Sam Pezz, previously a Producer at Thinkmodo, on branded entertainment

Brian Bosché:
Everyone welcome back to the creativeBTS podcast. This is Brian Bosché and today I am so excited to bring on Sam Pezz. Sam Pezz is a producer and a branded content expert. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Pezz:
Thanks for having me, Brian. And I learned how to pronounce your last name shortly before this. I hadn't considered the-

Brian Bosché:
Amazing.

Sam Pezz:
... accent mark.

Brian Bosché:
The Bosché. Yes.

Sam Pezz:
Bosché. Makes perfect sense.

Brian Bosché:
I get lazy. The extra couple of keystrokes to get that accent on there is often too overwhelming. So I leave it off a lot, but-

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Well that's why I shortened my last name. It is Pezzullo but-

Brian Bosché:
Yes.

Sam Pezz:
... people tend to mix up the Ls and Zs. So I just like to keep it simple for people.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. And there's another Brian Bosché with the accent too that's about my age white guy. It drives me crazy.

Sam Pezz:
Oh man. I hear that.

Brian Bosché:
And he's @BrianBosché on Twitter. I'm BrianPBosché because he a little older and he got the account before me.

Sam Pezz:
All right, well an initial is better than an underscore. I mean God forbid-

Brian Bosché:
True.

Sam Pezz:
... you have to have an underscore in your handle.

Brian Bosché:
Or at the Binge Mode the underscore where they make it part of the brand, then it might be okay from The Ringer. I like that. But regardless of Twitter accounts, we'd love to kind of start off discussing a little bit more about your professional background, because you've done some incredible work in the video branded content space and we'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah, thanks. At some point I'd love to talk more about what I've spent the better part of the last few years doing, but I think for your audience they might be most interested to learn more about what I did at a company called Thinkmodo where I spent six years from 2012 to 2018 producing branded viral promotions typically for films, but also some consumer brands. And we were essentially the leading viral marketing agency. I'm hesitant to say in the world, but really there was-

Brian Bosché:
Oh, come on, who was better?

Sam Pezz:
There really-

Brian Bosché:
Who had more?

Sam Pezz:
... like no one at the time that was creating the kind of content that we were and achieving that level of success, especially considering we were such a small team. They started the company, James and Michael in 2011 and they had interesting backgrounds. Michael was a video editor and had some success in the viral space and James had been a producer for SNL doing the commercial parody. So they partnered together in 2011 and they kind of created this new business model and at the time it was sort of ahead of the trend because we're in 2011, at this point, YouTube was still kind of gaining popularity. Facebook video-

Brian Bosché:
Yup. Very early.

Sam Pezz:
... was not even yet a contender as far as distribution. So they-

Brian Bosché:
LinkedIn didn't have videos yet. The all important LinkedIn upload video.

Sam Pezz:
LinkedIn was I think still in-

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Instagram was actually not even... I don't think Instagram even existed yet. Oh it might've been-

Brian Bosché:
Yeah, I think that's later-

Sam Pezz:
... but it hadn't-

Brian Bosché:
Just the start.

Sam Pezz:
... hadn't gone mainstream yet. They came up with this idea to create really bite-size shareable newsworthy content that was very subtly branded and release it digitally on YouTube and never pay for views or media, just kind of let it go viral organically. And they had a lot of success in that first year with a few videos, one of which you had mentioned was the Flying People for a film called Chronicle and that was for 20th Century Fox. And that kind of put them on every film studios' radar. So in 2012, they were finally looking to kind of expand and hire someone and I was introduced to James through a mutual friend from Tribeca Film Festival where I had worked for a few years prior to that and we hit it off and I sort of inherited this dream job and I remained with them for six years until the company shut down in 2018, but it was just us three for that entire time.

Sam Pezz:
So considering the reach of our videos, it is pretty impressive that we were such a small lean team, although we did have crews and specialists and fabricators from all reaches of the galaxy that we would bring on for any given project, but we were the three core members of the team and I learned so much there in my time. And also to kind of frame it, we were a one stop shop. We were sort of a hybrid production company, creative agency, distribution company. We handled every-

Brian Bosché:
Inventors.

Sam Pezz:
The inventors.

Brian Bosché:
Building the props.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah, I'll get to that.

Brian Bosché:
Engineering.

Sam Pezz:
Well, that was probably the biggest challenge is having to sort of go through this master class in mechanical engineering, which was so far from what I've ever learned or done professionally. So that was one of the bigger challenges of my role there. But we handled every aspect of the creation of these videos from brainstorming and ideation coming up with the concept, pitching the concept to the clients, overseeing the physical production and executing and creating the asset, editing it, and then actually seeding it, launching it and kind of making it go viral, which at the time was difficult, but once we kind of had this blueprint it almost always worked. I don't think that would be the case now. I think the landscape has kind of evolved so much. But we reached a lot of success and we were sort of well known for two styles of video. One was this hidden camera prank where we would create this outrageous scene in a public space that sort of somewhat related to typically a horror film and then we would capture people's reactions to it and we would create a montage. And those did really well.

Sam Pezz:
And then our other signature was building and fabricating these really complex, one of a kind gadgets or inventions or props. And typically that would be for a consumer brand like Verizon or Oakley or Amazon. So those were our two types of videos.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Well you mentioned starting in 2011, pretty early video internet. And I was right in the target market, just coming out of college. I saw all these videos, these were foundational to me kind of getting into media more and getting more into online video. I remember the Chronicle, Flying People in New York. It blew my mind. I remember The Baby, The Devil Baby in New York and all of those videos. So give us kind of a sense, was branded content a thing then, was branded entertainment a thing? Give us a sense of kind of in 2011, what was advertising like and was this kind of stuff done before?

