WGAN eBook-Win More Listings-Print Listing Videos on Cards via Unstationery

WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host 31.32K Website Atlanta, Georgia Linked In Facebook Twitter YouTube TikTok Instragram Matterport Service Partner Google Street View Trusted Photographer Zillow Certified Photographer We Get Around Network Member	31.32K DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user	plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 0
	WGAN-TV \| Help Real Estate Agents Win More Listings by Printing Listing Videos on Cards via Unstationery \| Guest: Unstationery Co-Founder and CEO Michael Cameron Martin \| Episode: 196 \| Thursday, 20 July 2023 \| Unstationery Promo Code: UNWGAN (Save 25%) ► Unstationery Promo Code: UNWGAN (Save 25%) Video: www.Unstationery.co Real Estate Example \| Save 25% with Promo Code: UNWGAN Transcript (Video Above) Dan Smigrod: -If you are a tech savvy real estate agent that likes to leverage tech and video to help differentiate yourself to win more and bigger premium listings, you are in the right place. Stay tuned. Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com]. Today is Thursday, July 20, 2023, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: Helping Real Estate Agents Win More and Bigger Premium Listings by Printing Listing Videos on Cards via Unstationery or How to Print Your Videos on Cards. Our subject matter expert today is Unstationery Co-Founder and CEO Michael Martin. Hey, Michael, good to see you. Thanks for being our subject matter expert on today's show. Michael Martin: -Hey Dan, thanks for having me. Dan Smigrod: -I know we're going to do a demo, but before we do that, just give us a quick, top view of what printing listing videos on cards is all about. Michael Martin: -Yes, sure so what we do is we leverage computer vision to essentially print videos on cards. By pointing your phone at one of our products, it comes to life with a video. Some people liken it to those Harry Potter portraits, but we try to shy away from that. But yeah, that's a pretty good summary of how we work. Dan Smigrod: -Well, almost impossible to understand what that means so let's look at a demo of what it is that someone receives in the mail and what happens. Michael Martin: -Sure absolutely. This is an example of how our cards operate. Simply by pointing your phone at one of the cards that you would receive in the mail. Imagine you get an envelope, you open it up, you pull out a card and then when you point your phone at the card, it comes to life with a video, just like this one. Hopefully that clears up exactly how it works. Dan Smigrod: -I'm going to do a little demo myself because it explains how and why I reached out to you. Michael Martin: -Sure. Dan Smigrod: -I work out of a co-working space in Atlanta called Atlanta Tech Village. We have something called 'Chowdown' every Friday: hundreds of us tech entrepreneurs get together for lunch. I sat down across from Unstationery Tech Project Manager, Zahra Ladiwala and of course I said, "what do you do?" She explained what she did and I said, "wow, that sounds great. I'd like to do that right now. Is that okay?" She said, "sure." This is what my wife received; Valentine colored card on Valentine's Day and when she opened the card because I happened to be out of town on Valentine's Day. Oh, yeah. Not good. ;-) But what happened was there was a picture of me. And keep in mind that this was a little quick demo that was accomplishing two things. Me being out of town for my wife on Valentine's Day and then also to get a demo right on the spot with the Zahra helping me do this and so this is what the card said. "Hi Ann, Happy Valentine's Day, love always, Dan. There was this QR code and then right below it, it said Open Camera, Aim at Code and then Scan the Image on the Front. I'm actually going to try and do that right now so just complete to that thought and so I am going to open my camera with my green screen, it's a little bit confusing, but I'm going to hold up my QR code. There, it says. I'm going to click on that QR code. It's launched an app that would like permission; It says, "Unstationery app would like to access the camera," so I'm going to allow and then on the back it says take a picture of the photo - through the app - and I hit the wrong button. What do you call that? Michael Martin: -Open that back up then, open the browser backup. Dan Smigrod: -Let's see, I was is inside. Michael Martin: -The top right. There you go and then just press the back button. Dan Smigrod: -I hit the Back button... Michael Martin: -Yes, sir. okay and the tap the the card itself, not the button. There you go. Nice. Dan Smigrod: -There were two things that happen there. One, it was super-simple right across the table from the Zahra for her to record a little video of me while we were having