How Creative Advertising Agency Poolhouse Produces Video Content

Creative agencies know that multiple campaigns hit at once. When producing advertising and marketing videos at the highest levels, nothing can slip through the cracks.

So how do successful creative agencies run? How do pros manage complex workflow without missing a step?

This post, and the video below, looks at a crucial tool that award-winning creative agency, Poolhouse, puts at the center of its production pipeline.

By collaborating in a cloud-based hub, Poolhouse delivers the goods every time — and any creative ad agency or content marketing agency can follow suit.

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Creative Agency Spotlight: Poolhouse

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CREATIVE AGENCY WORKFLOW

Plan and manage every production

Tim O’Toole, co-founder of creative agency Poolhouse, says, “when you’re in production, organization is a vital part of the creative process.”

O’Toole describes his company as a “hybrid agency,” as it is both a creative advertising agency as well as a production and post-production studio.

With so many projects happening at the same time, chaos is a major pain point for creative agencies like Poolhouse.

By necessity, any production generates hundreds of documents: creative briefs, treatments, shooting scripts, script breakdowns, shooting schedules, call sheets, contact lists, and more. A whirlwind of files and paperwork, much of it outdated as soon as a new version gets created.

That’s why streamlining workflow — keeping it in the cloud, allowing everyone to collaborate simultaneously — is critical.

“It’s imperative to implement the necessary tools to do it right and to do it in the most efficient way possible,” O’Toole says.

With StudioBinder, O’Toole and his team work together on every phase of production. The software provides a true end-to-end solution, letting O’Toole guide, track, and comment on all Poolhouse projects at any point in the pipeline, from development through pre-production and production.

“StudioBinder is clearly coming from the mind of a producer,” O’Toole says. “It’s clearly coming from someone who understands what this technology is supposed to do. It’s supposed to help.”

CONTENT MARKETING AGENCY TOOLS

Build shot lists, call sheets, and more

With StudioBinder, the best creative agencies build and manage everything it takes to make their videos. They can jump in at the beginning of the process or at any point along the way. This eliminates redundancy, empowers collaboration, and lets everyone on the team see what’s been done, what’s getting done now, and what needs to be done.

Create a brief or treatment with StudioBinder’s freeform writing feature. Write a script with the built-in screenwriting software, or upload a script from another software.

Once your done, click to automatically create and customize breakdowns, shooting schedules, shot lists, and storyboards.

You can assign tasks, give and receive feedback, and even sync and re-sync as every project evolves.

“The DP is able to put together their shot list, and from that, the AD is able to develop the right [shooting] schedule,” O’Toole says of the software.

“The fact that I can be apart of that conversation and post feedback, and then see that my feedback has been received, and that someone has checked it off and it has been completed — it takes 10 emails out of my inbox.”

Did You Know?

More than two-thirds (68 percent) of consumers say a short video is the best way to find out about a product or service.

StudioBinder functions as a tireless, always-accessible production manager so everyone else at the creative agency can focus on the task at hand.

O’Toole says he relies on the software “whether it’s things like contacts — having your saved crew in there, to literally just drag-and-drop them into a call sheet — and having Google Maps built into the software to confirm the location of a shoot.”

As the co-founder of an award-winning creative ad agency with two office locations — one in Richmond, Virginia, and one it Atlanta — O’Toole insists StudioBinder “has pushed us in a direction of being more on top of our shoots, being more proactive in our organization.”

Operating one of the best creative agencies calls for using the best production management tools available. For Poolhouse and O’Toole, this is the secret ingredient that powers their content.

UP NEXT

Ultimate Pre-Production Checklist

Even with a robust all-in-one solution like StudioBinder in the mix, any content marketing agency needs an equally robust grasp of the pre-production process. Get a primer on every step of video production, and download a free pre-production checklist in the next post. It’s essential reading.