In 2022, we transformed Ironclad’s quarterly “State of Digital Contracting” event into “Ironclad Live” — a talk show about contract management.
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:
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
