Inside Elemmir - A story about efficiency, a referral program, and some more videos… October 2024

Introduction:

In this newsletter, Inside Elemmir, we will write about ongoing projects, new initiatives, and more. Our mission at Elemmir is to help transform our clients’ ability to produce compelling videos, pouring fuel on the fire of their sales and marketing efforts, and this newsletter offers some insights on how we are doing that. 

Newsletter at a glance:

+Founder David Delaney Mayer writes a short story about a project with Ajax Health and Stanford Athletics
+New referral program gives friends of Elemmir an opportunity to have a free video made!
+Some samples of videos produced by Elemmir out in the wild from Caret Legal and Kinetic Insurance 

A story from founder David Delaney Mayer about efficiency, featuring Ajax Health and… the Stanford Athletics department

It was an ordinary Wednesday in many ways. I rolled out of bed, made coffee. listened to the birds outside my foggy, uninsulated windows, then took my short commute to downtown Durham. On the way, I checked my calendar, listened to 89.7 FM (the classical station), and watched trees whip past the windows of my 2004 Toyota Corolla. Durham in summertime is magnificent.

My day was particularly busy, filled with meetings, which meant that when I got to the office, I immediately jumped on Zoom (the modern day workplace..). In the morning, I had an internal meeting with our head of ops Frank (as seen below on the left). We had some logistics to figure out with our editing team.

Then a few customer calls. Then there was a chunk of time I didn’t recognize blocked off in the evening: 4:00PM - 8:00PM “Hold for Shoot in Palo Alto.”  It seemed we had an on-site production in Palo Alto, California scheduled. My heart skipped as I thought about what I needed to prepare for the shoot. We were going to be interviewing some of the best college athletes in the world in Palo Alto, and here I was in Durham on my laptop having just now remembered it was happening... 

Two weeks earlier on July 19, we had received an email from one of our customers, Ajax Health, about a potential project, “We are running a two-week business bootcamp for Stanford student-athletes on Stanford’s campus July 29–Aug 8; We’d like to make a video we can use to promote the program for next year.” We love fast turnarounds, but 10 days to get together a full shoot was going to be tricky. 

Ajax Health is a leading investment firm that builds medical device companies. Their team is extremely impressive. Led by Duke Rohlen, they have a team made up of hard working, intelligent entrepreneurs. And, their work reflects this: their technologies quite literally save thousands of lives across the globe. Most of their work is confidential, so I can not write about the specifics, but suffice it to say that their devices save lives. 

They were launching a new program in partnership with Stanford Athletics with a simple, powerful thesis: athletes’ skillset translate extremely well to business, but currently their busy schedules do not allow them to realize this. Duke and the team at Ajax designed DRIVE, a two week long intensive program, that mentors college athletes into becoming business leaders.

This was the first year of the program, and they wanted to create a story to help spread the word. So, a small cohort of folks from Ajax and Stanford athletics, and I all jumped on calls to make it happen. They wanted Elemmir to create a video about this program. There were a few goals with the video, which made the storytelling a bit tricky. First, the video needed to showcase all that the program offered but without feeling clunky/boring. Second, the video was an opportunity to touch on a core theme: athletes’ skillsets translate to business, something that Duke and the team are passionate about. And finally, the video also needed to be something that Stanford athletics could use in their marketing materials.

So, Elemmir set about doing what we do best: making videos on tight timelines. We organized a shoot in Palo Alto for two weeks after the initial call with Ajax. We used our on-site model, meaning we sourced a filmmaker local to the site through our networks of filmmakers, and we worked with him to set up an interview shot that allowed me to remote in via Zoom. Frank sent out call sheets and schedules, and on the day of the shoot, it appeared on my schedule: “4:00PM - 8:00PM Hold for Shoot in Palo Alto.”

So, fast forward to two weeks later, and I was sitting at my computer waiting for the meeting to start. I pulled up my project brief that I had designed following the calls with Ajax and Stanford, and I spent about an hour before reviewing all the materials. I ran through the interview guidelines I had developed the week prior, and from the comfort of my desk in Durham, I prepared for the shoot. 

I’ve probably conducted over a thousand interviews in my life at this point, so when the time arrived, I felt prepared. Our camera guy who we hired on-site started up the Zoom, and this is what I saw, a gorgeous shot ready to roll:

I conducted 7 interviews over the next two hours in what turned out to be a remarkably efficient process. Our director of photography had been shooting all day, and he had just finished setting up the interview shot, filmed in Stanford’s hall of fame room. The athletes had just finished their last session of the program and were eager to share their experiences. So when I joined via Zoom, everyone was ready to roll.

By 8PM that evening, we wrapped shooting. I said goodbye to everyone, and I closed my laptop. The director of photography in Palo Alto meanwhile was packing equipment and preparing to leave from the shoot.

Heading home, I turned up 89.7fm and drove through downtown Durham darkening against the twilight hours, and I let the romantic sounds of Schubert’s Symphony number 9 take my mind: that day I had managed to do a number of customer calls, plan some things with Frank, send a dozen or so emails, as well as produce a brand in Palo Alto with some of the best student-athletes in the world, all from my desk in Durham.

It’s a remarkable thing to see this process start to take shape. It allows us to tell stories at a speed and scale that I have never experienced before.  It left me feeling very excited for where Elemmir is heading… 

Here’s the finished video we produced with Ajax and Stanford:

Referral Program: a new referral to a customer = a free video!

Elemmir is launching a new referral program, which we are very excited to share with you. The program is quite simple: every time someone refers us to a new customer who we start doing business with, we will make a free video! Elemmir works with marketing teams at B2B SaaS companies doing $2+ million in revenue. If you’re interested in strategizing on the best way to make a referral, feel free to reach out to david(at)elemmir.com.

To learn more about the program visit https://www.elemmir.com/referral-program

Elemmir videos in the wild

Finally, here are some more videos Elemmir has produced recently. The two below are with Caret Legal and Kinetic Insurance.

Remote Customer Story - Caret Legal

Onsite Customer Story - Kinetic Insurance

Stay in touch! Feel free to reach out with any and all questions.