Can you imagine spending $80 million on a single-use product?
Andrew Levy and Sam Birdsong saw that happen on multiple occasions while producing videos for enterprise companies over the last ten years.
The two Athens, Georgia-based founders and filmmakers realized a fundamental flaw when it came to how companies think about content creation. Typically, the process is wasteful and leaves quality content buried in some social media feed at best or lost on an employee’s hard drive at worst.
“We saw over and over again [big companies] spend a ton of money on these impactful videos. They’d be really successful…and they’d never use them again,” Levy told Hypepotamus.
That ranged from one Fortune 100 team flying teams around the world to ultimately produce a three-minute video that was used once to another company spending $80 million on videos that ultimately just sat on an underutilized YouTube channel.
It’s what Levy, Birdsong, and the team behind the startup AdPipe call “the great underutilization of content.”
Part of that underutilization comes from what Levy describes as an “outdated employee mix” at most enterprise organizations. Their creative teams and marketing professionals are masters of static imagery found on billboards and in magazines. But most teams have not brought on the video professionals needed to keep up with the rise of short-form video.
“Marketers are being buried. New things are being put on their plate every day. They have no time. They’re being asked to do new things and not being trained or given the skill set or tools. So we wanted to help them,” Levy said. “We wanted to help them use what they have and lower the cost of production.”
Understanding AdPipe
AdPipe takes on content underutilization in three ways: Repurpose, Repackage, and Repost.
The platform works as a “content command center” for enterprises to ensure all their assets live in one place. That helps businesses repurpose old content and quickly render it into new content for use on additional platforms.
Repackaging content with new text or fresh animations helps enterprises get extra use out of its video library.
The reposting pillar is about getting enterprise content into the hands of more people across the organization. That means “anybody in the organization can quickly generate an industry-leading approved ad in just a couple of seconds,” added Levy.
On the written content side, AdPipe has also rolled out an AI-powered copywriter tool designed to help marketers get over writer’s block and create quality first drafts of LinkedIn posts, ad headlines, email drafts, and tweets.
From static to motion
AdPipe’s mission is to bring motion to the advertising space, something that Levy said can bring businesses a 12x return on investment compared to the use of traditional static images.
The AdPipe team is also on the move. Levy and Birdsong have grown their remote-first team to 12 since getting off the ground in early 2022. The startup got support from Georgia angel investors for its pre-seed round about a year ago.
“We were these outsiders from Athens who had built a film company, we weren’t tech forward,” added Levy. “They took us under their wings, they were super generous, always available, answering our millions of questions. I think that’s something that’s different about our community…is just how welcoming and how supportive these individuals have been to help us.”
The team just announced a new round of institutional funding in the form of a $3 million seed round led by Atlanta Ventures.
The capital will go towards product development and building relationships with marketers around the country. The team is also ramping up hiring efforts focused around sales and customer success.
“We’ve seen significant growth over the last couple of months,” added Levy. “We wanted to build a really strong product to support the pain that marketers are feeling. Marketers are overwhelmed. There’s a lot on their plate…they’re calling for help and we want to be the ones to provide that [help]. And that’s going to require a beautiful, very intuitive, and easy-to-use product.”