lunch and then to mail this card to Ann and have her follow those steps. I would say when she did this, which she told me was that, "it put a big smile on her face" and, "oh, that was cool" and of course I am tech-geeky or whatever. That seemed like the perfect thing; of scanning the QR code, launching a web browser, I want to say WebVR, then being able to have the video essentially 'printed on the card' so that's why I reached out to you, Michael, because as soon as I saw that I said, "Wow! I could imagine there's all kinds of interesting use cases for real estate agents, real estate brokers and real estate photographers. Tell me more about what reaction you hear from people that go through this process and they have a recipient open a card and have that photo trigger a video. Michael Martin: -Honestly, Dan, that's what keeps us going. People react to it. For the most part it's like a mind-blowing experience for most people have never seen anything like this and that reaction; I tell my team internally, this is our motivation, this is our lifeblood. This is what feeds us. We have to keep following this, asking people questions about how we can improve that and continue getting that experience out of people. I have a quick question for you. One thing that you just pointed out is, apparently we do video production under the right circumstances so that's a cool part, but I'm curious, what did your wife think? Dan Smigrod: -My wife loved it. Ann loved it and because I am geeky and I am techie, all that made sense to her that I was out of town, of course, I would send something that was a little bit different and so she loved it. By the way that yes, I saved the card because I knew I would at some point would do a show with you and I want it to have it for that reason. Oh, it went on the refrigerator. Wasn't that cool it Ann saved it because every time she looked at it, it wasn't just triggering my picture. It was triggering the memory of what I had to say. Do you find that the recipients, I mean, have you gotten feedback like that? Oh, you can't throw this out. You have to save it. It goes on the refrigerator. Michael Martin: -That's exactly right. It's funny you say that refrigerator, that's what I tell people is that it's got the most staying power on the refrigerator. It lasts longer, you know most cars go straight into a drawer, is what I find. I actually found that that's a universal experience. I think it's funny that everyone does that, but yeah, it stays on the fridge longer. Wedding invites: I'll see them years later and I'll still see that someone that received one of our early products. Early versions of what we were doing back then. Like why? It's an interesting question. I think it feels more personal. Everyone loves receiving mail. You see your name on something. It's probably... It's music to your ears and it's music to your eyes, or I guess it's a painting, a beautiful painting to your eyes. When you see your name on an envelope like this, you open it and then you actually get to hear and see the person sending it to you. Potentially, depending on what they're saying. Dan Smigrod: -It looks a little bit like magic of opening magic like, "oh, how do you do that or that? Oh. that was cool." Take me back to that first statement when I asked you for a short description of what your company does. Let's see if we can relate it back to this card. Michael Martin: -Sure. Our slogan is "we print videos" and hopefully that makes sense why. We really are using cards like this to embed a video, so to speak. On a deeper level, we are sending cards, in your case, it's a Valentine's card and some other cases it's for some business objective like marketing. But I think what's true across all of the use cases is we're making print marketing more information dense. There's just more in there now. Up until like our existence, it was just what you read on the card and what you can feel there. Now we're opening up another door for a way to think about physical marketing. Dan Smigrod: -Well, I do want to ask you more questions on this topic and more questions about use cases. But I would like to see a demo of how to create an Unstationery card. I did tell you my experience with Zahra; which is she used her phone. She took a quick video. One take. Boom! She had the video and then she placed an order from her smartphone. Can you perhaps share your desktop and show us the process of what she was going through, either on a desktop or a smartphone? Michael Martin: -Yeah, sure. Let me find ... Dan Smigrod: -While you're getting setup. I presume that you're going to go to: www.Unstationery.co Michael Martin: -That's right. Dan Smigrod: -For our viewers, are going to have a special offer for the We Get Around Network community that Unstationery was kind enough to share with us. Okay. I see that you