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 Veo 3, which is the latest thing in creating video for your ads, for your Facebook ads, for your Instagram, for your TikTok.
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.
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, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, all those things. 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 Fuzz. 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. Don’t worry about that. I’m not about to go into a rant about what I did in the past. That’s in another podcast. 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 actually for ads I could do for Engage Web. Because 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.
The way most web design businesses work is they take a lot of money from the client, they build the website, the website goes live, and 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.
Whereas here at Engage Web, we have a monthly website package which includes your updates. So you don’t pay a lot of money upfront. 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.
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 that they were impossible to film.
The first one was a psychic medium. You know, one of those people with a crystal ball trying to contact the dead from the other side. And it was a psychic, and she was sat in her psychic medium’s booth or office or whatever you call it, and there was a businessman sat next to her. And 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 a psychic outfit, get them to do strange voices. 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 had 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.
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. And 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,” and so on. And 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,” and so on and so forth.
But I thought there’s no way I can film that. There’s absolutely no way I could possibly film that because I would need a school setting because the scene is shot in a school. I would need probably 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. And 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.” 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, which is even more cost. So this whole thing was pushed to the back burner.
And then we found Google Flow Veo 3 AI video creation software
And it turns out you can pretty much do whatever you want. Whatever your imagination has, you can do it.
Now I’m going to play both of these ads for you during this podcast. So, 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 to see the visual for the podcast because it’s the visual you’re going to want to see on these ads.
One of the big issues with Google Flow Veo 3 is you can only create 8 seconds at a time. 8 seconds of video. And if you’re trying to create an advert, obviously the advert, one of them is about 56–58 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, which is an earlier version, in which case you can save scenes, you can save images, and you can create video based on those. But Google Flow V2 cannot do audio.
So I had to use Google Flow Veo 3, limited to 8 seconds. It cannot maintain information from one shot to the next. So if you have the psychic for example 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.
So without doing all that information at first, it created another version of this psychic and she was in a completely different coloured outfit. So I had to describe the colour and the type of outfit that she had in order to maintain consistency from one shot to the next. So every time you include a character in Google Flow Veo 3, you have to describe it exactly the same each time to try and get consistency. But even then, it sometimes flips out completely.
So in the Jaws scene, for example, that I’m going to play for you in a moment, 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.”
So let’s have a look at the first ad, which is the psychic ad.
[Music]
“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.”
“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. Uh, I’m going through a tunnel.”
“How do you even hang up on a psychic?”
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 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. That was the concept of it.
And you’ll have noticed when watching that ad as well that the businessman changed considerably throughout the ad. So 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. You don’t notice this lack of continuity because we’re just focusing on what’s going on.
There’s this famous scene with basketball with players playing basketball and you’re asked to count how many passes are made during this basketball game. It’s about 60 seconds long and then at the end of it it says did you see the gorilla? And you’re like, “What?” And then they play it back and there’s a guy dressed in a gorilla suit that walks in and around the basketball players and walks off again. No one notices it because they’re not focusing on that.
So continuity errors such as people changing what they’re wearing, moustaches appearing, disappearing, people going bald, people having hair from one shot to the next, most people never even notice. So you don’t need to worry about it. Which means Google Flow Veo 3 is perfect for creating this kind of content.
So let’s move on to the Jaws ad
“Sharks are really big at the moment. There is 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 then they’ve got all the Jaws movies as well because people are well into Shark. So it’s timed really well that we’re bringing out this Jaws-themed ad for Engage Web, but without in any way infringing on Universal’s trademark. There is nothing in it to identify it as Jaws whatsoever. That is important for me to say. So let’s roll VT on that one.”
[Music]
“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 offence.”
“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.”
[Music]
So that was the Jaws ad. There was a much longer ad originally which was about 1 minute 50 almost two minutes long which had every scene, every piece of dialogue that Robert Shaw’s character Quint said during Jaws, but it was referencing web design and digital marketing.
But as I cut all of that together I realised none of that was relevant. Let’s get it right down to the bare essentials. So the ad is just over a minute long. And then the last six or seven seconds is just the logo with the shark swimming. So effectively it’s a minute advert.
We will be cutting together reels, so you’ve got the horizontal for TikTok and for Instagram reels and for LinkedIn as well. We’ll be cutting together shorter versions for that.
