Remarkable Content with Ian Faison Traktor: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Swedish Filmmakers with Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab, Yuval Zukerman
There’s one marketing tactic that can make people laugh, it can make people gasp. But either way it’ll make them remember your content for years.
It’s shock factor. And people aren’t using it enough in B2B marketing.
It’s eliciting this strong emotional response that grabs your audience’s attention, gets them talking about your brand, and makes your content rise above the noise. What’s not to love?
So in this episode of Remarkable, we’re talking about a group of filmmakers who know about shock factor: Traktor. And with the help of our special guest, Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab, Yuval Zukerman, we chat about going for the shock factor, creating a series of ads for a single campaign, and using your constraints to your advantage.
About our guest, Yuval Zukerman
Yuval Zukerman is Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab. He joined the company in July 2022 as Director of Technical Alliances. Prior to Domino Data Lab, Yuval served as Manager of Partner Marketing at VMWare. He has also founded his own company, Enavigo, LLC, focusing on technology leadership for results-oriented marketers, mobile development, developer relations, translation and localization project management.
Over his career, he has served in a variety of roles across the technology lifecycle. From developer and engineer to project manager, technology consultant to technical creative and sales. He has worked with non-profits, medium-sized clients and global Fortune 500 companies in verticals that included CPG, B2C and B2B services, hospitality and financial. Past clients include Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Wells Fargo, Verizon Wireless, The Coca-Cola Company, Philips, and The Greater Boston Food Bank. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA and an M.A. in Information Technology and Software Engineering from Harvard.
About Domino Data Lab
Domino Data Lab powers model-driven business for the world’s most advanced enterprises, including over 20% of the Fortune 100. Their Enterprise MLOps platform speeds up the development and deployment of data science work while increasing collaboration and governance, to scale data science into a competitive advantage. Their platform enables thousands of data scientists to develop better medicines, grow more productive crops, adapt risk models to major economic shifts, build better cars, improve customer support, or simply recommend the best purchase to make at the right time. Domino is backed by leading venture capital firms: Sequoia Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Coatue Management, Dell Technologies Capital, Highland Capital Partners, In-Q-Tel, and Zetta Venture Partners.
About Traktor
Traktor is a group of filmmakers based in Venice, California. Though they’re based in California, they’re originally from Sweden and met in film school: Directors Sam Larsson, Pontus Löwenhielm, Patrik von Krusenstjerna, Ole Sanders, Mats Lindberg and producer Richard Ulfvengren. They’re globally renowned for their work serving brands like Lego, Nike, PepsiCo, Levi’s, Fox Sports, MTV, Virgin Atlantic, and more. They’ve done music videos for Fatboy Slim, the Flaming Lips and Madonna. At least twice they’ve been recognized as the most award-winning directors in the world. They’ve won three Grand Prix at Cannes, a handful of Clios, an Emmy, and been nominated for a Grammy.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From Traktor:
- Go for the shock factor. Knock your audience off-balance with unexpected content. It’s inexpensive, it’s attention-grabbing, it’s memorable. Traktor made ads for Fox Sports that showed a man high diving straight into the ground, and another of two blindfolded men swinging oversized bats at each other. They were shockingly off-kilter for sports ads at the time. Over 20 years later, Yuval still remembers them vividly. Ian says, ”I wouldn't say Traktor’s first ads are cheaply done, but comparatively. Like, there's no celebrities. They’re just jarring. It's just taking the one salient point that you want the person to know and finding some sort of crazy connection out there in the ether to drive that home and then make the audience think, make them laugh.”
- Create a series within your campaign. It gives you a format while allowing you freedom to play on your theme. So you can create a variety of ads that appeal to different audience preferences, increase brand awareness and recall, and even run A/B testing with them. It’s like how Traktor made a series of ads for Fox Sports. Ian says, ”They have one ad on an Indian sport and one on a Chinese sport. As the viewer, you realize it’s a series. It becomes something that’s beyond just a one-off thing. And now people think they’re so funny. That’s where ads are at their best, when it’s less of a one-off and more of something that’s ongoing.”
- Use your constraints to your advantage. Traktor leaned into their tight budget, and in doing so created stylized videos that were visually unique and captivating. Ian says, “If you don't have the budget, how can you steer into doing things grainier or less quality or unintentionally done in that way?”
Quotes
*”You're taking time from your audience. Traktor is giving them an exchange: Humor. They're giving you a giggle and a laugh. And that is something that is very important for us, to provide people value for their time. Time is the most valuable thing we have. So you better not waste it.” - Yuval Zukerman
*”No matter what your goal is in the content, stand up to your core set of values. Live up to those standards. I always tell my kids, ‘Are you proud of what you just did?’ Because there's something you can feel good that you delivered or created.” - Yuval Zukerman
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Yuval Zukerman, Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab
[2:08] Why are we talking about ads by Traktor?
[3:01] What does Yuval’s work at Domino Data Lab entail?
[5:35] Learn more about Traktor
[12:07] What makes ads by Traktor remarkable?
[20:35] What are marketing lessons we can take from Traktor?
[27:58] What’s Yuval’s content strategy?
[33:02] How does Yuval get leadership buy-in on new content?
[41:40] How does Yuval prove the ROI of content?
Links
Connect with Yuval on LinkedIn
Learn more about Domino Data Lab
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.