Social Motion Media is a digital content agency based in Vancouver. We spoke with co-founder and Creative Director, Jennifer Mawby about bringing visual art to content marketing and finding a workflow solution for the full lifecycle of a project.
Social Motion Media is a digital content micro-agency
We focus on short-form video and animation for brand marketing with a growing emphasis on mobile screens and social media channels. We’re in Vancouver, Canada but our clients are from all around the world and do all sorts of things. Visual content platform Olapic is based in New York, kitchen equipment brand Cleanblend is in California and we’ve just started a project with a designer in Australia.I combined my art and business sides to create a new work life
I was working as a technology project manager but have a visual art background. Seeing what was happening with digital and content marketing, I realized that my post-grad experience making short looping films and stop-motion animation was perfect for social media channels like Instagram. My co-founder Mark Glover Masterson has a screenwriting and documentary film background, so between the two of us we have a unique skillset for making the kind of content that brands now need.
“The Big One” from Social Motion Media on Vimeo.
We’re often consultants as much as we are content producers
Cleanblend had considered a lot of other video content producers but came to us because of our distinct style, which they described as a “quirky Wes Anderson thing”. But they first needed to understand exactly what they should be doing with their marketing. We had a series of meetings and developed multiple proposals to establish what their content program should look like. Only after that six-week period did we have a creative brief and could finally start making some videos.
Spin the Bottle – “Shoe Magic” from Social Motion Media on Vimeo.
My sister introduced us to Hightail
We were using a variety of platforms to manage our digital assets. Dropbox for transferring files, Flickr to handle our archive of photos and email for exchanging feedback. But I wanted a better, unified way to deal with this workflow. My sister, who’s an interior designer with a very successful firm in Toronto, told me about Hightail. I tried it out on the first couple of projects with the guys at Cleanblend and they loved how easy it was and that everything was in one place. They travel a lot so being able to comment on and approve assets on the go was very important to them.Hightail helps throughout the lifecycle of a project
I can set up a Space for project and invite our client to it. Once we start delivering the work they leave their feedback there and the ability to flag files for approval or comments for follow-up works well. And because Hightail keeps all different kinds of content in one place, that same Space becomes our asset repository, which is cool.
It saves us time and time is money
Not having to dig through multiple emails from different people to find the relevant comments is a time saver. By streamlining the process of posting new work, notifying the client, getting edits or approvals and uploading new versions, Hightail helps cut 20% off our turnaround times. But for us, the number one benefit is that our clients like it.To find out more about Social Motion Media, visit socialmotion.media, check out their Vimeo page and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