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Well, as far as I was concerned, it wasn't a thing because I hadn't really been exposed to it yet. I came from a background working in sort of independent film production and film festival. So I hadn't really been exposed to this whole concept, which I guess was pretty novel at the time of creating shareable content that kind of subtly incorporated a brand or a message or an advertisement. But I do remember the kind of... the benchmarks at the time were like the Volvo John Claude Van Damme, Epic Split, which just went insanely viral and that was one of the early memories I had of witnessing a video that was essentially an advertisement catch on with mainstream audiences and become... It was like water cooler moment. There was that other video, Dumb Ways to Die, which was... I think it was for like an insurance company. I don't remember what it was for or something-

Brian Bosché:
I think it was Australia Transit. Like don't step in the subway or don't step on the tracks. Yeah.

Sam Pezz:
It was something yeah. Maybe it was like a PSA but-

Brian Bosché:
Public safety.

Sam Pezz:
... that little jingle that just caught on. I think those were like the early days of branded viral videos as far as I recall. So when we entered the scene, I think we had a unique approach and it just... I think because we were such a small team and we positioned ourselves more as a creative production company, rather than an ad agency, we just developed a really great relationship with movie studios and brands and we have this shorthand that we just... we cut through all the fat of going through the traditional process of creating content. And once our videos just consistently reached that level of virality... And again, none of it was paid for, it was all-

Brian Bosché:
No paid. Yeah.

Sam Pezz:
... organic. So people just trusted us and they just kind of handed us the keys creatively and let us do our thing, which was just such a luxury that I probably took for granted at the time.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned a couple of things for... You had the two kinds of different ways that you were producing content; The hidden cameras, the props. Having those kinds of set templates and a niche that you found, I still think can be applied today. So you're saying maybe the strategies then won't work now, but I see that on TikTok, I see that on viral videos now where you kind of find what you're really good at where people can trust you. You find a format that's flexible for a lot of different brands and a lot of different purposes, and you can kind of double down on them and you continue to get better at them and up yourself over and over again. But I think that's a great lesson is once you find the things that work, you can really put them into a lot of different formats and find continued success, because you basically knew they would go viral every time, almost every single one went viral.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. We knew that if we sort of hit our marks and we had these certain ingredients, that it was just a recipe for success and more often than not, it was just okay, in the case of the hidden camera, what you need to; A, wow people with the execution and create some kind of insane environment and show the behind the scenes and what it took to actually orchestrate that stunt. So not too different than what is considered now experiential marketing, but create like just elaborate environment for people to have an experience around, but more importantly capture really memorable fun reactions, and then do the montage. Because I mean, that formula is pretty well tested-

Brian Bosché:
It still works.

Sam Pezz:
It's like the hidden camera kind of model or a punk. So it wasn't that novel, but we sort of found our niche. And then with the inventions, it was, how do we fill a need? How do we create a luxury fantasy item that people would actually want? And again, wow people by not using CGI, but rather building it in the real world. So it becomes interesting for everyday consumers, but also like a tech crowd or what have you.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. So when you first started this, how did you get the... How did they get... before you joined, the first client to agree to something like this?

Sam Pezz:
If I recall, I think James given his background with media and NBC, I think he just had a connection to someone at a film studio in the marketing division and I think they probably just blindly pitched this idea and somebody bought it. Someone at that company would have been... Actually I may have misspoke because I don't think the Chronicle video was their first video. Their first video was for a company called HeadBlade where they created what looked like a razor that... I'm sorry, a helmet that automatically

Brian Bosché:
Oh the helmet. Yeah the helmet razor. I remember that one.

Sam Pezz:
And if I recall one or the two of them had a connection to the founder of that company, which was a small startup and kind of-

Brian Bosché:
Got it.

Sam Pezz:
... put faith in them to create this video, but... It certainly took a lot of-

Brian Bosché:
And kind of figure out that model.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. It took a lot of hustling and selling and that mentality never went away. We were always... We didn't solicit new business a lot. We would rarely reach out to clients proactively. We just developed such a reputation and there was so much word of mouth that clients would come to us and say, "This is what we want to promote. Can you come up with a concept?" In some cases we would look at a film distribution studios slate and say, "Okay, these are titles that would actually lend themselves well to what we do." So we would come up with an idea and pitch it, but we were always kind of hustling to sell ideas.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. And you mentioned, it sounds like you worked with a lot of films, a lot of consumer good companies.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah.

Brian Bosché:
What would you say the role of branded entertainment is for brands? Could any brand do it, does it work for specific industries really well? Is it 10% of what they should be doing, 80%? What are your thoughts on how brands and how this audience who's listening is mostly marketers can think about branded entertainment in their strategies?

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. I would definitely say that any brand can and should be creating content that is designed to go viral or be shared and talked about. Of course it really depends on what they're trying to communicate and what their message is, and whether that message lends itself to piece of video or a more traditional form of advertising like... I wouldn't say a print ad because those are basically obsolete. But a billboard or... other types of advertising, but there should always be a budget for video creation. And I think I can talk more about that a little later when I talk about what I'm currently doing with Tribeca, which is if you think that what we did at Thinkmodo was subtly branded, the kind of projects that I'm focused on now are... You would never, in a million years guess that some of them are supported by or funded by brands because it's really actually just brand supported filmmaking and storytelling, which I think is so much more interesting and potentially valuable for brands now in these unprecedented times to-

Brian Bosché:
Yes, yes.

