Wall of Productions aims to fill the gap in the creator economy that traditional production companies cannot fill

And since the pandemic, Wall of Productions’ business has only gone from strength to strength.

Wall of Productions’ eevolution

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The company began as an online comedy network in 2015 and is now on track to become the production arm of a broader marketing services company. Now Wall of Productions is one of three subsidiaries alongside the original Wall of Comedy (sales and marketing) and Wall of Talent (talent management) living under the Wall of Entertainment umbrella.

The company’s idea is to give marketers a new perspective on their most enduring problem: how to strike a chord with people who have either stopped watching or are no longer interested in seeing a typical 30-second ad. Instead, Wall of Productions could create a video, whether it’s running on YouTube, TikTok, or even an ad-free streaming service, that conveys a brand’s ethos but doesn’t carry any of the traditional hallmarks that commercial audiences are used to or are used to Pre-Roll Video.

As Taf Makopa, the company’s Group Managing Director, pointed out, Wall of Productions was one of the first platforms to produce engaging and entertaining lockdown content for brands like YouTube, Amazon Prime, Badoo, Footasylum and Azar – all of whose videos were shot on iPhones at home. And since the pandemic, the business has grown stronger, taking total sales from around £500,000 ($601,400) before the pandemic to around £3m ($3.6m) now, with forecasts of £7m ($8.4m). $) for the next year.

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“We’ve focused on our manufacturing arm because it’s our strength,” said Makopa, who identified co-founders Wade and Ascott as contributing excellent production skills, creativity and ideas in the company right from the start.

The demand for this type of expertise seems to be growing. Or at least it is if the Wall of Productions momentum continues. The company has expanded from 11 employees before the pandemic to 27 employees today. Makopa was brought in December 2018 to further develop the platform and make it a sustainable company. “We currently have about four vacancies, but we’re looking for the right people,” he said.

Crossing the line between entertainment and marketing is a tricky thing — it is something marketers have been trying to perfect since the advent of the soap opera. However, Wall of Productions says this is exactly what it was designed for. This is evident in the way it goes about generating ideas for marketers.

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Overall strategy of Wall of Productions

For each show produced by Wall of Productions, talent is developed and hired through sister brand Wall of Talent and the finished product is promoted through Wall of Comedy.

“We spent a lot of time developing formats that allowed us to keep the business going,” Makopa said. “Now they’re coming into play, so we’re flying off that success.”

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Especially since Wall of Productions’ favorite platforms, YouTube and Instagram, are currently undergoing major structural and strategic changes – neither of which is an easy task for any marketer.

But being a relatively small fish in a fairly large pond hasn’t stopped Makopa and his team from competing for budgets with larger competing agencies. In fact, he believes it will be a much fairer fight in a few years.

“Traditional television is dying and that has worked in our favor,” he said. “Brands are now spending more on digital, so the market for us is growing. It feels like everyone on our pitch is now where we were seven years ago. We have been waiting for this trend.”

That’s exactly what Ali Mankani, Associate Creative Producer at Z2C Limited, a venture accelerator for marketing tech startups, found. He explained that viewership growth of over-the-top and digital content has increased exponentially since Covid and is still increasing year on year.

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“Brands are turning more to subtle integrations of branded content to create awareness without disrupting the consumer viewing experience,” Mankani said. “Brand awareness also increases significantly when brands gain virality through third-party content that is more socially shareable and relatable for contemporary audiences.”

Take Wall of Productions’ flagship show for Footasylum, for example, titled Does The Shoe Fit?, which premiered in 2020. Episode lengths varied from just over seven minutes to just under 18 minutes depending on the content and episode and the structure needed to create the best video. The show’s 27 videos have amassed almost 23 million views to date.

“Many production companies before us know how to create ads with fixed lengths, but we create content as long or as short as it needs to be. And that’s alien to the mindset of other companies,” Makopa said. “We don’t worry about the length of a piece of content. Our primary concern is engagement and retention of this content.”

While YouTube and Instagram serve the company and its core audience best, Wall of Productions is now investing much more time primarily in TikTok Given its rapid rise, its premise centered on short-form video and, of course, its heavy use by Gen Z.

Create Packages that span platforms

Despite adding another social network to the media mix, the core of the Wall of Productions team’s creative process hasn’t changed. Makopa explained that as soon as a brand briefs the team, people respond All levels in each department prepare ideas for an idea meeting and the best ideas are presented to the customer.

“We go back and refine the selected idea based on the client’s feedback – this is where our writer, production lead, producer, director and talent manager come together to really develop the idea,” Makopa said. “Our content needs to stand out, so our possibilities are limitless – it’s one of the reasons why our clients like our approach.”

According to Mankani, Wall of Productions has a decisive unique selling proposition compared to traditional production agencies.

“Using a unified internal framework that supports produced content from idea to execution and delivery, they are able to deliver more targeted campaigns with branded content of the highest quality for their clients by reducing talent acquisition, production and distribution costs while driving better margins ‘ Mankani added.

However, the most important aspect of the Wall of Productions creative process is ensuring that each idea can serve more than one platform.

“It’s never a TikTok, YouTube or TV idea. The content needs to work on at least two platforms and be sustainable,” Makopa said.

This strategy requires a deep understanding of each platform and audience. As such, Makopa said he comes in handy when it comes to gathering feedback, whether it’s asking industry peers for their opinions, diving into comments on the content, or providing a team debrief after each shoot and once a show is released.

“We have expectations about how we think people should react,” Makopa said. “If someone says a video isn’t good, there’s something about the product that we need to work on.”