Some of the prompts I’ve used are pasted below, so you can have a look for yourself.
Prompt example for Jaws ad
The scene is interior, in an old 1970s American school classroom. There is a black board, school tables, chairs and big windows that let in the light across the room. The walls are white. The window frames and doors and pale green.
A man is sat down next to the chalk board. His name is Quint. Quint is 60-years old. Slim build. 6ft tall. He is wearing a light blue shirt, with the top two buttons undone. He is wearing black trousers and fisherman’s boots. A grey baseball cap. He has a dark green fisherman’s jacket over his shirt. He has a small grey moustache, grey sideburns on his face and blue eyes. He speaks with a mix of a British, Cornish accents. He is based on Robert Shaw from Jaws.
Close up shot on Quint’s face. He speaks in a menacing way. Looking around at people’s faces in the room.
Do not add captions or subtitles.
Quint says:
“You’ve got to make up your minds. Gonna save your website and ante up? Or want to play it cheap, be on welfare the whole winter?”
Prompt example for Physic ad
The interior of a psychic medium’s shop. A psychic is sat at a table, with her crystal ball in front of her on the table. The psychic is white, in her 60s, dressed in elaborate purple psychic clothing, large hooped earrings, bellowing sleeves and long dark hair. On her right is a white business man, aged 55. He is wearing a grey suit, white shirt and black tie. He has grey hair and a handsome jaw line, with some white stubble.
Do not add captions or subtitles to the video. Do not add music.
The camera is in a wide shot on the two people. The psychic medium is using her crystal ball. The businessman is frustrated and angry as he can’t reach the person he wants to. Neither of them are saying anything. They are silent. The businessman is looking around him wondering if they will make contact with someone from the other side.
The camera is on a young Caucasian man, 26 years old, dressed in a white shirt. He is not wearing a tie. The top button of his shirt is undone in a casual manner. He is handsome, short black hair and a kind face. He is addressing the camera directly. Behind him, out of focus, is the backdrop of the inside of a psychic medium’s shop. He is inside the shop talking to the camera.
The camera is close up on his face.
He says:
“With our support team ready to make your website changes for you and it’s included in your price.”
How much did all of this cost?
In terms of budget and all the software that we used, Google Flow Veo 3 has an offer at the moment which is about $125 per month for three months and then it goes back up to about $250. It gives you 12,000 credits per month for that. And to create those two ads, the Jaws ad and the psychic ad, I used about 7,000 credits. I got about 5,000 credits left. So I could comfortably do another decent-sized ad. Or I could potentially do two smaller ads like the psychic ad because that was much easier to do than the Jaws ad.
So you could probably do four good video ads per month with those credits.
I also used Eleven Labs for the voice-over. Eleven Labs allows you to choose a voiceover artist that you want, feed it some text, and it will generate the text for you. It’s also got the capacity to emulate your own voice if you want to do that and create a digital version of yourself. You could even create your own version to do podcasts yourself. If you didn’t want to record your own podcasts or your own audiobook, that’s a bit more expensive, but the functionality is there.
In terms of music and in terms of the sound effects. We’ve got the music at the end of the Jaws ad. We’ve got the music all the way through the psychic ad. That was actually from Pixabay, which was completely free.
The special effects, the voice effects, sorry, the audio effects. So we’ve got the record scratch on the psychic ad, and we’ve got the murmuring, the crowd murmuring, and then the angry crowd in the middle of the Jaws ad. Those were all from Pixabay. Those were all completely free as well.
And then it was cut together using Adobe Creative Cloud, which is Premiere Pro. That’s obviously paid software that’s quite expensive. You can use CapCut for this. CapCut will allow you to edit this together. If you have that, then I’d recommend that.
If you are a bit of a video editor nerd, then obviously use the video editing software of your choice. You’ll get better results if you use something like Adobe or if you use something like Final Cut on a Mac.
That’s about that. It’s really simple to do. It’s a lot of fun to do. The only limit is your imagination. And just have fun with it. Just enjoy it and let me know how you get on.
I’d love to see some comments from people who’ve created videos themselves, who’ve had a go at Google Flow Veo 3, created some AI video, created some AI video ads, and what you’ve done. So I’ll catch you on the next podcast.
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