Sam Pezz:
... make content that doesn't look or feel like a commercial or advertising and just is designed to really resonate with people and kind of reach them on some sort of emotional level.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Well, I've loved... not trend, but I've loved that more marketing teams have started working with filmmakers and telling these stories. I interviewed REI about the Paul's Boots short film, where they took the... I think it was a New Zealand hiker, whose dream... Do you remember that one?

Sam Pezz:
I do. And they did something really great this year. It was a feature length documentary called Return to Mount Kennedy. It was a... Anything that involves mountain climbing, I'm in. Sort of like solo paddle, but yeah, REI is one in particular that does really cutting edge branded filmmaking and storytelling well.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah, and it's so effective because I mean just buys into their brand, but that's what people want to watch and it's very emotional and very outdoor driven.

Sam Pezz:
Right.

Brian Bosché:
And his breakdown was like, "We're going to hire filmmakers who do this better than anyone in the world, rather than our marketing team." Trust those creatives to really tell that story. And then you don't even know it's REI, but it's so REI. Like it's just such the REI ethos that you just associated with it automatically.

Sam Pezz:
Exactly. YETI is another one that just creates incredible short films that just... They align perfectly with the spirit of what YETI is, but there's like one minuscule moment of product placement, but that just organically ties into the subject so well that you just... It's brilliant. But-

Brian Bosché:
Have you seen B2B companies do it well?

Sam Pezz:
Well, I mean, if you consider HP B2B company because... But no, I mean, I think that the division that creates the branded storytelling for HP is more directed at consumers.

Brian Bosché:
The consumers?

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. No, I don't really know much about the B2B space to be honest.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. It seems like there's opportunities there to innovate because I'm at Smartsheet, so we're very B2B SaaS. I look at companies like Square, which I want to discuss with their Tribeca, but that's still consumer based, they're still trying to get people... I guess it's kind of the B-to-B-to-C. It gets a little bit of a mix-

Sam Pezz:
Right. Exactly.

Brian Bosché:
... but I've always like B2B seems to follow the B2C models and the media models and I think there's such an opportunity there to tell those stories a little bit better, but you're right. I can't really think of any now off the top of my head either.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. I'm sure if I thought hard about it, I could come up with a few, but as you know, from my tweet, I didn't prepare for this.

Brian Bosché:
No worries. So I actually want to go into the case study of the Tribeca Film Festival and what you're doing there now to take some of this branded content learning. So can you give me a quick pitch on what you're working with them on?

Sam Pezz:
Sure. So just a little backstory prior to joining Thinkmodo in 2012, I had spent three years working with Tribeca right out of college in various capacities, kind of overseeing different elements of the festival. And then I left for Thinkmodo and I was there for six years. And then when I left Thinkmodo, it was because the company shut down. So I was really in this interesting kind of transitional phase. I had so much hands on creative experience, but it was also in such an untraditional environment where I gained so much kind of entrepreneurial experience and learning the ins and outs of running a business and what that whole process looks like and I was just so fascinated by it that I thought, "Okay, well, I definitely don't want to go get a traditional agency job and I don't want to consider moving to LA and working at one of the studios in the marketing department. I think I really want to try and replicate what we did at Thinkmodo with my own production company." So I formed a company called Mostly, which will hopefully create content across all types of divisions. One of them being that kind of sharable viral content, but I also want to expand into more traditional methods of filmmaking and narrative and nonfiction storytelling.

Sam Pezz:
So ironically right around the time that Thinkmodo ended, I was approached by my former colleagues at Tribeca to join the team and oversee this program, the section of the festival called Tribeca X, which was new at the time and they were looking to really expand upon it. And what Tribeca X is, it's a whole section that recognizes branded storytelling, but very different from the kind of branded work that I did at Thinkmodo, which would have been considered way too heavily marketing driven and considered advertising. They-

Brian Bosché:
The marketing stunts and things like that.

Sam Pezz:
Right. They want to recognize collaborations between brands and filmmakers in many forms, long form, short form, episodic and immersive. So I kind of inherited this incredible role where I get to oversee all the programming for that section and kind of selecting all of the pieces that get recognized as finalists and then selecting the jury that awards one winner in each category. And we screen all the works, of course, not this year because the festival was canceled. But there's also a live component. So it's a full day of panels and presentations. So programming all of that live content and overseeing the production of that day really kind of took advantage of my skills as a producer and then allowed me to explore this whole other area of branded storytelling, which is just creating really artful story-driven content that focuses either on a narrative, that's a scripted film that looks... Not dissimilar to what you would see in a movie theater or a documentary that follows really interesting subjects.

Sam Pezz:
So we'll see. I think right now we're in an interesting stage at the festival. I'm still with them, but my role is sort of obsolete during these next few months. It kicks into high gear in the fall, but we're still trying to reimagine what next year is going to look like because of COVID. So I'm now at a stage where I'm looking to kind of combine my two areas of expertise, so pitching ideas to brands that I've built relationships with and combining that viral technique and how to create something that people want to watch and share, but also something that's really artful and well crafted and more cinematic and story driven.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Well, the one I really liked was the Forged in Flint. And I think that was a finalist. I don't think you've picked the winners, correct? So you're still kind of waiting for-

Sam Pezz:
No. We did. I didn't...

