Head of Content earning $150,000/year
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Jake Block heads up Clay Studios, Clay’s social, narrative, and media team. Previously a Supervising Producer at HubSpot, Jake has a simple ethos: make something people want to watch.
While everyone else is fighting AI fatigue with more AI-generated noise, Jake empowers a lean production team to zag by highlighting local legends over celebrities, nixing content calendars for publishing cadence, and centering video over any other media. The goal is not just to grow, but to become the next Morning Brew.
TL;DR: Jake answered questions from the Superpath Pro community that covered three topics:
Inside Clay Studios: Clay Studios is an in-house media company staffed by two full-time producers and a network of director-level ICs. There is no budget process and no content calendar, only conviction and a publishing cadence. The team is goaled on business value, including workspaces created.
Creative philosophy & craft: Hire for charisma, don’t script, and keep the moments most teams would cut. Clay is deliberately tool-agnostic and product-agnostic, and ideas come from whoever has conviction rather than from consensus.
Advice for other teams and creators: Replace the word “algorithm” with “audience.” Find the niche thing only you can talk about, borrow a format that already works, and make as much as possible. Reps are the differentiator.
That kind of output, and that kind of setup, doesn’t happen by accident. Below is his AMA with the Superpath Pro community, lightly edited for readability.
What exactly is Clay Studios? What kind of video do you produce? What does the team look like?
Clay Studios is our in-house media company at Clay. You could think of us as an agency that writes its own briefs. We do the narrative moments, the video moments, the media moments, and the written editorial moments. Basically everything you see and hear from Clay is from our team.
The team is incredibly diverse. It features community activists, big-time commercial producers, and journalists but the thing that binds them all together is that everyone is director-level and incredibly high agency.
How big is the team producing video?
Our team is actually fairly small. We have two full-time producers that lead our marketing video and then also our media motion, which you can think of as editorial-first video. Our special sauce is that we have a network of the best individuals (ICs) in the world and give everyone incredibly high agency when it comes to actually putting this work together.
I’m a former film/television production professional who made his way into content via video. Since you do have my dream job, I gotta know: what is your budget and how do you budget for projects? How do you track, measure, and report success?
Clay is famous for never having a budget. If we have strong conviction in the idea, we move forward.
When we talk about measuring success, we have to kind of re-orient how we think about what it means to run media in a tech company. For us, we’re more of an integrated marketing function, so all of our projects, any bet we make, have to directly relate to some type of business value, whether that’s awareness or whether that’s workspaces created. Our goal is to show the world how exciting it is to work at our company and basically write them in on what they’re missing out on.
I looked for videos on clay.com but couldn’t find any. On the way, though, I did find Clay University, cohorts, job board, templates, the GTM championship (!!), and community Slack. Is the studio’s goal to be so good that external folks discover Clay ties, and are already won over because they love the content? Why do you think that’s advantageous, or worth risking discoverability?
Our content aims to actually be mostly product agnostic, which is why you don’t see a lot of it on clay.com. You can think of us as the top and mid funnel for the product. B2B is boring. Our team just wants to make stuff that we would watch.
Are product launches under your purview at all? Any advice on launches that stand out?
Yes. Make something that doesn’t look like everyone else’s but have a reason for it. For us, everyone was going celebrity so we went local legend. Clay loves New York City so we try to base lots of our videos here because it’s true to our story.
Does Clay have a content calendar? What do you anchor it around?
We do not have a content calendar. We do have a publishing cadence, though. On [YouTube] it’s 4/month, on LinkedIn it’s every day.
From a medium standpoint, why all-in on video vs. balancing with a written publication and/or podcast? Does that come from your video background and the fact you originated the studio, or is that a specific decision about the medium your audience is most interested in consuming?
Great question. All of our media verticals are meant to truly be verticals. Written is on the list and you’ll start seeing stuff from us very soon.
I try not to put anything out into the world until we can be the best at it, and we recently brought on some incredibly talented people that will help us make this happen.
How do you train/guide your teammates to be such strong video presenters? Are they all naturally charismatic? What’s one thing you did to translate Clay’s brand into video that we might find interesting or surprising? For example, I’m really interested to learn how you go about choosing music!
We’ve been very lucky. One of the hiring criteria might as well be charisma. We don’t script, which is what keeps us fairly flexible even with individuals that aren’t that great on camera. We give them time to be themselves. The thing about our content is that across the board we aim to show the moments other people would cut, which I also think helps lean into the humanity of these people.
Quality vs. quantity. I’d love to hear more about how you’ve gotten buy-in, and (if you did), do you think some teams will always lean one side or the other? Is there room to grow buy-in gradually?
You can always grow [buy-in] over time, it’s just very grating. Creativity is also a game of momentum. The slower you are to start, the more likely it’s going to be difficult to make the thing that you’re excited about. Not everything that we make has to solve for every idea that we have though. In some places quality isn’t as important as the story, which is the only thing that really matters. Know where you’re posting and why you’re posting it. In a lot of cases, all you need is Photo Booth on Mac.
