297 | From Prompt to Powerful: The Secret Formula Behind High-Impact AI Videos with Eve Whitaker

0:00Hello and welcome to Leveraging AI, the podcast that shares practical ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency, grow your business, and advance your career. This is Isar, Metis, your host, and we have a really fun and impactful episode for you today. Creating great videos that can connect with your audience on an emotional level is something everybody wants to do, but very few people actually know how to do it. Now, also, most people, probably not everyone, but most people know you can create amazing videos with AI today, and yet very few people know how to do that. Our guest today, Eve Whitaker, knows how to do both.

0:36She knows how to create amazing videos that connect with the audience, and she knows how to do it with AI. Now, she spent over 15 years of her career on TV in multiple different roles, her latest role as an executive producer, which means she understands all the details and intricacies of what a good video looks like, something that the audience will want to watch, but she also knows all the needy little details such as where the camera should be positioned, how the shot should progress, how long should the shot be, and all the things that make a great story when told through video. So this gives her an amazing background in what a good video looks like.

1:15But in addition, in the past few years, she's been all about AI solutions and she has developed her own process that allows her to go from an idea in her head or somebody else's head to a professionally fully running produced video of that idea. And in today's episode, she's going to share with us her step-by-step process and the entire way on how to go from A to Z with creating solid, effective AI videos, including all the details that a professional executive producer knows and most of us don't have a freaking clue about, which in my eyes is very cool and very exciting. Now, since video is currently the best format we have to connect with our audiences, and it's also the best format from a shareable perspective, and it is the most viral content that can be put out there, I find this skill very exciting.

2:05And hence, I'm really excited to welcome Yves to the show. Yves, welcome to Leveraging AI.

2:13Eve Whitaker:Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I'm very curious about this one. I saw your session. You and I both spoke at the Social Media Marketing World, and that's where we connected. And so I guess we both need to thank Michael for this. So thank you, Michael, if you're listening. But it's a really cool thing, right? The ability to create the right kind of video. Everybody can create a video, like especially today. But creating the right video that will actually produce results, connect with people, and lead somebody to an outcome is not easy to do. And hence, I'm really excited about this. Yeah, no. I find this new world we're in of AI to be probably the most exciting time for solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, small business owners, because we really do now have the tools that we need to really promote ourselves and take our business to a level that we never could before.

3:05Eve Whitaker:And I, obviously being into TV, have always loved video. But even if I wasn't, video usually is the king when it comes to content. And because now we have so many platforms we can put it on, having your messaging be correct, it really does give us an advantage we've never had before. I love that. I will just add one more thing. I don't think it's just entrepreneurs and small businesses. I have several really large clients. Two of them are in the apparel space. Two of them are huge, gigantic companies in the apparel space. And they, until not too long ago, needed to do photo shoots for every new style, for every new season, for every new everything.

3:44And then that's very expensive because you need the talent and you need the location and you need the lighting and you need the photographers and you need all of that. Yeah. You do this every few months and it's crazy expensive. And now you can do this without the talent and without the location and without the clothing. You don't need any of that to make it happen. And you can change it every day and not just once every other month when you switch to your next whatever. And so I think it's true for anyone. If you, regardless of size of the company, if you want a way to effectively engage your audience through video, as you said, this is the best time in history to start doing that.

4:24Eve Whitaker:100%. And it really is for everyone. I just always give a shout out to the small guy because I don't think they would have ever done this before. Where the larger companies would have, they just would have spent a lot more money. So the advantage is for anyone that wants to use it. you will save time, you will save money, and you will be able to give more value to your customers or clients. 100%. So let's dive in. Let's see. Let's go. Let's go do this. Okay. So basically, my process is I did not create this. This is from all of my time working in LA, Los Angeles, on television shows, that a very simple framework to explain to the person that has never made a video is there's three phases.

5:03Eve Whitaker:There's the pre-production, and that's where we get our script. We gather all of the things that we need to actually produce the video. And then there's the production where before AI, that would be getting your photographers, your cinematographers, actors, a location and going out and actually the production day or days shooting, etc. And then there's the post-production. And that's where we take everything back into an edit bay and we put it all together. And so what AI has done is it's taken the whole entire process and simplified it. Now, the production actually got the most simplified. That is where we literally put a prompt into an AI video generator and we generate our video, which still blows my mind today.