Brian Bosché:
Oh, you picked them?

Sam Pezz:
We had our jury select and announce the winners. Forged in Flint did not win in the short category. Another film called Pay Day won for Synchrony-

Brian Bosché:
Oh nice.

Sam Pezz:
... which-

Brian Bosché:
Yup. I saw that one too.

Sam Pezz:
... was a fantastic film. And actually the filmmaker who won in the short category is named Morgan Cooper. He also won for his feature film for Adorama called U Shoot Videos? I would highly recommend both of those-

Brian Bosché:
Oh wow.

Sam Pezz:
But Forged in Flint was one of my favorites so I had selected it as a finalist. And I've been in touch with Nick over at Square. He's a great guy. They'd won in the past. They'd won the Tribeca X Award in the past for some of their other documentary work, but they set the bar really high in that space where they just... A, they know how to craft a really interesting story and they know how to execute really beautifully. It just looks and sounds really, really high caliber. And the subjects are just really interesting relatable people and they typically focus on the small business owners that use their product. But in this case it was just genius to focus it on the community and Flint, because it's such a local small town that has all of these preconceived notions it because of the water crisis.

Sam Pezz:
So it was the perfect focus because it resonated with so many people outside of that community, simply because it was a globally recognized area and to focus on the people in that community who are rebuilding the community through their businesses and using Square was genius and you might say kind of ironic and ahead of its time given COVID and how much focus is now being placed on small business owners and rebuilding. And also one thing that Square does impeccably is recognize a diverse group of people. And I think that's something that is to be admired and acknowledged because all of their films really focus on, I think a lot of underrepresented communities.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah, well, that one hit home for me, especially because I spent three years in Detroit right after college. My wife is from Flint, born in Flint, grew up in the Flint suburbs.

Sam Pezz:
Oh wow.

Brian Bosché:
So I was pretty involved with Opportunity Detroit, which was Dan Gilbert from Quicken Loans and the Cavs initiative to bring back small businesses to downtown Detroit. Because the Detroit suburbs are pretty vibrant, very wealthy communities, but the actual downtown area where we all worked, trying to get the coffee shops back, trying to get the diners back, trying to get retail, bringing in cool activations so people can actually try out their shops. And I spent some time in Flint as well when the whole state in that area is recovering and rebuilding, but having Square there, we had a lot of different branded partners come to Detroit and Flint to try to help rebuild. And it is the perfect marriage of Square's brand trying to enable entrepreneurs, enabling people to make a business and making a living for themselves and communities that have been hit really hard and really lowering the barrier of entry. Yeah, I love that one. I thought it was a perfect match for them and glad to see them recognized and that you are highlighting them at Tribeca.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah.

Brian Bosché:
You get more talented people when you have these awards to actually showcase.

Sam Pezz:
Right. It's unfortunate that they didn't get to have the moment that they deserved. I mean, they would have typically had a screening in a theater with audiences and the day event would have probably incorporated them into some panel. I'm sort of still disappointed that we didn't get to see that to fruition, but there's always next year and I have no doubt that they're going to create something equally as brilliant this time next year.

Brian Bosché:
How do you think filmmakers view branded content? Do they see it as lesser or that it's more like selling out or it's not as pure as traditional filmmaking? What's kind of the perception there with this branded entertainment category?

Sam Pezz:
I think some might think that it's beneath them in a sense. But I think ultimately they're probably attracted to the money generating opportunity because I think that a lot of filmmakers can earn a lot of money by collaborating with brands that will hopefully trust their vision and just let them do their thing. Nowadays I think it's more common to see brands like Squarespace partnering with the likes of Spike Jones, Oscar nominated filmmakers or AT&T with Errol Morris or any number of... Olivia Wilde directed a film for HP. So it's becoming more and more common for really A list filmmakers and talent to collaborate with brands because I think the stigma is totally gone. I think we've... Brands have evolved enough to the point where they can create really artful content that has integrity that traditional filmmakers will get on board with.

Brian Bosché:
And it just opens up a lot more opportunities.

Sam Pezz:
It does. Yeah.

Brian Bosché:
Now there's only so many... There's only so much budget that traditional filmmaking has where if you're in a B2B SaaS company, you're getting 75% margins on every sale and that can fund a lot of marketing and filmmaking-

Sam Pezz:
Right.

Brian Bosché:
... and just gives more creatives access to actually produce films.

Sam Pezz:
It does. And it's also interesting from a distribution standpoint for any creator who's typically working in a film for theatrical distribution or streamer to go into a project knowing that it's going to be distributed online and therefore the reach is somewhat unlimited. I think it's probably an allure to know that you're creating content that has the potential to reach and be seen by a lot of people who might not see your work otherwise.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Well, it's good to see the stigma broken down. You see that with like people signing with Netflix and how that didn't... That had a little stigma when that started too where it wasn't the big budget studios and it was kind of, "Oh, what's this new model? It's just going on Netflix." It's if it's not being released in a theater, is it a real film? And you see that at the Academy Awards, but I'm glad those barriers are being broken down because it gives a lot more opportunity.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Branded content is not reality television, which I think is the one area any sort

Brian Bosché:
Still stigmatized.

Sam Pezz:
... would be apprehensive to enter.

Brian Bosché:
That's very funny. We could go on a whole topic of reality TV production. Maybe I'll try to get a producer on one of those on or something. Do the Desperate Housewives or something that would be-

Sam Pezz:
Oh that would be Real Housewives.

