His own time as a magazine journalist and consultant, inspired Simon to launch Crowdfindervideo.
Simon Elliott said: “The consultancy was under an NDA so I can’t say too much. What I can say is that I went into a business that was making news content. Their images and written content were good, close to market leading, but their video was six figures expensive and getting tens of viewers.”
Having led digital projects and transformations at military broadcaster BFBS, Sky News and Al Jazeera, Simon says he was surprised at what he found during his consultancy work: “This news publisher could have spent 10% of the money and had thousands of viewers. It was kind of heart breaking but they sum up the issue for a lot of content makers in the magazine market.
“Overworked editorial staff making the core product, telling great stories their readers want but struggling to make cost effective video. Asking them for consistent, audience growing video is next to impossible without experience of the start to finish process.”
Crowdfindervideo says it has several video pod style shows in production and aims to deliver the first before the summer. Simon Elliott added: “For our first client we’re making long forms and shorts for YouTube. Along with that we’ll supply reels for Insta, TikToks and LinkedIn video. We’ll supply thumbnails, titles and ready to upload files. They’ll also get audio files for Spotify.
“Our pod series Video for Magazines is a good starting point in how publishers should approach video. It’s a free resource for publishers who either want to make video inhouse or who want to commission in. If nothing else, it’ll mean they know some more of the questions to ask.”
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