Nic Hill is the co-founder and head of the interactive department at Sawhorse Productions, a creative agency that focuses on innovative brand storytelling through immersive and interactive technologies.
Key Takeaways:
- Sawhorse evolved from a traditional film production company to a creative agency specializing in branded content and immersive experiences.
- The company leverages platforms like Roblox and Fortnite to create engaging, interactive brand experiences.
- Immersive technologies offer deeper engagement and longer interaction times compared to traditional marketing methods.
- Nic emphasizes the importance of providing value and authenticity in branded experiences, especially for younger audiences.
- Sawhorse's approach includes rapid prototyping and real-time feedback through community engagement.
Nic's journey began as a filmmaker in his youth, evolving through documentary production to founding Sawhorse Productions. The company transitioned from traditional video production to creating immersive brand experiences, particularly during the pandemic. Sawhorse now focuses on building 3D worlds and interactive experiences for brands, aiming to tell stories in more engaging and persistent ways.
Nic highlights the shift in marketing approaches, especially for younger audiences who value authenticity and engagement over traditional advertising. He emphasizes the importance of creating experiences that provide value to users, rather than just pushing brand messages.
Looking ahead, Nic aims to continue pushing the boundaries of brand storytelling through emerging technologies like augmented reality. He sees Sawhorse as a leader in this space and is committed to exploring new ways to connect brands with their audiences.
About Nic Hill
Nic Hill is the Co-founder and Head of Interactive at Sawhorse, a leading agency specializing in branded content and gaming. During his tenure, Nic has cultivated a dynamic team of leaders in the innovation space and has created immersive interactive experiences for some of the biggest brands, studios and agencies in the world.
He strives to push the envelope on interactive storytelling by blurring the line between film and gaming. Before this role, Nic was an independent film director / editor and created internationally acclaimed documentarie films. In his spare time he enjoys DJing, biking and spending time with his wife and two kids in Los Angeles.
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Welcome to the Glow Up! Fabulous Conversations with Innovative Minds. Today, I am talking with Nic Hill of Sawhorse Productions. Nic, thank you so much for joining me today.
Nic Hill:right on Nathan. Thanks for having me on.
Nathan C:so good to chat with you. I've adored your work from afar and from some of the events that we've been at together and I'm just thrilled to learn a little bit more and share your journey with the listeners on The Glow Up. So, I think first off, tell us a little bit about what you do and, maybe how you started your innovation journey.
Nic Hill:Sounds good. So yeah, my name is Nic Hill. I'm a co founder and head of the interactive department at Sawhorse. And just I'll sort of back it up and give some history about myself. I started my career as a filmmaker back in junior high school. I used to make movies with my friends. I was kind of a part of that digital revolution, where anyone could create what they wanted.
Nathan C:I was curious about what specific era you were talking about. Is this like camcorder? Is this digital video? Is it camera phone?
Nic Hill:So I'll take myself, right now, but the first camera I worked on was a high eight, high eight camera. so that was, that's tape, actual, like tape, video camera. And I actually didn't have one. My family didn't have one. So it was my friends. I used to go over to their houses and borrow the camcorders that they had. And we used to make films. I was just lucky because I grew up in this era where you could kind of make your own material and share it with your friends, but you couldn't share it publicly because we weren't there yet. There was no YouTube or anything like that. So I just made movies kind of ad hoc with my buddies. And as time went on, I got more serious about filmmaking. I studied media in college. made a documentary about the history of graffiti art in San Francisco, called Piece by Piece. It got international distribution around the world. And at that time, it was DVDs. There was no streaming platforms yet. So, we had a lot of success creating DVDs and doing self distribution of the film around the world. And that's how I started my career. from there, I built a production company. I started hiring all my friends, all the artists and collaborators that I had worked with, and we started to do production work for different clients. Eventually got pulled down to LA, because that's where the film industry is. I had a lot of the connections, all the clients were here, started doing a ton of work. So I founded Sawhorse with my partner, Blake Benham. and then we brought on a third partner, Evan Cobar. And we've turned Sawhorse into a creative agency where we essentially help tell brand stories. So do a lot of branded content, a lot of promotional video, a lot of creative storytelling. And during the pandemic, we grew our capabilities. Because we couldn't be on set filming celebrities and doing hardcore production work, we really got into live streaming. And also building 3D immersive worlds on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite And that side of the company has grown so big that I've since taken a step back from the traditional production side. And now I'm full in on all of our innovation work. All of our interactive work.