Brian Bosché:
... that would be a fascinating... Real Housewives, sorry. Desperate Housewives is just real TV. Sorry, that's my bad.

Sam Pezz:
Real TV. It could have though inspired The Real Housewives. It did.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. And creativeBTS, we try to go an actual case studies on actual campaigns, videos. So would love to go over a few of the most viral campaigns that Thinkmodo went through. So we discussed a few. I'd love to kick off with Bubba Watson, PGA golfer and his hovercraft which you don't CGI anything. It's actually a hovercraft. I saw it on water as well as on the greens.

Sam Pezz:
All there.

Brian Bosché:
Can't believe you pulled that off, walk us through that process and kind of what it was like actually producing that.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Well, if you thought that was impressive, the next iteration of Bubba's hover was called Bubba's jet pack, which was a project that nearly killed us at Thinkmodo. It took several years to actually see to the fruition. But I would just preface it by saying that one of the biggest challenges of my job at Thinkmodo was these projects that involve some really complex fabrication. It was my job to kind of oversee the process of creating that. And that would involve just trying to wrap my head around technologically what was involved with making it and understanding and recognizing what the potential setbacks would be and there were many. Anytime you're working with a prototype much less an aircraft, you can imagine that things just don't always go according to plan. So the process of navigating through that was very challenging, but also exciting kind of learning this new vocabulary and just really understanding what it takes to create something in the real world.

Sam Pezz:
But the Bubba's Hover campaign initiated... Oakley approached us and said that they wanted to promote... And you have to forgive me because this was many years ago and I'm now three months into quarantine and my brain is somewhat gone to[crosstalk 00:27:52]-

Brian Bosché:
Quarantine brain.

Sam Pezz:
I'm digging into the depths of my memory here, but we were approached by the digital marketing team at Oakley to create a video, not necessarily around the Oakley product, but they wanted to focus more on Bubba's involvement with Oakley. And I don't recall if he was creating like a special collaboration or align, or... There was some involvement with the upcoming PGA Tour, I believe in any that they wanted to create a piece of content that incorporated their product, their sunglasses in the golf space and they had access to Bubba Watson. And prior to that, we were sort of averse to working with any sort of celebrity talent because we found that it could, in some ways have a chilling effect on the media and just... It seemed almost a little too commercial and a little bit...

Brian Bosché:
Not as organic. Yeah.

Sam Pezz:
Obviously a piece of branded content that it might deter media outlets from covering it or whatnot, but we figured, "Okay, let's experiment here." So we-

Brian Bosché:
But Bubba is Bubba. He's one of the unique personalities on the Tour.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Bubba is Bubba. I wasn't particularly familiar with prior to that, but met him. He's a great guy. I think a God fearing person, whatever that means, but I know he's very religious. So he came in very graciously and was just very willing to appear in whatever concept we designed for him. So we went through a few rounds of brainstorming and I think one of the original ideas we had was we were going to create a video that involved Bubba, teeing off down the fairway and we were going to place all of these outrageous distractions around him, like a marching band, wild animals, all of these kinds of insane things that were meant to distract him that wouldn't distract him and just prove what a precise, professional golfer he was when he was carrying the Oakley gear. And one of the scenarios that we came up with was that a golf cart hovercraft would ride by just kind of for humor and then we thought, "Hm, that could be just as interesting to kind of create an entire idea around a hovercraft." It's like-

Brian Bosché:
And the hovercraft car-

Sam Pezz:
A fantasy item that any golfer would want because; A, it's cool. B, it kind of makes the process of driving around a golf course more exciting, sexier, and also easier because you could glide right over the water traps. So that was the thesis of the concept. Let's create a physical device that makes the game of golf better and easier, and anyone would wish they could have, but it's not feasible because it's just too elaborate. And so we sold it to Oakley. They loved the idea. And then we identified a number of different hovercraft builders in the Midwest, I believe, or maybe it was Texas. I can't remember where.

Brian Bosché:
Who knew there were hovercraft creators that commercially produced these things.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. There are builders for every imaginable gadget or vehicle that you could think of. So after sort of a vetting process, we were able to partner with the right company who understood what we wanted to design and we just custom designed this hovercraft that was retrofitted with the traditional elements of a golf cart. So the roof and the siding, and then the back for the bags and the sand traps and all of the kind of traditional gear that you would need to play golf and to maneuver the golf course, but built onto a hovercraft. That alone, I think would have been enough to go viral because it was... It satisfied a desire and it was just so cool and outrageous. I think-

Brian Bosché:
It looks incredibly imposing on the course. Like it is a legitimately huge hovercraft that looks like you're in the future.

Sam Pezz:
It's not as big as you might've imagined.

Brian Bosché:
But on the screen, it just like pops out. It's not just like, oh, a little kid hovercraft, it's kind of cutesy. It's like a legitimate vehicle.

Sam Pezz:
It would definitely a vehicle. And it had a... What's the word I'm looking for? A feature where it would... I mean, like the... I don't know what the base is called of a hovercraft, I did at the time, but it sort of inflates and deflates command. So it was really cool to watch it kind of come to life. And in the video, you can see the kind of renderings that we used before we created it. And so kind of managing that process was fascinating and then it was one of the easier props I will say that we built because the hovercraft technology is pretty tested and-

Brian Bosché:
Pretty tested.

