But in software companies, that’s rarely the case.

Which means that people writing and reviewing scripts often don’t understand (a) what normal people sound like when they say things out loud and (b) how dialog and visuals work together to tell a story.

As a result you get scripts that are collapsing under the weight of their abstract and practically meaningless words and sentences. And a final video in which the dialog and visuals have all but the loosest relationship to one another.

In other words: bad videos.

There are two ways to solve this.

1. Give the job of writing and directing to someone who understands both how to make a good video and how to explain your product.

2. Don’t script it. Instead, film the best live demo-er at your company and edit down the talk track from their performance.

This video took approach number two.

Damon (the presenter) knows the product and how to talk about it. We just gave him the top three features/differentiators and let him cook.

We did three or four takes. It took 30 mins. Then the editing process took about a day (thanks to collaborative script editing in Descript).

And the result? Pretty darn good, if I may say so myself.

And for this new talk show format, I wanted to give the audience the feeling they were watching a real talk show.

And the key to this, I realized, was commercial breaks.

Why would you have commercial breaks in what itself is a 45 minute long commercial for Ironclad?

Lots of reasons:

1. Audience understands the format (segment-commercial-segment)
   If you give people information in a structure they understand, they don’t have to work hard to digest it.

2. Palette cleanser

   You can’t go right from one 10 min contract management deep dive to the next without your audience tuning out. A 90 second commercial is a nice little slice of pickled ginger that get them ready for the next course.

3. Surprise

   At the same time it’s a familiar format, the audience doesn’t expect a commercial break from their B2B SaaS event. And surprise is a good thing.

4. Branding

   Commercials can (and should) be the most creative and experimental content you create. By including them in the talk show, we could instill the full experience with energy and personality.

5. Free ad space

   We can actually use the commercials as commercials and advertise things that don’t fit in the core event content.

So, this is what we did. Over the course of producing Ironclad Live, we created at least a half dozen of these standalone commercials.

How did they perform?

During the show, audiences LOVED THEM. We got countless 😂s, lols, and OMGs from online attendees. Also we could see in the engagement stats that NOBODY tuned out while they played.

And then after the show, guess what? We had commercials that were perfectly suited to be used as… commercials. So our growth team had a field day using them on YouTube, Linkedin, etc to the tune of multiple 100k impressions and multiple 100k new pipeline.

So that was all great.

And the best part? These were wildly fun to make.

And if you watch the full video, you’ll see our audience was stoked.

At least three customers in the room immediately emailed their CSMs asking for access. It’s a cool feature, so of course they did.

But I believe the video played a huge part in that excitement. The secret ingredient? Confidence.

Now, you might say, “It’s marketing, of course it has to be confident.”

But if you look around, you’ll notice something different.

Sometime in the 2010s, millennials started taking over the creative landscape. And millennials, as a rule, don’t like to promote things without a little irony. They’d rather lean into humor, winks, and self-awareness than come across as too earnest or over the top.

And so we got a wave of tech videos—think Zendesk, Wistia, and Sandwich—packed with cleverness and wit. These videos are great. Creative, fun, beautifully made, with solid product marketing at their core.

But what they don’t do is say, “This product is fucking amazing. It’s going to change your life.”

Because the creators couldn’t bring themselves to say that. They’re allergic to bullshit.

But now the 2010s are behind us, and I think there’s power in bringing back some good, old-fashioned confidence. The kind of confidence you saw with IBM or Apple.

The kind that says, “This shit’s going to rock your mind.”

The kind that says, “We believe in this. And so should you.”

That’s the direction we took with this video. It’s not fancy. It was cheap and fast. But it got attention because it was direct and unabashedly confident.

And guess what? Our audience noticed. They responded.

So give it a try—your audience might appreciate you for it.

1. Nice looking and engaging but slow and expensive

2. Crappy looking and/or boring but cheap and easy

But for this customer story with Calm, we didn’t have that luxury. We were on a tight deadline with a bare-minimum film crew. No time for long feedback loops or heavy post-production.

The reason we were able to pull it off so fast and make it good? Descript.

Using Descript for the paper edit, I was able to knock out the story in less than two hours. We had the narrative locked before the editor even touched the footage. All they had to do was layer in the B-roll, add music, and get the timing right.

This approach completely flipped the typical process. Instead of waiting for an editor to make multiple cuts, we walked into post-production with the story ready to go. It cut down on the usual back-and-forth and let us focus on making it visually engaging without sacrificing speed.

And it worked. Everybody loved it.

In the end, it became one of the most-used customer stories Ironclad has ever produced. All because we streamlined the process and let the tools work for us.

So, if you’re working under pressure with limited resources, the right tools and a clear vision can make all the difference.

Here’s the story of how it got made:

Our CEO, Jason Boehmig, was never shy with feedback on messaging. As a PMM team, we’d make endless decks and messaging docs, sharing them with stakeholders, trying to answer one fundamental question:

What does Ironclad do?

This process often consumed months, resulting in assets that wouldn’t ship—or, worse, shipped but never got used.

This video didn’t follow that process.

Instead, I wrote the script. Got some notes from my manager (PMM Director). Then we went straight into production with Deep Sky.

And surprise — everyone loved it.

The CEO watched it post-publication (fully baked) and sent a message to #all that went something like, “This is a great encapsulation of what we do as a company. Please share it with prospects, customers, friends, and family.”

Best of all, it’s still being used as a GTM asset — four years later!

But here’s a question: what if we had shared the script with GTM and Execs for feedback?

In my opinion, two possibilities—both bad:

1. Script edits would have made it worse.

2. It wouldn’t have gotten made at all.

So, what’s the lesson? Don’t take feedback? Just do your own thing and hope for the best?

Not exactly. Maybe sometimes. But mostly, no.

The real takeaway is that you can’t expect people to visualize the final product from a rough draft. Sometimes, you need to cut the feedback loops and just build it.

Get something real in front of people. That’s when the feedback is useful. That’s when it sticks.

And sometimes, that’s how you make something worth keeping.