What the heck is Klout?
Video for Klout shot on the streets of North Beach in San Francisco.
As social media was on the rise in the early 2010s, it became clear that people with large followings had influence that was valuable. And before “influencer” was the career of choice for Gen Z, a person’s Klout score was something to brag about.
Klout was an app that measured a person’s online influence by analyzing their followers, post reactions and other social media activity. Everyone could get a Klout score and hotels, restaurants, brands and other institutions could quickly see if a person was deserving of special treatment or extra service that might yield them some online love.
We’d love to say the video we created helped launch Klout to the world. But after working with the company to make the video, they decided it was too long and that web content shouldn’t be longer than 8 to 10 seconds. (For proof they’re wrong, please see Live Nation, Nike or millions of other examples that you love on the internet.)
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We had a friend working at Klout and they wanted help promoting the company. So he introduced us to the founder, gave us a creative brief and set us lose.
Division of Labor is an ad agency in San Francisco that works with startsups in the technology industry. And Klout needed awareness to encourage signups, which were free. And the whole idea of social media influence is about getting attention. So doing something funny was a must.
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We produced the campaign on location on the streets of North Beach. Some of the people were actors we brought in but the majority of the cast was random people we found on the street. We had a producer and casting agent walking around asking people if they wanted to be in a video. And the streets of San Francisco are the ideal place to find great characters. Division of Labor is a top ad agency in San Francisco but we’re also a producion company so producing videos like this for our clients increases efficiency and lowers costs for our clients.
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The funniest part about this video is that the client found it hysterical but the founder was convinced that it was too long and needed to be under 15 seconds. Needless to say, he drove the company into the ground. And thousands of successful companies have used long format videos to gain awareness and increase user engagement.
So while the company is no more, the video lives on and it’s still funny.