Sam Pezz:
Not nearly as complex as some of the other things we built. So once we found the right team to actually retrofit it to look like a golf cart, and we had access to Bubba. We threw him into the mix and we shot the video in Arizona at a golf course. It was pretty heavily branded by our standards because there was Oakley product all over the place and there was a known celebrity endorsing it, but it was still fun and light enough that it just caught on with the tech media initially that's sort of how we would see videos. We would choose a influential media outlet and kind of arrange a story with them to kind of announce and kickoff the surprise.

Brian Bosché:
Was this during the brainstorming process or after you'd already shot the video?

Sam Pezz:
Oh no, no. We never arranged any media until after we had like a finished

Brian Bosché:
Got it.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah.

Brian Bosché:
So you still create the idea independently of any media source or anything like that?

Sam Pezz:
Always. Yeah. And we very much work in stages where, "Okay, we're in the brainstorm phase now." In some cases we were juggling multiple projects at once, which was hard to kind of be in the ideation phase on one and the distribution phase on another, but we multi-tasked really well. So we went from coming up with the idea, pitching it, selling it, producing it, editing it, and then we arranged... Might've been Gizmodo or TechCrunch or Mashable. One of those media outlets to kind of break the story and introduce this world's first golf cart hovercraft. And it just predictably kind of spread like wildfire from there and it got picked up by so many different media outlets and that added to the uptick in the YouTube view count.

Sam Pezz:
And then the other really unique part of our business model, which I haven't discussed yet was that we would deliberately create content that was launched online, but really designed to capture the interest of television media news.

Brian Bosché:
Oh, interesting.

Sam Pezz:
Because that was so valuable to brands, and it was sort of media... earned media that money just couldn't buy. And at the time almost every local news station and also the big news programs like Today Show and Good Morning America and then on the film side, all the entertainment evening news shows, they all had like a what's trending segment. So they all had a need for this content. So we were lucky enough to establish great relationships with both the Today Show and then all of the evening entertainment shows and also some business programs as well, where we became content providers to them and they would agree to do segments that incorporated aspects of our video and mentioned the brand for free. Whereas you would typically have to pay millions of dollars for the kind of media coverage that we were able to deliver. So-

Brian Bosché:
What kind of-

Sam Pezz:
Today show, we did an entire segment with them and we had Matt Lauer and Al Roker. We went out to... I'm afraid to say the location, a golf course in New Jersey that may or may not be affiliated with political-

Sam Pezz:
It was the only option we had at the time and it was the most cost effective, and it was also pre presidency. So we shot this incredible segment with Matt and the whole team from the Today Show. And then they did a six minute segment on their show that got four million viewers right there, whatever the viewership was, which translated to X amount of... or immediate dollars for the brand. So they were thrilled with the performance. I think the video itself on YouTube got like eight or 10 million views, which was substantial at the time, considering all organic, we didn't pay any... And it got probably a billion impressions and just, it got picked up on every major sports, e-commerce... Sorry, fashion, tech media outlet, you could have imagined. So that was a huge success for us.

Brian Bosché:
Is there a formula that they wanted? Like how did you make content for TV other than the relationships? Was there a certain formula you used or that they asked for?

Sam Pezz:
No, their interest was purely, "Oh, this has gone viral. This is trending."

Brian Bosché:
It's trending.

Sam Pezz:
"Okay. People are talking about this. Let's do an exclusive segment around it." And we would offer them the exclusive segment because it then became like newsworthy, valuable content for them to air on their show. But then when the Today Show is covering something or Entertainment Tonight is covering something or CNBC is covering something, then a lot of local news also pick up that same story and then we had every local news station across the country and globally doing segments on our video. And they would invariably without question mention the brand, because it just kind of put the whole thing into context. So it was just such a winning formula and we had-

Brian Bosché:
Especially with the props.

Sam Pezz:
With the props-

Brian Bosché:
With the props, you can reuse them while if you do a prank, you can't really reuse a prank on exclusive for just... Maybe you could. You're more

Sam Pezz:
We did. We used some of our-

Brian Bosché:
You recreated it? Well, I guess you could do it again, but like the props is like you can bring the hovercraft and do an exclusive segment with the hovercraft.

Sam Pezz:
You're absolutely right. That was actually one of the reasons why we chose to never do anything CGI was because if you have a physical asset, it's so valuable for media opportunities like that. And we did that with so many different campaigns, but we also scared the shit out of a lot of celebrities and anchors and talent in the same vein of one of our hidden camera pranks and those were a lot of fun.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. So we covered the prop. Let's go to the other specialty that you're known for, which is the hidden camera prank. As we discussed before the pod, I did not want to do Devil Baby because it terrified me growing up and seeing this online, but we're going to do Devil Baby because it hit home. So give the quick creative brief of Devil Baby.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. Devil Baby was for a film called Devil's Due which was by 20th Century Fox. And it was sort of a modern day version of Rosemary's Baby. And I think the studio came to us and they said we want to create a video to promote this film. They probably offered us an opportunity to read the script, but we were just kind of averse to that. It was never really helpful to read the script. We always just said like, give us a treatment, give us the elevator pitch, what is the film about? And when it came to film promotions, our method was to typically just take one element from the film, one unique aspect and then amplify it in the real world in some really extreme way. So in this case, okay, she's pregnant with the spawn of hell, this demon child which I don't think they ever actually reveal in the film. You never see the baby. So we thought let's focus a video on the baby. And so we pitched them the idea, I think at that point...