are at: www.Unstationery.co Michael Martin: -Right, So we've got some high level information on how -- what it is we're trying to do? What our goal is? What our mission is as a company. But the problem that we're really solving here is most mail that you receive. Dan Smigrod: -Excuse me. Michael Martin: -Yes. Dan Smigrod: -I'm going to ask you that question. I promise they asked you the question. But let's just do the tactical piece. Let's see how you order a how to print your video on a card via [www.Unstationery.co] Michael Martin: -Let me show you. Where I just was was Dan Smigrod: -Forgive me. You were on www.Unstationery.co then I think you clicked on the button to create your own. Michael Martin: -Right. On this page you can be redirected to our card creator. From here, it gives you some high level information on how to do it, but I'll walk through it with you. We've got a few templates that you can use down here. Let's just go with a plain white one for now. Once I have this template, I can rename this, so we're live with WGAN. From here, once you name the project, you can come in here, click on the card anywhere, and we can upload a video. Let me show you that in real time. Our goal when we were building this is to make this feel similar to the experience people have when they create a custom card, a photo card, let's say, on any of the big players in the space. Whenever you're creating that car and you want to send it somewhere. That's essentially the experience that we think users are used to. We wanted to mimic that with the added layer that we're actually uploading a video instead of an image, so we try to keep it really simple. On this, this is actually a Creator... created this video for us and posted it to her Instagram, but you'll see here ... pretty similar to this case the way you used it, Dan. Dan Smigrod: -I didn't hear the sound. That was probably related to how you're sharing your screen. But I "get it" that it included audio. Michael Martin: -Okay, good. Yes, everything that's on the video, you can upload here. Common question I get asked here, "how long should the video be?" "Are there any size limitations?" Any video works. I would say, just in the day and age we live in, shorter is better. But anything works. There's really no limitations there. Dan Smigrod: -If you would, go slowly for me. The file formats that you accept for Video? Michael Martin: - MP4. MOV. What are the other ones? Well, Well, shoot! Upload it and try to break it. Honestly, I think pretty much every video format or size. Size I would say, there might be an upper limit, maybe like a gig, we probably would be waiting for a while, first of all, but I would say keep it short and no matter what you do with the video. Dan Smigrod: -You could you 4K, but you probably keep it short, if it's something longer, you may want to make the resolution less? Michael Martin: -Sure. Absolutely. When I've used the tool myself, I've used 4K videos. No issues whatsoever. I'll take us there. There's an interesting layer and they're based off what you just said, but I'll bring that up in just a bit. Another thing you can do here is you can flip the card over and customize the message on the back the same way you did. We can write a message like that, and again, "Dan, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here." We can format it, we have some cool formatting. I would say, better than captions on Instagram as far as formatting. Not quite as good as Microsoft Word, but we can do a bunch of cool things here. Dan Smigrod: -Michael, a few questions here before you hit Continue, please. Michael Martin: -Sure. Dan Smigrod: -You could add a paragraph of texts there, if you wanted? Michael Martin: -Sure. Absolutely. Dan Smigrod: -It's not limited to that one sentence? Michael Martin: -Absolutely not. Dan Smigrod: -Go back up to the top, I see select card size, so what are our choices? Michael Martin: -Great question. I glossed over that. Right now we keep it to a 5" x 7" vertical card or 7" x 5" horizontal depending on the orientation of the video, so rule of thumb. If you are sending a portrait [vertical] video to use the language of iPhone cameras. If you're using a portrait video, then a vertical card makes sense because the dimensions match up better. Then for a horizontal video, landscape video, you would want to use a horizontal card. You'll see a couple of different size variations. We also do this 4" by 5.6", which is essentially the same ratio, just a slightly smaller card. We found that those cards tend to be conference goers, people that want to create print marketing to hand out; tends to be a good option for that. Dan Smigrod: -Then it says Select Template, so you had selected white, meaning a white border, but clicked on there, there were other border options? Michael Martin: -That's right, and