Work/Cloudinary
Nine thousand views in the first week
Long-form videos and Shorts for Cloudinary's channel on transforming images at the edge, made with their DevRel and marketing teams. Their videos usually average around 400 views. Ours passed 9,000 in their first week.
- Full production
- Scripting
- Motion graphics
- Developer education
9000+
views in the first week
200+
new subscribers
1500+
likes and interactions
Capabilities nobody knew to look for
Cloudinary's team wanted free API signups from developers who had no idea the platform could do the job for them. That's the catch with a platform this broad. Most developers know one corner of the media lifecycle and assume the rest needs another tool.
Take background removal. There's a free web tool for a single image, so nobody goes looking for an API, right up until they need it on every image they serve and the free tool is no help.
Every video had to take a developer from never having heard of the feature to typing the parameter themselves.
The strategy
Two budgets, one parameter
- 01
Both audiences in the first minute
Every video speaks to two people from the first minute: an engineer at a large media company, with a team and a budget behind them, and a vibe coder shipping on their own. The fix is the same for both.
- 02
Then show it at both scales
We demo each capability twice. First as a one-string change inside an img tag, then as an eager transformation at upload across an entire media library. It's the same parameter both times, which is also the real lesson about how Cloudinary works.
- 03
Titles for people who skim
Developers scan titles for their exact problem, so ours name the parameter and the outcome and nothing else. We sent publishing recommendations with every video, and Cloudinary used them almost word for word.
Same parameter for both. One runs it on everything at upload, the other in a single URL.
One team from brief to upload
We wrote, presented, shot, cut and animated the whole series ourselves. The person who chose the enterprise example wrote the line, said it on camera and built the graphic under it, so nothing got lost between the strategy and the edit, and nothing sat waiting on a handoff.
Every frame follows Cloudinary's brand guidelines, right down to which blue is allowed where.
- Series strategy and persona definition
- Scripts and shot-by-shot storyboards
- On-camera presenting
- Editing and post
- Motion graphics and visualisations
- Titles, descriptions, chapters and links
On camera
Motion graphics
Vertical cutdowns
Edit and colour
Every part of the production was ours: camera, motion, the vertical cuts, the edit and the colour.
The pipeline had to be drawn
Each video needs a few seconds on what Cloudinary is, and nobody remembers seven stage names read aloud. So the lifecycle animates in one stage at a time (Upload, Moderate, Manage, Enrich, Transform, Optimize, Deliver) and the stage in play pulls forward. A developer sees exactly where the parameter they're about to type sits in the platform.
This is the opener as it runs in the series, built to Cloudinary's brand guidelines at 4K and 60 frames a second.
Built so the parameter is the payoff
Every script has the same shape: a limbic hook, tell-show-tell, one CTA. The URL with the parameter added is on screen inside two minutes, and the rest of the video is that idea at enterprise scale. Unglamorous, but people who came for one parameter stay for the enterprise version.
The series
One parameter per capability
On Cloudinary's channel now, with the titles, descriptions and chapters we recommended. More are on the way.
Background removal · e_background_removal
Compression · q_auto and f_auto
Social and OG images · l_text on a template
Shorts
One parameter, in a Short
Single-capability Shorts for Cloudinary's channel, each built around one parameter, with motion graphics designed for the vertical frame from the start.
Vertical motion graphics: smart cropping with g_auto
Upload an image in React in 10 seconds
Resize images
Create a thumbnail automatically
Quote reserved
Awaiting the words from Cloudinary.
Views
Cloudinary also saw a measurable increase in adoption.
What shipped
Everything we delivered.
Strategy
- Series strategy
- Persona and journey-stage definition
- Capability and use-case selection
- Publishing recommendations: titles, descriptions, chapters, hashtags
Production
- Scripts and shot-by-shot storyboards
- On-camera presenting
- Editing and post
- Motion graphics and pipeline visualisations
- Shorts with vertical motion graphics