5:53Eve Whitaker:Post-production is getting better with AI, but we still need to use the same tools that we used before. That is one of the biggest misconceptions where people are like, how do you make such a long video and why do yours turn out great and mine? It doesn't always turn out. And so that's where I'm always very I like to get ahead of that to say, you still need to edit your videos right now. We're not at a place and we could be tomorrow, but today we're not at a place where I can just tell the AI what I want and it just makes it perfectly. So that's where the post-production, But where I get the most excited, where I think I can help the most people is once they understand the pre-production.

6:33Eve Whitaker:And that is coming up with your message. Because you can have everything work out perfectly in production and post-production. If you don't have your story down, your message down, it's not going to do anything. And especially today with all the content coming out there, you have to understand how to stay ahead and have the correct message and say it to the correct people. That's fantastic. Yeah, I agree with you 100%, right? At the end of the day, whatever video you put out there has a goal. The goal might be just to entertain people. Maybe you're not selling anything. The goal might be to promote a nonprofit thing that you're going.

7:13It doesn't have to be financially driven, but there's always a goal. Otherwise, you wouldn't be spending the time to create the video. And maybe you would if it's just for fun, but then you won't post it anyway. If you're posting it for other people to see, then it means you're trying to get people to interact with it, engage with it, impact them somehow. And that means you have a goal. If you have a goal, there's a way to get there better than just, oh, let's shoot a video and see what happens. which I love the direction that you're taking this. I will say two things about the post-production thing, because first of all, obviously I agree with you.

7:45That's the part where it's the least impacted right now by AI. Two things. One, I have been editing all my videos. So every content you guys ever consume of me is produced using a tool called Descript that has been around. I've been using it for probably five years in podcasting. So it existed way before the whole AI craze, but it is an AI tool that allows you to edit and produce videos significantly faster in the post-production aspect of it. And we're now adding more and more layers of like external AI that works with it, which is really cool. So this is our latest testing with that. And the other thing is Gemini.

8:21So Google just came with Omni this last week. And Omni is actually really good at editing videos, any videos like either AI videos or real videos, which just prompts. It still doesn't do all the things that Eve talks about. Yes, you can remove the background and you can remove characters and you can dress them up in different things. And you You can do things that are absolutely magical, that you needed a high-end production studio for weeks to do the stuff you can just do with one prompt. But it still doesn't know how to take six videos together and stitch them perfectly so they look like one video or stuff like that.

8:52So there's still work to be done manually if you want this to be the perfect output. But we're slowly closing more and more aspects of this.

9:01Eve Whitaker:We are getting closer. We are definitely getting closer. So the first question that I always ask my audience when I start talking about if there's so many different frameworks. So let's focus on the person that wants to market themselves using social media. And so I always ask them, do you know who your audience is? And do you know what problems do you solve for your audience? Now, most of the time they ask or if I ask them that they tell me what they do. So I always use the weight loss example because it's really an easy one. And most people have some relationship or experience with either someone trying to lose weight or they've lost weight or they've tried.

9:39Eve Whitaker:And so let's say they're a gym owner and I say, OK, what problems do you solve? And I help people lose weight. I have a gym. I have this equipment. I offer classes. I'm like, no, what problems do you solve? Because there's a reason people can't lose weight or there's a reason people don't go to the gym. So I also say, because we're putting out so much content, we all know and we've heard of hopefully most of the people listening, your ICA, your ideal customer avatar. But you have several, right? Not everyone's going to fit into that box. Once you have your ICA, you have your male, your female, the age groups.

10:15Eve Whitaker:Everything is very different with that. So I tell people in the pre-production phase, we're going to talk to one, one person, and we're going to solve one problem. And so I created a custom GPT. Now you can do this in a Claude skill. You can use perplexity. It doesn't have to be done in chat GPT. That's just the first LLM that I use that I still love. Everyone's, where are you going to switch over to Claude? And I'm like, I have. It's just easy for me to share my custom GPTs. And so little foreshadowing, I am sharing this custom GPT with your audience. Yeah. So this, cause it's the hardest part, I think, in really getting this part down.

10:58And once you understand it, it's like it clicks and then you're like, oh, I made it harder than I thought.

11:06Eve Whitaker:But once you get it, it really does help. So if I can, I'm going to share my screen and we'll just walk through one of these and to show the audience and verbally say to the audience kind of how this works. Awesome. Fantastic. Yeah. And those of you who are not watching, you can watch this on Spotify. right now if you're not driving. Or you can watch this on our YouTube channel, which you can find the link on the show notes. And there's going to be a link to the GPT that Eva was gracefully sharing with us. So that's going to be a link for that as well. And if you can't watch this, that's perfectly fine.