Nathan C:Oh, that's cool. So if I'm hearing correctly, Just a tendency toward creative storytelling and a really early interest in like film as a storytelling medium. Started a film production company, became an agency, became an interactive agency as you built a customer base and as markets, technologies, and, sort of avenues for your storytelling evolved.
Nic Hill:Yeah, that's a hundred percent correct. And we've been around for 13 years and we've pretty much grown year after year. And now we have a full time staff of over 50 people. and we are project based and we just continue to grow every year. So it's been really exciting.
Nathan C:So, I've seen your website, so I know a little bit more of the details of some of these streaming events, some of this immersive content that you've produced. Can you give a couple examples, just what that might be like? I think so often, we hear about streaming and that might mean Netflix. or we hear about on demand or virtual, and it all means something a little bit different, but you've done some really like specific stuff with some cool both brands and artists.
Nic Hill:Yeah, that's a great question because. People often ask what I do and I say, we make branded content. And a lot of times people are like, what is that? they kind of know what it is, but it's hard to define it because it's so broad, kind of also falls into that term, like new media. when we were getting into this, people were like, what is it? Is it a movie? Is it a commercial? and the answer was like, it's neither. it's now branded content. it's digital. It's in the digital space. Oftentimes it's short format, creative content that is distributed across all these different platforms that aren't traditional. That's like how I would define it. And from a storytelling standpoint, that's really fun because clients will come to you and say, I want to do a web series of 10 videos. Each video is five minutes long. We want to highlight these two influencers. They're going to be acting in it. And it's sponsored by Gillette. So what would you do? And then my team gets to come back and write and try to figure out like, how can we make this content really engaging and exciting and additive to people and entertaining? While at the same time, letting the brand message permeate through it. That actually was not a real example. let's see, I didn't think of
Nathan C:it's totally. Okay. So, I've seen things like Concerts in virtual spaces with your favorite music artists, and I've seen branded games in, like, 3D environments like Roblox, in your innovation journey, you've already sort of, started to telegraph some of the questions. but I'm curious, as a, as a storyteller, and as a writer, Somebody who has been in this business and made these choices to move into these markets, it seems like immersive and interactive, was provoked by the pandemic and some of the limits that you had then, but you're continuing to double down. You're continuing to build, you're moving into business in B2B spaces with some of these works. how do you see, the problem space that you're solving with interactive storytelling, and how are you helping these brands, achieve things with interactive in a way that's, different, better, more nuanced than sort of traditional ways that they think about?
Nic Hill:Yeah, I love that. It's been so fun transitioning into this interactive space because at the heart of everything that we do is we're just telling stories. That's it. and I think if you look at the history of how this has evolved with traditional marketing, the only way you could communicate that was through like a 30 second commercial or like a billboard somewhere. And that was pretty flat. there wasn't that engaging. And then with like the digital revolution, it got kind of exciting because then you could, Work with influencers, and you can co create with communities, and you can quickly make, video content, and branded content, and like, just interesting stuff, and start to populate that across all these places very quickly on social platforms. And now with Immersive Interactive, UGC gaming platforms, you can tell these brand stories in gamified, interactive ways. So it's almost like the most advanced kind of deepest way to tell these stories. And what's been really inspiring to me is I grew up as someone that played video games. As a gamer, but when I was coming up, there weren't a lot of UGC gaming sites, so it wasn't very easy to, become a programmer and then share, what you built. Today, thanks to platforms like Roblox, this is easy. Anyone can do this if they put their mind to it. So I just got really inspired to be able to tell those brand stories in a new engaging way. Like you can go deeper, you can build an entire world and put your audience in it, and then you can create interactivity and goals and challenges for them to kind of go through and get more immersed in that story. And it's also persistent. So designed for them to keep coming back next week, tomorrow, the next week. And from a storytelling standpoint that you can understand how that gets really deep. that's one of the reasons I've sort of fallen in love with this. a lot of the team members. From, softwares that come from the traditional production side. moved into this interactive side, building on Roblox, building these 3D worlds, and they're so inspired and excited that they've left the other side of the company. they don't want to do traditional storytelling. Now they just want to build these worlds and it's super exciting.
Nathan C:That's not an impact that I was expecting to hear, that like, traditional storytellers working maybe in more 2D media, are excited to move into immersive, and it sounds like because There's new opportunities or that there's new, powers that they can flex, within these spaces. How do you, I mean, with your team as well as with your customers, how do you talk about success when you're working in, new media? And, how do you help these brands understand the impact of what you're making? They may not be used to this kind of storytelling, the interactions and the audiences might be new, and even, like, the way that you're asking them to think about how they show up, right? like, a billboard is so intently promotional, and an in world game, it has goals around community and belonging and creation. how do you help people, Reimagine storytelling in an immersive way, when they're so used to 2D storytelling.