Clay has amazing product-market fit and a viral product. Is that existing demand a necessary condition to have enough buy-in/runway/budget for a content studio? Or could your strategy also work for creating demand at a new startup?
Short answer, no. Long answer:
I would never build a team that doesn’t directly contribute to growth for a company. Our team is goaled on not only audience metrics but also workspaces created.
Traditional content marketing funnels, whether it’s links or when people sign up for the product and they mention YouTube. It’s far from perfect but we don’t need much to prove that this is valuable.
One of the main levers that we have to grow our PLG motion is our studio operations. We also have a very heavy creator motion, which is also under the studio team, which helps us do that.
Why buy a billboard when you can be one?
We also buy billboards lol.
Is there a specific tool your team uses to make the clay-like videos? Are you guys just Blendr experts?
We bring in craftspeople whenever we can. If you see something that looks like Blendr, it’s probably Blendr. If you see something that looks like Claymation, it’s probably Claymation. We use tools to get the job done. We’re not necessarily tool-specific.
Can you share some examples of content you’re proud of?
Anything on the Clay LinkedIn I’m proud of. Also our new channel Clay Originals on YouTube I’m very proud of. We don’t put out work that we’re not excited about.
What other studios (in-house B2B or not) are you watching right now? What content makes you jealous?
Founders Inc. is probably my favorite entrepreneurial content.
How do you come up with ideas?
Most of our ideas come from open conversations, weird tangents, and profound interest. I don’t believe in creative democracy so whenever someone is running a project, we already trust them because they are on the team. We let them run with an idea because we know they have conviction.
How long did it take for you to come up with a specific vision and point of view for Clay? What part of that specific vision are people responding to?
Not very long. I pitched my team and job to the founder and knew of Clay as this irreverent B2B brand and just leaned in fully. It’s really not hard when the product and people are so good.
Can you share a bit how you think about and balance making what you want to make but also thinking about how it’s going to get shared?
It’s not for everyone. You have to be obsessed and passionate to make this type of work. We try to hire individuals that we know have it because it takes time to teach someone to have it. Like every other company in the world, we don’t have time to teach atm.
What’s been the most surprising thing that’s worked at Clay?
The amount of agency that an individual can have. There are no rules on how to run a business. I believe the future of companies will look closer to how Clay has been set up. I credit that to our founders, Varun and Kareem!!!
My organization is a large online nonprofit university. We are getting into “GEO videos” from what I hear, but that seems nebulous. What are your recommendations for a university like us when it comes to YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn strategy?
Anytime you hear the word “algorithm,” replace it with “audience.” Someone said that recently and I don’t know who, but that’s the most true thing I can point you to. GEO is just another game to play when it comes to making things that the audience watches. My recommendation is to find the incredibly niche unique thing that your university does and try to make content about it following a format that already has proven itself online.
What do you recommend for folks with a writing background who want to sharpen their video skills?
Make as much stuff as possible. This is the only differentiator. I don’t care what you’ve done in the past if you can show me that you have tried on social media. This is generally a game of reps. You can be great if you have a perspective and passion. Just put stuff out there.
Clay has a bit of a dream UGC situation. What’s your relationship with Clay customers and advocates? How do you capture some of that magic and turn it into content?
Luckily our community does a lot of that work. We try to package everything in the best way for them, and keep them in the loop when we have something new coming out. We also have an amazing community team that helps us make this happen.
There was a time when everyone was talking about Clay on LinkedIn. Did you have any part in building an employee and/or customer advocacy program? If so, how do you get employees to meaningfully share the content you produce?
I feel like people are still talking about Clay on LinkedIn hahaha! I can’t take much credit here but I will say that our team is passionate and excited and Clay has always been community first.
How effective do you see customer video collaboration being? For example, if we have David Protein as a client, would it serve my company to create a video highlighting their business’ success and their team? Or do we have to specifically highlight how they use our product?
My challenge here for anyone that believes in a case study is to think of the last time they’ve watched a case study. Did you like it? I think we should treat these people like humans and capture the things that make them David Protein, and in that you’ll share your company’s objectives naturally. But don’t go in with the sole goal of showing your business’s value.
If you were ramping up video storytelling at a scrappy startup, besides narrative and voice, what top production elements are a must vs. what can be skipped?
Don’t just make tutorials. Nobody wants to watch them. Find people that speak to your audience and replicate their formats.
What’s your experience been like in the B2B podcast space? What platforms/types of content do you see as essential for a B2B podcast to grow? Any advice for the team of 1 freelancer?
Podcast video, I think, is the most important part of podcasts and then the clipping operation that comes with it. If you can be the person that helps formulate a podcast that people wanna watch and then build the clipping strategy, I think you have an amazing business.
For more from Jake:
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