we're actually filling this up with tons of options. But as you could see, Valentine's Day was the last time that we updated this, so we got a bunch of templates coming, but we've got about nine that you can choose from right now. Dan Smigrod: -Then, if you wanted to replace the video you already uploaded? Michael Martin: -Absolutely. Dan Smigrod: -What does video thumbnail mean? Michael Martin: -That's a great question. What you see here is just the first frame of the video uploaded. That is our default behavior for our card creator, is grabbing the first frame of the video, so we processed the video, grabbed the first frame, and then that is the image that will literally be printed on the card whenever we put it into production. Minus this little Play button, it will just be that image. But, there could be a circumstance where you want to use a different image, in which case you could change it. Dan Smigrod: -Which I did on this part, I created another card and I actually, I wanted to select a different image for the first thumbnail. Simply if you hit change, you can go ahead and change that thumbnail, and if it's a vertical video, it should be a vertical thumbnail, and if it's a horizontal video, it should be a horizontal thumbnail. Michael Martin: -Yes. Good point. As far as sizes go, best practice is to keep the dimensions the same. But no matter what you upload, we'll work with it and make that experience seamless, and if we have questions, obviously my team reaches out pretty proactively to make sure of that. Dan Smigrod: -This was super-simple. You hit Continue what happens? Michael Martin: -Yes, sir. Let's do it. Now we go on to the next step. Something that separates us from most of the competition. In this space, is the space being sending cards. As far as I know where the only one that does what we do. Dan Smigrod: -Talk more about that I just want to go through the ordering process first. Michael Martin: -In this step, the paper finished is something that we will offer more options down the road. But we've got a couple of things built in that just tease out some of the things in the future. We can also select the envelope color. This is something that's constantly being updated on our side, it is what envelopes we have in stock and what you can use. So we can select that. Then down here, oftentimes the question is, "how much does it cost?" Well, this is a calculator to help you determine how much it would cost per card, per unit, and we can play with that number. You might be asking yourself, "wait, if I wanted four are those four coming to me and then I hand them out? That was a question that we asked ourselves early on. The answer is yes, you can do it that way. But another thing you can do is you could ship to multiple addresses. This is an important point, is that we do all of the mailing for you, and this is what I was alluding to, is that a lot of players don't do this in this space, but we will actually mail out to each address and each person that you're looking to send this to. So perfect for wedding invitations. Perfect for anything event-related where you want to do a mass sending. Dan Smigrod: -I promised we're going to get to use cases. How to place an order. Michael Martin: -Understood. It's important to understand that though, Dan, in order to conceptualize what it is we're doing here. You select the addresses. You can upload a CSV with the list of addresses, or you can add each address one-by-one. Dan Smigrod: -Can we put in my office address? Is that okay? Michael Martin: -Yeah, let's do it. Am I spelling that right? Dan Smigrod: -That works. The mailing address is 3524. Michael Martin: -3524. Dan Smigrod: -Piedmont AVE, NE, Atlanta, GA 30305 [Suite 204] Michael Martin: -Piedmont. Look at that, Google Maps. Wrong one not that Piedmont. Atlanta. Dan Smigrod: -Dan Smigrod, 3524 Piedmont AVE, NE, Atlanta, GA 30305 [Suite 204] Michael Martin: -There we go. We auto-fill that and then we go onto the next step. Do you have any questions before I move on, Dan? Dan Smigrod: -That's perfect. Well, I should say what I see is a price range of $2-$10 depending on quantity. Then of course, for our viewers, Unstationery was kind enough to provide a coupon code [UNWGAN] so I think we'll probably do that on the next field to save 25%. Michael Martin: -Yes, sir. Let's do that. Dan Smigrod: -The coupon code is -- UNWGAN -- that will save you 25%. Thank you for that code. That the promo code, Michael, for the We Get Around Network community. Michael Martin: -Sure Absolutely see what I did that. Then you apply it, and there you go. You see the 25% off. Dan Smigrod: -Great. Next step? Michael Martin: -We check out and then from here we add some payment details. I think we should spare the audience. Dan Smigrod: -We won't ask you to put your credit card in there. ;-) But it's