Nic Hill:Yeah, that's been a new thing for a lot of brands and clients to learn and to understand is marketing inside these interactive spaces and gaming spaces, because oftentimes it's a bit foreign to them. A lot of them didn't grow up as gamers, their connection with gaming is through their kids or through their kids kids. and so they look at that and say, Oh, it looks really important. I don't really understand it, but maybe we should be there. And if you look at the data, That's the trend that everything is moving in. young people, the future generations are spending way, way more time. engaging in interactive social platforms like Roblox, even more so than they are in social. And then when you start thinking about like TV and the movies, they're not even going there anymore. So like, it's key for these brands to be in these spaces. I think at the core of it, it's all about brand storytelling. It's all about conveying messages. And so, if you're conveying that message to these larger groups it's, first off, from a brand awareness, top of funnel perspective, it's a lot of engagement. we can drive millions of young people into an experience and have them engage with a brand. Beyond that, it's engagement time. If you look at like a billboard, for example, or a commercial, a 30 second spot on TV. If the person is really good, the user might watch it and be fully engaged for 30 seconds and take that message in. But that's only 30 seconds. If you have an experience, say, on Roblox, the average dwell time is between, five and ten minutes. And that's one visit. And then it might be coming back again and again. See, the amount of hours of engagement that you get, from the users is so much higher. And then I would argue that the message gets deeper digested. So instead of just a flash in the pan while you're watching TV or scrolling through Instagram and go right past that thing, you're spending 10 minutes with the brand, so it creates brand affinity, brand love. You can unlock cool wearables that are branded, that people actually want to attach to their avatars. They see value in that. They get to keep it. to me, that's a ton of value. And then the third thing I would say is monetization. you have an opportunity to actually, charge users for their engagement or sell items within the space. Oftentimes this isn't a main KPI, but it is something that is possible. And that's not really possible with traditional marketing as we know it.
Nathan C:There's a couple things on Immersive that I always point people to, and the difference, marketers, especially digital marketers, B2B marketers who live like I do, are used to counting success. in three second increments of eyeball time, right? Like eyeball time is a marketer metric these days. And a view on most platforms is three seconds, right? And so when you're talking about daily minutes, tens of minutes, that long term, Immersion in a brand's world that's, like, incredible and so much more informative than traditional media. Two, there's this part about data that Interactive, has some benefits on. It also has some of the same risks that, social has had. but the ability to understand context, to understand, what people are into, is really interesting and still very early. You also mentioned something about the generational differences in storytelling. And I think this is one of the places where people who aren't engaged in gaming really maybe have one of the biggest gaps that I think is worth calling out, right? Which is social selling in today's market, especially for younger audiences, especially for gaming first audiences. is not about selling, but it is about building relationships, it's about building time with brand. And like, there's, there's all sorts of TikToks that are like, yo, if you want to, reach Gen Alpha, like, you don't even talk about your brand, you don't even talk about your product, you talk about people and engagement and connection. And then, the rest of that happens as part of what those users funnel actually is. And you're creating this landing pad for engagement, for opportunity, for, this deep engagement, as you're calling it, that I think most people just don't even understand how important it is, and that today's users don't. necessarily want to be sold
Nic Hill:Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I think that's extremely important. There's all these studies about how these younger generations authenticity to them is key. They don't want to be marketed to, they don't want to be lied to. They don't want this fake BS crammed in their face saying, buy this. It doesn't work. And I think there's a parallel though there for me, because truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of marketing. I don't really like it. Traditionally, when it's intrusive. It's not great. When it's additive, it actually gives you a lot of benefit. So, I always use that commercial, like the Got Milk commercial. Also, Dating Myself. the Aaron Burr that classic commercial. It's basically a short film. It's a short comedy spot. And it was created by Milk and it to me was like, I could watch that several times. And that makes me happy when that that's additive. and then if you look at what we're doing with interactive on a platform, like Roblox, users are opting in to participate. They are not being, this is not being forced in their face. They have to make a choice to say, Oh, I want to go to that Milk experience with my avatar. So they teleport in there. And once they're there, you have to give them value. You can't just be like, cool, well, now you're here. Look at this billboard of art that we made for milk. So they engage, they learn, they are entertained. They, gain value. And then you build trust and brand loyalty that way.