Sam Pezz:
I can't remember if we had worked with Creature Effects at that point yet, or if this was our first project with them, but they're really skilled animatronics and prop creation house in LA, and they've done some incredible Oscar worthy films. But they can create an animatronic, the most lifelike creature, anything you could possibly think of. So we partnered with them to build this little animatronic baby that was just very, very sophisticated. It had really incredible features where it could articulate its face and blink its eyes and open its mouth. And we just figured that visual alone is so interesting, but what was-

Brian Bosché:
I wouldn't say interesting. I would say terrifying.

Sam Pezz:
Terrifying. Yes. But meaning the actual... the creation of it would be interesting for people because like I said, we always add some sort of BTS element to the start of the video where we kind of give people a glimpse at what was involved in executing and how we staged everything because the success of those hidden camera pranks was sort of relying on two things, one, the admiration for how we executed it and B, the entertainment value of the reactions we captured.

Brian Bosché:
And people love BTS. Right.

Sam Pezz:
People love-

Brian Bosché:
Even you find on TikTok. Even now, like the BTS always performs better than the actual end result, which is very interesting.

Sam Pezz:
Exactly.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah, I loved how you incorporated both in the same videos.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. So I think once we knew that we wanted to build a really crazy, scary prop, we needed the environment. And I don't know how we determined to actually put it on the street in this scenario, as opposed to traditionally we had done stuff inside where we could easily control the environment, but we decided in this case, "No, let's build a stroller. Let's place the animatronic baby in the stroller." It had the functionality to actually pop up from the stroller, which was like the first initial scare. And then it also had the capability to move around and look really lifelike and vomit and do all these wild things to kind of enhance the reactions, which was another strategy I'll get to. But essentially we were able to build this prop, this baby stroller with the animatronic inside and speakers rig, and we placed it on the streets of New York over the course of like five days.

Sam Pezz:
Unfortunately we did it during the polar vortex in New York in 2014 when it was bitterly cold and the machine kept malfunctioning because the batteries were freezing. I mean, that whole shoot was plagued with so many challenges being outside in the elements with this prop, which was frigging expensive, having the entire team from LA come to operate it because we couldn't operate it. And then having to capture reactions of passers by on the street. So in order to do that, we had a sound effect. So we would kind of dessert the stroller on a corner and then we would cue the sound, which was a baby crying. And it was really loud. So naturally you have people walking in New York and they see an abandoned baby stroller and hear a baby crying. You have enough good Samaritans in New York to approach the stroller. And once we did that, we would activate the devil baby and it'd pop up, and to this day, I don't think we captured better reactions during a video because it was-

Brian Bosché:
Where you hiding?

Sam Pezz:
... startling that you just have the initial scream, which is what... That's like the money shot. And then it would increasingly get crazier and you'd have the thing move around and people were shocked.

Brian Bosché:
I know it thrashed around.

Sam Pezz:
One of our formulas was how do we create a sort of stages of people being scared so that the video feels like it's building to like a crazy climax.

Brian Bosché:
So how did you hide? Where's the whole crew? Where are you operating?

Sam Pezz:
Oh, we were all scattered like within... Whatever the range was for the remote controls, probably like 30 feet, I would say we were all-

Brian Bosché:
So just hanging out, pretending to be part of the public?

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. In New York city, you're on the streets of Manhattan in different neighborhoods. We went to Harlem, we went to The Meatpacking, we went to Soho, we went into Midtown, we went into Brooklyn. So yeah, I mean, you're not... There's people everywhere, so we never looked sort of sinister or like we were lurking. But yeah-

Brian Bosché:
The thrashing and the elevation of the scariness got me watching the video too. Because the initial fright is like, "Oh, maybe it's just a robot or a prank." But then once it starts thrashing and throwing up and you're just like, "What is happening?" And like really elevates it.

Sam Pezz:
And it looked like fairly realistic and that added to it. But that was another one that we did a segment with the Today Show and Fox Business and... The week that that video came out, it was shortly... It was our next campaign after, The Carrie, a telekinetic coffee shop video, which had like 60 million views and was everywhere. And that really put us on the map as far as like the pranksters, the guys that scare the shit out of people and then Devil Baby was next and it reached a very similar level of success. And when we were walking through Manhattan with the Devil Baby that week to go to our various media appearances, it was like Paul McCartney. I mean, people were coming up to the Devil Baby and taking selfies and it was just unreal how popular that video was. That's one of the videos where I've had this experience in my travels where I'll go... whether somewhere in the country, in the States, or even in Europe, I'll meet people and when I talk about what I've done, they've seen these videos, which to me it's always like a pinch me moment.

Sam Pezz:
It's kind of inconceivable that something I worked so intimately on has been seen by so many people, which is kind of like the biggest reward from my time at Thinkmodo I think.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. And any creative. Just to know people-

Sam Pezz:
Right. Of course.

Brian Bosché:
... have seen your work is so special. Yeah.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah.

Brian Bosché:
So when you're doing this work with the clients, is it earned media? Do you tie it back to revenue and ticket sales for these films? What were you actually setting out to do and what would you report back to the client on the more business side?

Sam Pezz:
Yeah. In the case of the film promos, we would always strategically release the video either one week or at the most two weeks prior to the release date. And the goal was to generate enough awareness to drive people into theaters and translate into box office success. And there were varying degrees of effectiveness when it came to that, but at the very least more people were talking about their film and they got more publicity and press than they ever would have otherwise. But it's really hard. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force them to drink. So it is quite hard to convince people after just seeing and being entertained by a video to actually physically go somewhere and buy a ticket and sit through a movie that they might not have been interested in to begin with.