truly easy-peasy, of how to do that. You started to talk about use cases. Can you tell us about, even before we start talking about real estate agents and real estate brokers; in general, what are some of the top use cases for Unstationery? Michael Martin: -Top use cases. Depends how you define the top. Dan Smigrod: -The most interesting to you in terms of, "Oh! That was a great use case." Michael Martin: -I think I really loved the wedding thank-yous. One of the sticking points is you need a video. Not everyone is comfortable taking a video of themselves and everyone wants to do something like that. But in the case of a wedding, oftentimes there's a videographer at the reception. So those thank-you cards are coming anyway. If you can embed using Unstationery, if you can put that like a recap of the reception, then that's a lifelong keepstake. That was something I found really interesting. We talked about staying power on the fridge. This is something that you're probably going to hold onto forever. These memories are just... We are bringing a video that would otherwise live on social media or maybe somewhere in your photo gallery and bringing it into the physical [world] it's like a queue. Dan Smigrod: -Of what you've seen is that been a bride recording custom videos, "hi Dan, thanks so much for coming,"... "Hi Ann and Dan, thanks so much for coming to our wedding," or just the, "hey all" and then a moment and then using that video to accompany the card? Michael Martin: -That's a great question. It would be cool with a little more customization, but typically it's just the recap video that the videographer gives them and then the thank you and all the messages are customize on the card somewhere else. I actually have an example of handy, well gentlemen that did this where we've got a foldable card and then he wanted to blank in the middle so he could write something on each one of them, personalize it for each person. Dan Smigrod: -Now, I didn't see that on the [www.Unstationery.co] order form. Michael Martin: -Correct yes. Foldable cards is on the roadmap, but as you can see, it is something that we can do for more customized projects that we're working on. So happy to do it. Dan Smigrod: -If someone has a quantity that they would like to talk about, you'd like to hear from them? Michael Martin: -Absolutely. Please reach out. Someone on my team will talk to you. We've done a bunch of different things. To go back to your previous question, as far as cards go, wedding thank-yous have been awesome. We've done quite a few direct mail campaigns that have been really interesting, really powerful tools for business owners across all kinds of industries. I guess one that I want to highlight that I thought was interesting is besides the real estate one we'll get into in a bit. Again, it's a thank you card but through the lens of a business owner, a lot of times these thank you cards would be something like a holiday card that goes out to all of their subscribers, for example. Or some Patreon, people that are big on Patreon have used this as a top tier that everyone that lives in this subscription tier will receive periodic thank you cards or just like exclusive info. As far as cards go, those are really interesting things and the exclusivity is something that I thought was interesting as well. Because if the creator wishes to do it this way, they can make it, so you have to have this physical card in order to watch the video. You can gatekeeper it and the key is having the Unstationery card. Really interesting applications, I could talk all day about that. Besides cards, we've done posters for a band in Seattle. They did a really big poster that they actually update the video. They work with us and then every so often they changed the video and ask all of their fans to check that out, everyone with the poster. Then we've done some really cool things as well. We've done massive murals on art projects and then some other boundary pushing projects that I think I'll get into a little bit later, so I'll save it for them. Dan Smigrod: -Would you like to talk a little bit about real estate agents? Michael Martin: -Sure. Dan Smigrod: -Some of the use cases that you've already seen or some of the ones that you think would be awesome? Michael Martin: -Things that I've seen, I think most of us are receiving direct mail from real estate agents. At least if you're in a home, a lot of times, they're just canvassing, they are blanketing an entire area with direct mail and it's a little flyer normally that probably lasts about 30 seconds. It goes from your mailbox, maybe a quick glance into the bin. What we do to improve upon that it's pretty interesting. It's funny that just the act of putting someone's name on an envelope and having a nice quality card inside of it obviously with our little spin on it. We've