Nathan C:This is a very interesting question to me. how do you learn from your customers? How do you learn to talk like them? How do you meet them? Is there an example of one of these opportunities where you learned from gamers, where you learned from these consumers and had to, pivot or change how you thought about immersive?
Nic Hill:Every single project we do is a learning opportunity, and because these are living experiences, That oftentimes have Discord communities attached to the actual experience. We're getting real time feedback constantly. unlike the traditional world where you make a 30 second spot, you lock it, you master it, and you ship it. There's no going back, That thing is just going to run. If someone's like, hey, I don't like the way that feels, not much you can do about it. These experiences, you can get feedback in real time, because users are in there saying, I don't like this, this is lame, that's cool, whatever. So you take it all in, and you can aggregate it down to, hey, this message is not really landing, or they don't like this element. then you can quickly go in and start to reshape how things are being perceived within your experience and how they're being communicated. You can see that change and how it's accepted by the communities in real time. it's a more living, real way of workshopping your marketing.
Nathan C:Okay. I thought I knew, like, the edges of why immersive in marketing is cool, but, I've heard you say a couple times here, right, that it's living, that, it continues, that people go out and play it, and this is another difference in traditional storytelling versus as a like an in world or maybe an immersive or game based storytelling. You have discord communities attached. You have, online social conversations. You have assets that people are bringing back and forth into different worlds. Also something, right, like, that you have to learn and share with your customers, right? to go from thinking from a time based marketing campaign, that is over six weeks in February to, how do you advise folks to think about immersive and, the investment, the lifespan of it? It's a very interesting, change from where a lot of marketers might be thinking about social or digital spin.
Nic Hill:Yeah, I spent a lot of my time in education. I'm on calls constantly with marketing teams explaining what this new space is, how it works, who is there, why they should take it seriously. It's just a foreign thing. it's like the early days of social media, where you had advocates and sort of innovators saying, we have to be on these social platforms. this is the next thing. And the jury was out whether that was true or not, but now you look at it today and it's like every marketing team in the world has a social person that is dedicated and they have a social strategy, several, right? And that's key to the success of their business. We don't have that right now for UGC gaming and immersive experiences. It's just the coolest innovative companies in the world, the ones that I get fortunate to work with, that have an innovation person that are saying, let's be there, that are learning about that stuff, and educating the rest of their teams. They're unlocking budgets to activate within those spaces, and they're seeing these huge results. But there's no standardization. It's every project is like reinvent the wheel. How do we do this? Let's, tweak it in all these ways and then we'll deliver it. So it's kind of a big lift. I don't want to talk anybody out of it, but we haven't got to that point where it's like, okay, cool. Yeah. We'll just green light this thing. Like we always do. And that thing just runs every month. We're still in that innovation phase where we're testing and building That's what's so exciting. Cause you really get to push yourself and you get to push the limits of Interactive marketing and you can kind of get these amazing results. So yeah, does that answer the
Nathan C:I love it. Yeah. absolutely. there's so many things and I suppose coming from like a media film production background, there's many benefits that you might have just in being able to, take care of branded IP to be able to translate. characters and stories and others from one media to another. there's all these touch points where you may need to educate, bring people along, and help them see the possibility. 13 years in, that's, an amazing success for, small businesses, growing businesses. That's an amazing success in business. That's where we're going to land. Let's think about, the glow up for Sawhorse. First, let's talk about, the next six months, what do you see as, a glow up you're looking to make or take these, stories, with Sawhorse in the next six months?
Nic Hill:Okay. So we'll start with the six months. I have always followed my passions in business. It started back when I was in college when I was editing documentaries and doing short films. To me, that didn't feel like work. It actually felt like fun, and I got so much out of that creatively that I've always kind of used that as my North Star as I've progressed in business. It was like, what do I want to build? and that's kind of like the reason why we call our company Sawhorse because the Sawhorse is a tool that you use to build things. So it's always like if I'm passionate about telling a story or making something that doesn't exist or whatever it is, I've just been able to accelerate that over the years. take it from very simple storytelling to bigger budgets, bigger stakes. More technology, more interactivity, and really push the envelope on what type of stories can be told and how you do that. And now, I'm sort of, dipping my toe in the world of innovation and just thinking about, like, how do you do things that have never been done before? How do you leverage, like, the bleeding edge technology to apply some things that you understand to things that you don't to do things that have never been done before? And so, for me, I would say the next six months is all about leveraging. That passion and kind of trying to push that initiative, all with a branded angle, it's really about helping these brands reach the customers of tomorrow in the most dynamic way. And so we'll just continue to challenge ourselves.
