
Who’s that?
It’s Alexis. I’ve sent you five emails and left you three voicemails.
I need you to do some updates on my website.
I’m losing you. I’m going through a tunnel.
How do you even hang up on a psychic?
Darren [10:35]
So, that was the psychic ad. I thought that was absolutely hilarious. You be the judge of that. But the important point it got across was that a normal web designer is difficult to get hold of whereas Engage Web is much easier to get hold of because that’s how we do the website.
Darren [11:00]
And you’ll have noticed when watching that ad as well that the businessman changed considerably throughout the ad. At one point he was in his early 40s, clean-shaven, and then in another shot he was probably about 60 with a big white beard and white hair. But for the most part, people don’t notice. We don’t spot these continuity issues because we’re focused on what’s going on.
Darren [11:30]
There’s this famous experiment with basketball players where you’re asked to count how many passes are made during a 60-second game. And at the end, it asks, “Did you see the gorilla?” And you’re like, “What?” Then they play it back and there’s a guy in a gorilla suit walking around in the middle. No one notices it because they’re not focused on that.
Darren [11:55]
So continuity errors like people changing what they’re wearing, moustaches appearing or disappearing, people going bald or growing hair from one shot to the next — most people never even notice. Which means Google Flow V3 is perfect for creating this kind of content.
Darren [12:15]
So let’s move on to the Jaws ad. Sharks are really big at the moment. There’s a celebrity diving shark thing where hopefully lots of celebrities will get eaten by sharks. That’s what I expect to see. If you go on to ITV Player right now, they’ve got that and all the Jaws movies as well because people are well into sharks. So it’s timed really well that we’re bringing out this Jaws-themed ad for Engage Web — but without in any way infringing Universal’s trademark. There is nothing in it to identify it as Jaws whatsoever. That is important for me to say.
Darren [12:50]
So let’s roll VT on that one.
[Jaws Advert Playback] [12:55]
I know our website is broken, but we can’t get hold of the web designer. We’re going to try to use freelancers on the website.
Are you going to close the website?
Yes, we are. Only 24 hours.
I didn’t agree to that.
24 hours is like 3 weeks.
You all know me.
Who’s this guy?
You know how I earn a living. I’ll catch this web designer for y’all. But it ain’t going to be easy.
How do you even get in here?
I value my neck a lot more than 3,000 bucks. Chief, who said anything about three grand?
I’ll find him for three, but I’ll catch him and kill him for ten.
Wait, what?
If you can’t get hold of your web designer, you don’t need to hire this lunatic to find them. No offense.
None taken.
Where are these people coming from?
You just need Engage Web. On their most popular website package, all your website updates are included at no extra cost and are completed within five working days.
Just call security.
Better to call Engage Web. With a four-hour response time during office hours, you’re never waiting for changes to your website.
Give this Engage Web a call. You’re going to need a bigger office.
With Engage Web, you’ll never go to another web designer again.
Darren [13:55]
So, that was the Jaws ad. There was a much longer version originally, almost two minutes long, with every piece of dialogue Robert Shaw’s character Quint said in Jaws rewritten for web design and marketing. But as I cut it together I realised none of that was relevant. So I got it down to just over a minute.
Darren [14:25]
We’ll also be cutting together vertical versions for TikTok, Instagram Reels and LinkedIn. The prompts, as I say, are all on the blog. Please go and have a look at those.
Darren [14:45]
In terms of cost and the software we used, Google Flow V3 has an offer at the moment for about $125 per month for three months, then it goes back up to around $250. It gives you about 12,000 credits per month. To create those two ads, I used around 7,000 credits. So I could comfortably do another decent-sized ad or two smaller ones like the psychic ad. You could probably create four good ads per month with that allowance.
Darren [15:25]
I also used 11 Labs for the voiceover. It lets you choose a voice, feed it text, and it generates the narration. It can also emulate your own voice if you want to create a digital version of yourself for podcasts or audiobooks.
Darren [15:50]
For music and sound effects — the music at the end of the Jaws ad and throughout the psychic ad — that came from Pixabay, which was completely free. The sound effects like the record scratch and the murmuring crowd were from Pixabay too, also free.
Darren [16:10]
Finally, I cut it together using Adobe Premiere Pro. You can also use CapCut if you prefer. If you’re a bit of a video editing nerd, use whatever software you like — you’ll get better results with Adobe or Final Cut.
Darren [16:30]
It’s really simple to do. It’s a lot of fun. The only limit is your imagination. Just enjoy it. And let me know how you get on. I’d love to see some comments from people who’ve created their own AI videos and ads with Google Flow V3. I’ll catch you on the next podcast.