seen a massive uptick in engagement. It's just that simple act, makes people a little more interested in investigating what exactly is going on. That's an awesome use case. I don't think enough real estate agents - Dan Smigrod: -Excuse me Michael, do you get feedback from clients that say, "Hey. We're big direct mail users. We're really happy with direct mail. But when we added the Unstationery augmented reality [AR] experience -- the "printing of the video on a card" -- it was, "this just really lifted the engagement. These things happened as a result of that. We got more calls, we got more orders, we got people talking about us." Michael Martin: -Yeah. Absolutely. The answer to that is yes, absolutely. The great thing about the way that we do things is -- the comparison to traditional direct mail, I think, it's a little bit unfair because most traditional direct mail is a bit of a black box. You just believe that it's working, you send it out and it's difficult to measure how effective that campaign was, with a few exceptions. But what we do, is we have the ability to track who's scans it, when they scan it, how long they're spending looking at the experience. Then we also have call-to-action buttons within our experience that redirects these people that they're targeting to whatever desired behavior they have. One of the big things I'd like to point out about how we are different than traditional direct mail is direct mail, all of it, the goal of it is to get this target to do something. It's "pick up the phone and call me. Email me. Fill out a contact form. Visit our website." All four of those cases in today's world, pretty much across the board, require you to pick up your phone and either look this information up, maybe there's a QR code sitting on it, but you have to do some investigation with your phone. When we peel back those layers, we think about it as Unstationery cards, motivate people to pick up their phone and view this experience. Now we're just one step away from the desired behavior. We definitely see a much higher click-through rate. But besides that, as a business owner, as a salesperson, you can react in real-time if you know when someone scanned, and you know how long they spent on it, and you could even prioritize the ones that you see spent longer time engaging with it. Maybe that's the priority that you want to use to decide who it is that you reach out to first. But now you reach out, it's not just guesswork, you know who's actually interested. Dan Smigrod: -Does that mean for corporate clients, you provide a dashboard in real-time for number of views? Scans? Time-spent viewing? Or, is that something that's coming? Michael Martin: -You have been talking to Zahra. It is something that's coming. Right now, what we have is essentially the same information, but it comes in the form of a report, and we send that out for at least two weeks after the campaign has run. We see quite a bit of a drop-off. After that time, it becomes a little less interesting. The numbers don't change much. But for those first two weeks, we're proactively sending this information so that they can react. Dan Smigrod: -Perhaps in the roadmap is providing the dashboard. Michael Martin: -Absolutely. Dan Smigrod: -A fan of [WGAN.INFO/flowcode QR codes]. Flowpages landing pages. I imagine you have a very robust dashboard in the back-end because of Flowcode. Michael Martin: -Absolutely. Because of Flowcode and because of the metrics that we get from the actual experience, which Flowcode is the bridge, the QR code is the bridge to get them where we want them to go. But then we get information on how long they spend and where they clicked. That's also very interesting. The combination of those two is what at least Version 1 of our dashboard will have on it. I think it's a really powerful tool. Dan Smigrod: -For clarification, this Flowcode brand QR code, that's unique to me. It's unique to this particular card. Michael Martin: -Exactly. Dan Smigrod: -Therefore, you're able to track it from that scanning of that QR code? Michael Martin: -Exactly. Dan Smigrod: -Then the video play, how many plays, how long, my wife -- Oh! I got to find out. She told me that she really loved me and thought this was great of how many times she played it. ;-) I have to come back to you for that. ;-) Those are actually your mailing reports to corporate clients with some expectation of a dashboard in the future for real-time analytics? Michael Martin: -Exactly. I think what we have on the roadmap is the summary that we're sending right now has all that information but that part would be automated and it would just be a link to the dashboard on some periodic basis. Dan Smigrod: -Let's jump into real estate agents, real estate brokers, real estate photographers, if you want. Michael Martin: -Sure. Dan Smigrod: -Can