Nathan C:Amazing. Okay. So now let's blow it up. how do that this always learning, always innovating mission that you've set for Sawhorse, is a success? what is your big future vision?
Nic Hill:Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say like put an exact KPI on it necessarily, but I will say we currently are leading, we're one of the leading studios in brand storytelling, in immersive technologies. And I want to continue to. Be a leader in that space and push as hard as possible to be on those front lines, to constantly be making, helping lead the future of marketing. I don't want to sound pretentious, but I feel very lucky to be in this place, to be leveraging these technologies and doing these things that no one's ever done before. And I don't want to stop that. Roblox is great. but that's just one platform. there's so many amazing technologies like with augmented reality. I think there's gonna be a massive demand for AR and how that affects our lives. How does marketing show up there in a world that's invisible currently?
Nathan C:Oh my, you're talking my language now. I love, you said you weren't going to put a KPI on it, but I think you kind of did, right? Which is. One of the things that I hear you, is a driver for you, is how do I tell stories? How do I solve problems? How do I get into these juicy, story problems? And how, can I use technology to push the limits and, make opportunities for other folks? I love this idea that as long as you're learning, telling, in being creative, that you're down to follow it, not just from one industry to the next, but, it seems like, you've really opened up to, problem solving, more than any one technology. how do you tell a story? Period. with today's technology.
Nic Hill:Yeah, that has been the big growth of us moving from a production company into an agency. Whereas we are helping brands solve that problem versus Production company, it's more like, hey, we already know what we want. We've already bought the media. We need an asset. Can you guys do this? That's great. Now we're more in situations where brands are coming to us directly saying, how do I reach Gen Z at scale? And if I do, what are some realistic KPIs? So then we have to really shape the entire campaign with them. Help establish why and what they should be doing and then execute on that. So now there's a lot more strategy. There's a lot more innovative thinking and problem solving, but it's not just how do we make the thing good? It's like, why are we making the thing?
Nathan C:what a cool evolution and, what a fun question to be a part of solving. As you think about this growth and continued evolution of Softhorse, is there anything that you're actively looking for? Whether it's, learning, network, research, Do you have a call to action to the community at large?
Nic Hill:Well, I would say my, my brain is like a sponge. When I got into this, I was kind of nervous about the metaverse, and I know the metaverse is kind of like a bad word, we're not allowed to say it anymore, but, I'm still a proponent of it, but going from a production company, someone who works in video, to someone who now works in software, and game design, it was a scary jump, and I just dove headfirst into every book, every podcast, But I think what I'm looking for is the strongest, most passionate innovators. that are out there. We've hired some of these people that I've met through LinkedIn and met in my travels and met at conferences, and I found they are why Softhorse is successful and continues to grow. Because just like me, someone who's so passionate about what I do, I need to find people that are on that same level, that love what they do, that would be doing this Whether they were getting paid or not, essentially. So, we've made some really important hires over the past few years, and all of those people have been on that level. So, I think some of those people might be listening, to this podcast right now. And I feel like if you've got the passion, the enthusiasm, and the vision, those are the best hires in the world, so, we keep growing, so don't hesitate to reach out.
Nathan C:What a cool offer! we really position The Glow Up for anybody with a big idea, and I love this, call to action for if you've got a big idea, if you want to tell big stories, if you want to crack these hard problems, come check us out. What a cool offer! Very cool. So, Nic, this has been so fantastic. How can people, connect with you, learn more, reach out, follow up with you?
Nic Hill:The best way is just to hit me up on LinkedIn, easy to find. My name is just Nic Hill, NIC. H I L L. You can just hit me a DM, or you can check out the Sawhorse Productions website, which is just sawhorsela. com. It's got, tons of examples of our work, and there's a communication method that way as well.
Nathan C:Amazing. I have seen you at a number of top tier events, both in the media and in interactive space. it's where I saw this amazing cafe, installation of all your greatest hits. wonderful mug game going on there. Nic Hill, Saw Horse Productions, you changed my mind about, the scope of storytelling and how, brands and storytellers should think about immersive and interactive spaces today, it has been such a pleasure to hear your multi phased, journey That you've almost sort of turned this journey into the project, right? Like always evolving, always learning, always creating. I think what a great example for entrepreneurs, right? It is a marathon, not a sprint. why not make your career, the journey itself? so cool to talk with you today. and learn about what you're doing at SockWorce.
Nic Hill:Well said, And Nathan, thank you so much for having me on and giving me the opportunity to chat and, connect with your listeners. This has been fantastic.
Nathan C:Amazing.