Compass Grows Site Traffic with OpenReel-Powered Video Content
Meagan Wood, Senior Creative Producer at Compass, and her team initially planned to shoot in-person in five different cities for Compass Academy’s Agent Growth content initiative. When forced to pivot to remote video shoots, the team needed to quickly produce enterprise-quality videos with busy Compass agents, with limited bandwidth to learn complicated work around for remote shooting. OpenReel’s patented remote filming technology ensured the subjects only had to focus on their presentation, while Meagan’s team maintained full end-to-end directorial and quality control.
Scalable production schedule
Increase in site traffic
4.75 out of 5 feedback rating
Significant production budget saved
The Company
Compass is a real estate technology company that is building an end-to-end platform to support the entire buying and selling workflow. They deliver an incomparable experience to both agents and their clients all in service of the Compass mission: to help everyone find their place in the world.
The Challenge
Compass needed a tool to professionally film a Master-Class style series with Subjects in multiple cities
Compass Academy was created to educate their growing team of more than 18,000 agents across the U.S. on the technological tools that Compass created to improve the way agents do business. The education platform launched in 2019 focused on providing agents anytime access to training on Compass tools. In spring of 2020 Compass launched their Agent Growth series, over 75 videos providing Master Class-style lessons focused on business best practices from top Compass agents. The goal of this content was to drive site engagement even after agents had been trained on and felt comfortable with the tools.
In February 2020, Meagan started pre-production on the Agent Growth Content Initiative. The in house production team was in the process of casting top agents, who would present the video lessons, and scoping an outside video production company, who would shoot in several regions across the US.
By March, Compass’s plans to send a video crew across the country — or to even have separate local video teams shoot in-person with the subjects quickly diminished. Compass’s in-house team had to quickly pivot to find a way to still shoot content with the agents. The jury-rigged process worked like this: Compass’s team loaded a script into a teleprompter service, then gave that lesson’s presenter the log-in for the service. Both parties then hopped on video call to teach the agent how to download and use QuickTime for self-filming. After the agent self recorded their videos — always with multiple takes, which filled up personal computers with massive files — the agent would upload all files overnight to a Google Drive folder for the Compass production crew to access. “It was just an incredibly difficult workflow,” says Meagan. “I think we filmed it with two different subjects before we quickly realized that that was absolutely not going to work for the number of videos that we had to create.”
The Solution
OpenReel gave full directorial control to Compass’s creative team, while agents focused on their own stories
OpenReel allowed the production team to pivot overnight to a different and better way of shooting. The Agent Growth videos were all filmed via webcam, so each agent only had to open the OpenReel session invitation email, click the link, and type in a password, which is crucial to quickly filming top agents whose time is limited. After filming, Compass’s creative team uploaded each session to the cloud in real time, allowing the raw footage to be automatically deleted from the subject’s device and simultaneously available to the creative team to download. This effectively removed all the technological hurdles that the production had faced when it moved to remote shoots, while mitigating any bandwidth or storage issues on the Subject’s device.
The OpenReel platform also gave full directorial control to Compass’s creative team. They controlled the recording including professional-level features like temperature, resolution, exposure, and more. They were able to preload an approved script on the teleprompter ensuring the messaging would be concise, on-brand, and require as little preparation from the Subject as possible. The team also provided each subject with a style guide to brief them on how to prep for their shoot and set up their shooting location. Together, these capabilities ensured that the production team could provide consistency and collaboration, as much like an in-person shoot as possible — without having to fly from city to city and the Subject could be filmed with the least amount of disruption to their busy schedules.
Results
OpenReel™ empowered Compass’s team to film 75 professional video remotely
Compass Academy has expanded to include business best-practices courses for Real Estate topics in general. The decision was made to make this content available to the Real Estate industry at large as a way for real estate agents to focus on professional development with guidance from thought leaders selected from among their peers. Any real estate agent, anywhere can come watch the majority of the Agent Growth Content. Site traffic has gone up, surpassing site goals since its launch on March 20, 2020. Compass also measures the success of their video content by agent surveys. The team has consistently received terrific feedback, averaging 4.75 out of 5.
Beyond its reach and awareness goals, Compass also benefited from the cost and flexibility of a remote shoot. “OpenReel has allowed us to film faster, to film smarter, to film cheaper certainly than the plan to fly across the country and shoot with a production company,” emphasizes Meagan. “We’re very nimble.”
Learn more about how OpenReel™ is working with customers like Compass to master their video goals.