Brian Bosché:
Or track it.

Sam Pezz:
Right.

Brian Bosché:
I's hard to link it.

Sam Pezz:
Right. But still we always had satisfied clients because they understood what the stakes were and they understood what the measure of success was and it was really just about awareness for the film. But on the consumer brand side it would typically translate to web traffic or increased sales of a product and brand awareness and just how much coverage we could get. And I don't know, off the top of my head how successful we were like analytically, but I know that we were successful in all cases where the brands were always satisfied with the amount of media coverage and the uptick in sales that we were able to deliver.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting to see these early prank videos because right now YouTubers, TikTok creators, people who go viral now do these pranks, it's almost... It's the same formula where they'll... David Dobrik on TikTok did the elephant, the world's elephant toothpaste experiment where it shot off at their home in LA. And you see these people, it's like every person now has their own TV channel-

Sam Pezz:
I know.

Brian Bosché:
... with their own TikTok accounts. So what do you think of these prank videos now with everyone trying to kind of one up each other to keep getting that ad revenue or those sponsorships and branded content for themselves?

Sam Pezz:
Well, I think that it's undeniably just like an effective form of content because it keeps people engaged and laughing and entertained, and it's just fun, easily watchable content. I think that it's sort of subpar on the sophistication scale and I think what we did at Thinkmodo, we sort of broke the mold as far as creating these really elaborate scenes. But that just goes to show that you can nowadays just be equally as successful with a very simple scenario or prank.

Brian Bosché:
Or you guys never harmed anyone or like some of the pranks now might go a little overboard with actually affecting people where they break things or... There's like the licking the ice cream in a store and then putting it back, those types of pranks.

Sam Pezz:
I haven't seen... Frankly, I'm not that dialed into that whole culture anymore because for reasons I just want to evolve a little bit, do different-

Brian Bosché:
But it's filmmaking.

Sam Pezz:
Well, yeah. No argue.

Brian Bosché:
Come on Sam. It's modern filmmaking.

Sam Pezz:
It's entertainment that's for sure. But no, we never put anyone in danger or put people in an environment where there was that layer of... Yeah. Anything. That extreme-

Brian Bosché:
Sophisticated.

Sam Pezz:
Sophisticated art.

Brian Bosché:
I like that.

Sam Pezz:
But yeah, I think that there's always going to be an appetite for that type of content. I think it's just... Like I said, it's the candid camera model. People like to see other people react to things in a comical way and kind of imagine what you would do in that scenario, whether it's Cash Cab or whether it's Michael Carbonaro or whoever is like the new prankster on the scene.

Brian Bosché:
Yep. Yep. Definitely. Well, I like to end every creativeBTS with a parting shot.

Sam Pezz:
Parting shot of alcohol?

Brian Bosché:
Parting shot... No, not a parting shot of alcohol. It's too early for that here.

Sam Pezz:
Oh, I was going to say [crosstalk 00:49:09].

Brian Bosché:
In sports. There's like the sign off from the newscaster where they like will tell a story and then they'll get to do this like two or three minute monologue of their parting shot that kind of condenses everything. So if you had wisdom that you want to give to the audience, if you have advice, what would your parting shot be?

Sam Pezz:
My parting shot would be... I would say-

Brian Bosché:
Other than like a whiskey shot.

Sam Pezz:
Yeah, my parting shot-

Brian Bosché:
Which is where your mind went right away.

Sam Pezz:
Casamigos chilled with a lime wedge. My parting shot would no longer be so going line, which I would do in college and so repulse myself at the thought of it. But no, my parting shot of any sort of advice in the branded content space would be your goal should be to create content that resonates with people in some way. I think that needs to be the goal always. And I think whether it's... You need to want to elicit some sort of reaction from people, whether it's laughter or outrage or a sadness or emotion or something. I think that that is a winning formula to create content that will ultimately... People will watch it, but more importantly, they'll want to share it. And I think that is kind of always like the goal in today's digital online culture is to create shareable buzz-worthy content. And I think that's one way is to just kind of appeal to people's emotions.

Sam Pezz:
And then if you can do that for a brand and successfully communicate whatever their messaging is then you kind of hit the jackpot because you can paid to do it. But always experiment too. I think that people need to just kind of find their niche on social media and shoot more content. I love the stuff that you shoot. I think your camera work is really cool. And like I said-

Brian Bosché:
Thank you.

Sam Pezz:
... at one point, you should be kind of a spokesperson for Visit Seattle because you convinced me that it's not this gloomy dreary place that I always-

Brian Bosché:
Beautiful. Yeah.

Sam Pezz:
... thought it was. Just the sunsets and the colors and the blue skies are-

Brian Bosché:
Thank you iPhone 11 for superior camera technology.

Sam Pezz:
It's good stuff. I would also say always shoot in a 16:9.

Brian Bosché:
Yeah.

Sam Pezz:
That's-

Sam Pezz:
... a little tip because maybe you'll shoot something good enough to become a television series or something and that's just a better aspect ratio. At least it is now, who knows? That's sort of-

Brian Bosché:
Casamigos and 16:9.

Sam Pezz:
Casamigos and 16:9.

Brian Bosché:
Love it. And emotional connection.

Sam Pezz:
Emotional connection.

Brian Bosché:
Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on Sam.

Sam Pezz:
Thank you so much.

Brian Bosché:
It was great chatting and learning more about branded entertainment. Hope you have a good one.

Sam Pezz:
Likewise.