you list? Talk about some ideas that either have happened or that you think would be great use cases. Michael Martin: -Honestly, the use case that we see the most with real estate agents actually is not direct mail, although I do think that's potentially a more powerful one. But the one that we see the most often is -- Real estate agents have this problem when they're trying to win a listing, oftentimes they're competing against multiple real estate agents. You need to find a way to stand out. There's a lot of ways to do that, and what we want to do is enhance that because the business card or what they call in this industry, a leave behind with these potential listings. An Unstationery version of that, would certainly stand out and it would communicate that they're on the cutting edge of marketing techniques. So, I think if you put those two together, if a homeowner puts those two together, then they begin to realize that, "oh, this person is probably going to be a very effective real estate agent to sell my home." Dan Smigrod: -May I add to that? Michael Martin: -Sure. Dan Smigrod: -Because when I sat across from Zahra at Atlanta Tech Village and she was talking about some of the use cases might've been talking about weddings. What I was thinking, or probably thinking at that time, and it was a long time ago, is that innovation occurs when a tech created for one use case is used by a completely different expectation. That's where I was thinking, real estate agent. When you start talking about the real estate listing presentation, what I'm thinking is that the real estate agent when they say, "and thank you for meeting with me." When they finish up that presentation, they say, "by the way, here's my leave behind. Let me show you how this works." They're literally showing an example of something they might do in their marketing, and now you literally have trained the homeowner to go show every one of their family members, every one of their friends, every one of their neighbors, because "this is the real estate agent that I'm looking at and I really like that they're tech savvy, including maybe they're doing Matterport, virtual tours, 3D [and printing the listing video on cards.]" Michael Martin: -There you go. Dan Smigrod: -They're doing drones, they're tech savvy, but they're also doing this printing video on cards. "When we list your home for you, we're going to take a video of your home and we're going to print that listing video on this card like this, and we're going to give you some of those cards to give to your next door neighbor, so that you can ask them for their help in marketing the house. We're going to do a targeted mailing to the neighbors in a greater..." For example, on our street, we have 10 neighbors. But we have side streets. Real estate agents are going to send to all those side streets to say, ["here is a listing video printed on this card of a neighbor's home for sale.]" All of a sudden, hopefully, the agent is going to get that listing because it was one extra, as you described, another way to help differentiate themselves as a tech savvy real estate agent and incorporate the homeowner in giving away those cards to the next door neighbor and to do the mailing. Anyway, that's where I get all excited when having that conversation because I can just see this happening. Are there other ways that real estate agents are either using it or that you're thinking about that they should use it? Michael Martin: -Yes. This one hasn't been used yet, but it's akin to an example I gave earlier about a business owner trying to thank their subscribers. You see this a lot in the auto industry as people use direct mail as a way to win referral business from their previous clients. Real estate agents already have a lot of tricks to accomplish this as well. It's really closely related to what you were just talking about as telling your neighbor about this tech that this real estate agent is using. We, similarly, always tell our clients, "it's a great idea to send these periodically throughout the year as a way of drumming up more referral business. Keeps you top of mind, and these people that you're sending them to are presumably your previous clients." Dan Smigrod: -When you said that, I am thinking, "Oh! Okay, we just listed the house for sale with the agent. They did this mailing -- printing of the video on the card with Unstationery -- the house is sold, and now we get an Unstationery card in the mail with a picture of our real estate agent. That's" Johnny, our real estate agent." They already know how to follow the instructions, and boom, "hi, Ann and Dan, congratulations on the sale of your house. I was so thrilled and thank you for the opportunity to work with you on listing your house for sale." Now you know that the recipient, when they get that thank-you card, any other