11:36We're going to walk you through everything that is on the screen so you can keep on listening if you are driving or walking your dog or mowing the yard or doing something else that does not allow you to watch this.

11:47Eve Whitaker:So I call this the problem identification assistant. So I help you identify problems you solve for your clients or customers. And the reason we're going to do this is each piece of content you produce is going to solve one problem. So if you can solve one problem in a video, and this can be artistic too, like you said, it doesn't all have to be for like saying, Hey, I'm a gym owner. Here's my gym. Come on down. So we'll just say you just literally hit start here. And this is just so the average person, if they have no idea what they're doing, this is what you can just start. And the tech is going to go a little slow.

12:25Eve Whitaker:So we'll wait for chat GPT to think here. And while we're waiting for that, I will say one thing. Those of you who do not know what custom GPTs are, which this is what this is, a custom GPT is basically a set of instructions with some additional context if you want, files and other references and so on, that does a repeatable process. And you can save those and then reuse them again and again whenever you want. And as you've said, they're very easy to share as well. So there's literally a share button at the top right corner of a custom GPT and it allows other people to use it. And inside of it, like I said, there's just a set of instructions.

13:00So let's continue.

13:02Eve Whitaker:So it's going to ask you, let's get clear on the problems you solve. Please answer these two questions. Who are your clients and what is the main problem you help solve? So I'm going to say I own a gym and I help people wait. And I'm keeping this pretty basic just so you can see how it's going to peel back the onions. And so I'm just going to even just leave it there and just see what it's going to come up with because it is programmed to now say, okay, based on what you shared, here are three core problems your clients are dealing with. They struggle to lose weight consistently even after trying diets or workout plans before or workout plans.

13:43Eve Whitaker:they lack accountability and motivation so they start off strong but then fall after fall off after a few weeks they feel overwhelmed by fitness and nutrition and don't know what actually works for their body or lifestyle so then the user is going to choose one of these right so i'll let you pick which one speaks to you in your experience of knowing someone with number two perfect and you literally just have to yeah you just have to put in number two you don't have to type it out so they lack accountability and motivation. So they start strong, but fall off after a few weeks, which I do think is very common in the weight loss world.

14:21Eve Whitaker:So then what the GPT is going to do, the little AI tool, is it's going to break it down into five specific problems as to why. That's what I'm always asking. Why? Why? So why do they start off strong and then fall off? And those are the topics that we're going to actually use in our content. So they can't stay consistent with workouts because life, work, and family constantly interrupt their routine. They lose motivation when they don't see results fast enough, so they quit before the real progress happens. The third one is they know what they should do, but they struggle to hold themselves accountable when nobody is checking on them.

14:59Eve Whitaker:The fourth one, they start and stop fitness programs repeatedly, which makes them feel frustrated, discouraged, and embarrassed. And the fifth one is they feel intimidated or uncomfortable in gym environments so they avoid showing up consistently. So out of those ones, which one should we pick? I love this for one very interesting reason. I think if you would have just gave this to a random gym owner, they would have said all of the above. And I think what you're doing is that you're forced to speak to one problem. And then you can do another video for the other problem and then a third video for the third problem.

15:35But in this one video, tackle one audience. And the reason I love this is because the person that's going to watch it, one person can say, oh, this is exactly my problem. Exactly. Versus this is my problem, but not exactly. And so I love the focus and making it very specific because these kind of sound the same, but they're not. Like you're saying, they address a slightly different pain point or trigger at a specific individual that will say, oh, this is exactly me. So let's go with the first one. They can stay consistent. with workouts because life work, blah, blah, blah.

16:09Eve Whitaker:Okay, perfect. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to cut and paste that. And just to go or just copy it for now to exactly what you said, that's exactly the plan is if you are doing this and you are building out your content strategy, I always talk about it in pillars. I like to work in quarters, but you could do it by month. It doesn't matter, right? And so this month, let's say if you were doing it in a month, here are three pillars, which is once I put in I'm the gym owner and I help people lose weight, the AI gave me three pillars that I can produce content on. And then with those three pillars, it gave me five for each one.

16:47Eve Whitaker:So I could go in and say, now let's tackle number one. Now let's tackle number three since we picked number two. That's now 15 pieces of content that we can produce. So you are exactly right. We are just going to start talking to that one specific problem because we've heard this before. If you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. So let's get very specific. All right, so then I'm gonna go into a different GPT. Now, with this, you don't have to have my GPT to be able to do this. This is just how I move faster, right? So I would go into a GPT that I created called AdSpark Engine. And what I do with this is I begin to look at where is my audience in relation to me?

