Inside a Birdline Kickoff
The first week of a partnership, and why we spend it learning how you work before we make anything.
A partnership that starts well is usually one where the first week was spent listening. Here is what ours looks like.
The kickoff call
About forty-five minutes. You meet your project manager and the Birds who will make your work. We learn how your team runs: who signs off, where the files live, what is coming up on the calendar and what is keeping you up at night. Then we decide, together, what to tackle first. Usually that is the next campaign; sometimes it is a backlog of footage nobody has had time to cut.
What to share
Everything you have, in whatever shape it is in. Brand guidelines. Past campaigns, the ones that worked and the ones that did not. Raw footage and project files from previous productions. Performance data if you can get it. We organize what comes in and flag what we can start using right away. More than once, the first deliverables of a partnership have been cut entirely from footage the brand already owned.
The fastest first win is usually sitting on a hard drive you already have.
Setting up the workflow
Before the first brief, two things are in place. A shared Slack channel connects both teams, with a thread per project so conversations stay attached to the work. And you are set up in the Birdline App, which is included in the partnership and open to your own projects too. Briefs, deliverables and the finished library live there, and when performance data is connected, so do the results.
We deliberately do not work inside your internal tools. Permissions, folder structures and notification settings vary from company to company, and the time spent navigating them is time not spent on the work. Slack for the conversation, Frame.io for review, the Birdline App for everything else.
The first deliverables
Most partnerships have their first edits in review within the first two weeks, and the first strategy call on the calendar for the week after. From there the rhythm sets in: briefs in, drafts to Frame.io, finals to the library, a call every other week to look at what shipped and decide what is next.
Onboarding is simple and fast on purpose. We can usually start within a week of the first conversation. The work is what takes care; the start should not.
Mike founded Birdline because too much content was going to waste and brands did not know what their creative was worth. He writes about production, performance and the workflow between them.
More about BirdlineMore From the Blog.
How to Brief a Creative Team So the First Cut Lands
A good brief is not long. It answers four questions and leaves the rest to the people making the work.
Unlimited Deliverables, Explained
What “unlimited” means in a Birdline partnership, how the queue works, and what it does not cover.
ROAS Can’t Tell a $5K Shoot From a $100K One.
Media gets measured to the dollar. The production behind it gets a line on an invoice. Two more numbers put them on the same page.
Put the Ideas to Work.
Tell us what is in your pipeline and where your team could use another set of hands.