Sales Videos
LifeLearn Animal Health - Company Overview 2019
LifeLearn WebDVM - Sales Video
LifeLearn Client Ed - Sales Video
LifeLearn Stratus - Sales Video
Whiteboard sales videos written for Optimal Health & Wellness to promote some of OHW’s health and nutritional supplements.
At request, scripts were written according to the 3X Sellerator formula taught by direct marketer Jon Benson.
During my off-hours at OHW, I wrote a series of humor-based sales scripts for a variety of OHW products, including the BioDermRx line of skincare products and a small line of male sexual health supplements called AndroGenyx, which OHW never launched.
Based on the success of sales videos by companies like Dollar Shave Club and the Harmon Brothers, I felt that OHW could better engage people on YouTube and social media by similarly using humor in their product videos while still keeping the focus squarely focused sales and promotion.
As a spin on presenting video scripts in plain old text form, I produced my script ideas as video and audio storyboards. Some product names were fictionalized for privacy protection. Colleagues found them engaging. Yet OHW chose to pass on them.
Here are the storyboards I produced:
AndroGenyx
AndroGenyx
AndroGenyx
AndroGenyx
BioDermRx InstaLift
StrictionBP
StrictionBP
B12 Energizer Plus
Following the production of the whiteboard sales videos (top of this section), OHW decided to launch a YouTube channel and asked me to create four engagement scripts for their blood-pressure supplement, StrictionBP. I was also asked to create another Job Benson-style long-form video sales letter (VSL) to promote OHW’s new blood-sugar supplement, StrictionD.
In the end, OHW forewent the launch of its YouTube channel and while they launched their blood-sugar product, I don’t know whether they produced the VSL.
YouTube Scripts for Optimal Health & Wellness
Four-script informational series to promote the all-natural blood pressure supplement StrictionBP.
< == Click on the icon (left) to open the PDF
VSL for StrictionD
Traditional long-form video sales letter script for the all-natural blood sugar supplement StrictionD.
< == Click on the icon (left) to open the PDF
Click on an individual button (right) to play a video in a separate web page. Player and volume controls will be available.
Shortly after, I noticed how Tylenol was earning a lot of views on Facebook for a silent 60-second video, which was essentially the whiteboard video reinvented. Aside from a musical soundtrack, the Tylenol video had no narration, and only featured on-screen text. Deciding to test the effectiveness of silent video for myself, I created and posted a silent video called "4 Signs Your Cat May Have Dementia" on my own YouTube channel. When the video immediately began getting traction, I proposed the idea to OHW of creating short silent product videos, but they did not pursue the recommendation.
Footnote: My cat Majyn appears in the opening of the below video.
Returning to the study of humor-based sales videos by the Harmon Brothers and other agencies like Dead Famous, I spent my off-hours writing two new humorous video sales scripts to pitch to OHW for B12 Energizer Plus (fictionalized in the PDFs below as B12 Prime). To pre-screen the scripts, I sent one of them to the OHW staff as a holiday email called "Your Zombie Apocalypse Holiday Health Tips! (Yup-For REAL)." (The script was based on real research.)
Several colleagues wrote to tell me that the email was the funniest thing they'd ever read. So I finished up my two scripts for presentation. Unfortunately, due to a year of poor product sales, OHW laid off half its staff (including me) before I had a chance to present them.
Here are the two humorous sales video scripts that OHW never got to see:
B12 Prime: Reclaim Your Awesomeness
Humor-based sales video script loosely modeled after the Harmon Brothers' sales video for Orabrush.
< == Click on the icon (left) to open the PDF
B12 Prime: Yes, You Can Easily Survive the Zombie Apocalypse
This original sales video script was inspired by actual research showing that 12% of people have a plan to survive a zombie apocalypse.
< == Click on the icon (left) to open the PDF
Social
Movie Trailer Spoof (Market Highlights, August 8, 2018)
Local Business Fest II (2018)
Market Midseason Highlights 2018
Local Business Fest (2018)
While studying Digital Media Production at Conestoga College in 2015, a representative from the Cambridge Scottish Festival arrived one day to ask for volunteers to produce material to help promote the festival. I wrote and produced three video storyboards (below) for social. For my own copyright protection, I fictionalized the name of the games.
Shine
Aphasia awareness video produced for the Aphasia Institute.
Critically acclaimed, Shine earned a public screening at the 2015 Annual General Meeting of the Aphasia Institute.
Awareness
LifeLearn 25
Past, Present & Future
My credit is partial in this company history video for LifeLearn Animal Health. I wrote the questions, interviewed off-camera and partly helped with the storyboard. LifeLearn Social Media Manager Andru Valpy handled all production and also interviewed off-camera.
Company History
Hollywood scriptwriter Michael Hauge once advised me to always capture my ideas, whether I'm writing for someone or not. And this is what I've always done, echoing the oft-quoted line "A writer writes, always" from the 1987 movie Throw Momma From the Train. Some of the following storyboards were pitched to companies. The storyboards are neither endorsed by nor used by the product, service or company featured.
A Writer Writes, Always
Sometimes, I Do Podcast Stuff
Some while ago, I wrote and recorded a few messages of support and encouragement for musicians, which were picked up and shared by Candice Marshall on Starlight Music Chronicles.
Sometimes, I Do Fun Stuff :)
Long before I started employing humor in sales video scripts, employee communications, emails, social posts and more, I spent two years writing and testing different forms of humor through the Radio Xrisville podcast, spun from four years as the writer and publisher of Xrisville, an independent humor magazine distributed across Toronto and occasionally in different countries around the world by readers and fans.
The Best of Radio Xrisville
Get your six-month weather forecast, discover why lemurs never go to hell or simply hear the sound of a computer being blown up! It's all waiting inside the best of the Radio Xrisville podcast.
The Radio Xrisville Xrismas Show
Grab yourself a Midnight Beer, join Cops on Winter Stakeout or have yourself a Steven Tyler Christmas in Radio Xrisville's first (and only) Xrismas Show.
== > Click here to listen to the Radio Xrisville Xrismas Show
Radio Xrisville Podcasts Still Available on PRX
Radio X Odds and Sods
“I am kind of in awe at the amount of content that Xris has amassed here. He has created an entire universe as densely composed as it is making fun of everything and, most of all, itself.”
—Chris Landry, Broken Pencil
This magazine is dripping with sarcasm like a rabid bull mastiff but most of the humor is good-natured and just plain silly (Canadians). Reads like a one-person zine version of MAD Magazine or Cracked.”
—Randy Spaghetti, Life Reviews