17:35Eve Whitaker:We've heard about funnels, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. If you haven't heard of funnels, let's do, have they heard of you before? Are they familiar with you? Are they ready to buy for you, from you? Or are they brand new, right? So we have the cold audience. They're the ones that have never heard of you, top of funnel. Then we move into the, ah, they've seen your stuff around, but they haven't yet really engaged with you. that's your warm audience, middle of funnel. And then you have the bottom of the funnel where they're ready to buy from you. They just haven't hit it yet.

18:07Eve Whitaker:So with this, I have just started this to where I'll put this in. And what this does is this is going to create an ad for me that I can iterate on and go back and forth using AI to do this. Now, like I said, if you don't have my ad Spark Engine. You can use AI, just go into any LLM and answer these questions and you will get a result that will work for you. So it basically says if you already have a specific problem with your audience from one of Eve's other GPTs, you can drop it in here. If not, no problem. I'll still build a strong commercial. And it literally goes over what I just said. Now give me these four so I can build the right ad.

18:48Eve Whitaker:Where is your audience right now? And so I'm just going to say cold and just pretend that I just started this gym. What's the one emotion we should hit in the first three seconds? Talking about hook. Do we want urgency, aspiration, curiosity, trust, protectiveness, surprise, or inspiration? I'm going to go with inspiration just because I want to launch this campaign maybe a couple months before my gym's going to open and start getting the word out there. What does your product primarily do? Solve a problem, a painful problem, create a transformation, protect something, or build a skill or remove confusion.

19:30Eve Whitaker:So I'm going to go with transformation. Where will this ad run? Now, this isn't really as important because the only thing that the only reason it's asking this is because it will then create an ad that will fit these formats, whether it's TikTok wants 45 seconds, reels, et cetera. So I'm just going to say Facebook right now. Just to be simple, you can say all of them. And then I'm just going to cut and paste my problem in. So again, if you don't have this GPT, you could literally just go into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and just answer these questions and say, hey, I want you to create an ad for me, answer these questions and give it the problem.

20:12Eve Whitaker:And it's going to come up with something that you can definitely use. So it says, here's the problem we're building this around. Your audience keeps starting over with fitness because the routine only works in perfect conditions. The second work gets chaotic, kids need attention or life shifts unexpectedly, the entire system collapses. This is not really a motivation problem. It's a fragility problem. That's strong because it's emotionally true, visually clear and easy to dramatize through a metaphor instead of a generic gym frustration. So based on your audience, which is cold, the desired emotion, which was inspiration, product outcome, transformation, and platform Facebook, I recommend the BAB plus pattern interrupt hybrid framework.

21:02Eve Whitaker:Here's why. So I'm not even going to go into this because this gets into the back end, the GPT, and it's frankly boring. We'll just get to it. So the emotional outcome is maybe fitness doesn't need more discipline. I've just been using a system that breaks under real life. Would you like to proceed with this framework? So I'm just going to say yes. So this particular custom GPT, I put in a lot of back end information about different ways that people will relate to ads depending. So now it's going to do my commercial script. It's going to do a duration of 30 seconds. Again, the cold audience, the platform being Facebook.

21:39Eve Whitaker:It's going to start off with a three-second hook. A man is jogging on a treadmill inside a house that violently shaking like an earthquake simulator. Kid runs past him. Phone alarms explode. Laundry falls from the ceiling. A laptop slams open with notifications, but he keeps trying to run. Then the treadmill suddenly snaps in half. Silence. Your fitness plan only works when life doesn't happen. That's a text overlay. Then it's going to be good. Yeah, it's fun. First of all, I can visualize it in my head. And second, I think it's a really good tagline. I will say something else that I really like about your approach is the fact that the question was what emotion you want to invoke in the first three seconds.

22:21The hook has to generate a strong emotion for the people to stay around. It's not about about what you're selling is about what is going to make the people feel connected emotionally, going back to I'm solving your particular problem. If I'm not, don't watch this video because I don't care. I may care, but this is not the role of this particular video right now. So I totally see how all these things connect and I absolutely love this. So let's continue.

22:45Eve Whitaker:Awesome. And I'll throw in just a little fact that I read that Google did a study probably about six months ago and came out and said that for someone to actually take an action and purchase from you, they on average need to be exposed to your content for up to seven hours of content across four platforms with at least seven touch points. That's a lot, right? And so that's why the name of the game is content, right? And we're going back to what we talked about earlier. AI allows us to do that in a much more simple way. Now, those touch points and that content doesn't always have to be video, just to be clear.