Shipping Things Video Series
PRODUCER • DIRECTOR • ART DIRECTOR • WRITER
Opportunity
The Shipping Things video series started as a resource for early Lumi customers. Most of them were new businesses and solopreneurs shipping hundreds of products a month from their garages.
These customers weren’t packaging experts and they didn’t have time to be. To empower them, without over-burdening them, I wrote, directed, and shot this video series to help folks navigate common packaging decisions.
Execution
We chose episode topics based on the most common questions that our customer service team received. The goal was for our customer service team to be able to help answer any question with a video. But, of course, our customers weren’t the only people with these questions, so the videos performed well with tens of thousands of views and top SEO rankings.This was the start of what became an audience of 44k subscribers — a rarity in B2B video content.
Crafting the Shipping Things world helped to make the videos scalable and endearing. But a big part of their popularity comes from our genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for packaging, which comes through in the examples and antics in the series.
Process
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I met with our customer service team and scoured customer emails to not only find common questions, but consider how to answer them in a way that was direct, actionable, and visually memorable.
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A few rules were developed from the start. To keep with Lumi’s brand guidelines, we didn’t not use any motion media or special effects. That’s where our handy dandy hands came in. In lieu of digital titles, hands would hold up signs and give Jesse props throughout the episodes.
I built all the props beforehand so I could test them before shoot day and make tweaks as needed. Sound effects also became part of the world, which helped to not only add character to the episodes, but improve the rhythm.
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Besides the help of our hands character (courtesy our fab Merchandising Designer, Lauren Tom) I wrote, directed, art directed, and shot the episodes solo.
To scale up production for a biweekly release cadence, I built an in-depth Airtable to keep me on track.
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At one point, we were shooting three video series at a time: Unboxing Things, Lingo, and Shipping Things. To make time for new ideas, something had to give.
We took a long hard look at this beloved series and realized that while our channel subscribers still loved it, it didn’t serve our new customer base. Lumi users had evolved. These new brands had entire operations teams and packaging experts, for whom this information was, well, old news. We said goodbye to Shipping Things as we phased in Unboxing Things.
In 18 months, we built an arsenal of 50 videos that cover a solid range of evergreen packaging topics, that still get new views every day.
⛴ My favorite episode is one of the few that we took out of the studio. We packed up our props and headed to the Port of LA — one of the biggest ports in the world. We shot at 4 locations around San Pedro Bay, including a tour boat where we got epic shots of ships being loaded up with containers.
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