PMG Blog

Ever wonder if B2B marketing should focus more on analytics or creativity? Is there a lack of art in the way we market to our audience? B2B marketing is only boring if we allow it to be. A successful marketing practice is not necessarily always about the big numbers and the finances needed, it’s about actually thinking outside of the box…way outside the box. 

Kaltura, a video platform company that provides live and on-demand video SaaS solutions to thousands of organizations around the world, used a strikingly creative approach in order to convey a typical marketing message in their latest B2B campaign, by using their kids. Yes, their kids!

Excited to launch their new Personal Capture tool, Marketers at Kaltura wanted to grab people’s attention in order to launch a new product. However, one slight problem – no money. How do you introduce a new product in a crowded market when you have no budget?

We interviewed Rebecca Rozakis, Director of Marketing at Kaltura to learn more about the marketing strategy behind their witty and highly entertaining B2B campaign which proves how a lack of budget doesn’t mean you can’t grab people’s attention and create the stir you want.

Who is Kaltura?

With the mission to power any video experience, Kaltura has emerged as the fastest growing video platform. Kaltura is deployed globally in thousands of enterprises, media companies, service providers, and educational institutions and engages hundreds of millions of viewers at home, at work and at school. Our live and on-demand video products include a social video portal, webcasting, a market-leading lecture capture solution, integrations with multiple enterprise and learning management platforms, a video capture solution and more. With Kaltura, organizations can securely deliver video anytime, anywhere, to any device.

What is the product you are promoting?

Kaltura Personal Capture combines an intuitive interface with a user-centric experience and interactive viewing to enable easy video creation at the office, in the classroom, at home, or on-the-go. Without needing specialized equipment, content creators can capture multi-stream recordings synchronized with a PowerPoint presentation or screen capture and then use Kaltura’s wide range of tools to enrich and publish their videos.

What was your marketing challenge?

Kaltura Personal Capture replaces an older video capture tool, CaptureSpace and so we were really excited to be launching this new tool. However, we were launching two other new products around the same time and pretty much all of our marketing budget is dedicated to those two products. We wanted to make a big splash, but we had no money.

In addition, it’s a surprisingly hard product to show. It’s basically a button on your screen-you click it, the button disappears and Personal Capture then starts recording you and your screen. It’s extremely easy to use and seamless; but that means there’s almost nothing to show! There aren’t a whole lot of product shots, because the product is almost invisible so it doesn’t distract the presenter. So how can you present a product that’s so user-friendly it’s almost invisible, with basically no budget?

How did the creative idea behind this campaign answer your challenge?

We were tossing around ideas on how to get people’s attention. Maybe we could run a contest for the best video made with the product? It wouldn’t really show the product, though, and we didn’t have the budget for a really good prize. Most of the ideas became increasingly complicated, which seemed to go against the core value of the product, which is that it’s simple.

So we came back to fundamentals. What are we good at? Well, video. What is the single most important message we wanted to convey about this product? That it’s easy to use. You don’t need to train people. You don’t need your users to be technically oriented. It’s supposed to be so easy that anyone—busy executives, tradition-bound professors, people who aren’t really very comfortable with technology—can use it without a tutorial or hand-holding. That’s when I said, “It’s so easy, my five-year-old could use this. Wait. Wait, my five-year-old can use this!”

Can you tell us about the production?

Kaltura is a pretty family-friendly company, and a lot of us have kids. (We actually had too many volunteers; I had to restrict it to just the New York marketing team’s kids to keep it from getting out of hand.) We had a nice age range, from 3 to 10 and a good balance of boys and girls. It would have been nice to have a little more diversity in terms of ethnicity, but it’s not like we were putting out a call to central casting; we had to work with what we had.

The kids were so incredibly excited. Getting them to come into the office, to be part of a real video shoot—it was thrilling. My son, Alex, was extremely insistent on creating a presentation that met his exacting standards. He chose all the colors, dictated the text and directed how he wanted his slides laid out. I think we probably spent 45 minutes examining stock images of dinosaurs! I’ve put together conference decks in less time than we spent on that dinosaur deck.

We have an in-house production team, so we already had all the equipment and personnel. We transformed the conference room into a little studio. You can see a bit of the footage of us setting up at the end of the spot.

I scripted the intro from the beginning and outlined my presentation to them, but we tried to keep the middle really loose—as a parent, I’ve learned that the key to getting good results with kids is to not have too many rigid expectations. We mostly stayed out of the kids’ way. They chose their topics, they created their decks. We helped them get set up and then stood back and let them do their own thing. They did indeed have a pretty easy time using the software; most of the problems we had were because they got frustrated with PowerPoint, but things went pretty smoothly, overall!

I deliberately didn’t write the intro until we wrapped up the kids’ section and sent them to go finish eating their lunch. (They voted for sushi. What can I say, they’re little New Yorkers.) I wanted to be able to riff off of what the kids had done. And no, I didn’t know that particular dinosaur factoid before we started.

Are you able to measure the business impact of the campaign at this stage?

It’s still early to have hard numbers on the campaign, but we’ve seen a lot more comments and sharing on social media on this one than any other campaign we’ve ever done. I’m still having people reach out to me who I haven’t talked to in years, asking about it. The product is having some great adoption rates so far, so I think we must have done something right!

In conclusion, trying to launch your product with a lack of marketing budget can seem impossible, but it’s not. No budget does not equal no impact. Make the most out of your resources (even if it’s a little help from your kids!) and have fun with your product. Kaltura’s case is a great example of the creative art today’s B2B market lacks. Check out their campaign here!