thank-you card may go, "Oh. That was nice" and into the trash. When you get this card, you really want to show it to family members, to friends, to neighbors. I think there's an opportunity to do that. "Congratulations on the sale of your home" is another one, "thank you for listing with us." I think just the parse out, what you describe is a way to get referrals. Even initially, there's that opportunity, thanks, congratulations. "Anything I can do to help you" now that you're... Whatever those next things might be. Even in the course of that is probably open house. So if an agent was doing an open house, they might have a stack of one-sheets and somehow, some way, it might include one of your cards. Michael Martin: -Exactly. Dan Smigrod: -We talked about posters, how crazy would that be to have a poster that's activated as well. Michael Martin: -Yeah, exactly. That was another thing I was going to bring up. First of all, thank you for that. That was an excellent explanation of how our products help you evangelize your existing clients. It's a very interesting thing. They feel that personal touch, they do want to share it. As a result of that, you're obviously going to get a little more business and exposure. But a couple of points I want to hone in on. You talked about an open house. Another thing that real estate agents haven't leveraged yet is those signs out front that say this house is for sale, they often have one-pagers in there. Obviously, we've explained this part that that itself can come to life using our technology. But the sign itself could be interesting as well. A lot of times, homeowners or prospective homeowners, they can't quite make the open house, but maybe they drive around the neighborhood thinking about it, they miss the open house. This is potentially a way to give someone a tour of the home that they're interested in rather than just leaving a phone number. Again, we get engagement, we understand. Dan Smigrod: -Flyers, postcards, events. Michael Martin: -Exactly. People do use business cards as well. We see these, this is from a really cool company called Mastry. Then another version, we're going to do a bunch of different form factors. This is an artist that use this, but cards is our bread and butter. But I guess a takeaway here, something that you kind of alluding to is the form factor isn't important to us. All that we need is really a video. Design would be nice, but we can even give input on that. Dan Smigrod: -I'm going to ask you some more questions, I promise. I'm going to ask you more questions about that. But before we leave real estate, I had some other thoughts, but I wanted to ask anything else on residential real estate agent? I'll mention two. First is real estate brokers are always looking for tech-savvy agents, and so if you're a agent and you're looking to make an impression on a particular broker, imagine doing an Unstationery card to that broker in order to help recruit. Now imagine you're the broker and you're targeting very specific agents in your market that you know are tech-savvy, but you want to make an impression with them that you're the right brokerage. What a great mailing -- to do an Unstationery mailing -- and also to personalize it with a video "hey, Dan, I noticed all the cool tech marketing that you do for residential real estate for your clients, we are very tech-savvy brokerage. We would love to recruit you," and so it becomes a one-on-one video recorded right on a smartphone by the broker, sending out tailored mailings to help recruit. And then the last thing on residential real estate that I have, commercial real estate for that matter. Many in the We Get Around Network community are real estate photographers and real estate photographers shoot video. What I would say to real estate photographers, if you can get your clients -- show them www.Unstationery.co -- and say, "I can help you shoot those videos for you, if you like." So there's an opportunity for a real estate photographer to do two things: 1) help their clients broaden and deepen their relationship with their clients, not that they're perceived as a salesperson all the time that takes pictures, but a trusted colleague that's always thinking about their clients and how to help them win more and bigger premium listings. 2) At the same time by helping their client, then that's another opportunity to keep shooting video for their client. Whether or not they choose to use their smartphone to create a one-off is fine, but that listing video really needs to be a beautifully shot video and edited. [www.WeGetAroundNetwork.com] community to show and tell their real estate agent and broker clients about Unstationery. Michael Martin: -Absolutely. Yeah. To piggyback a different version of that same story is a lot of production houses like video production companies, they treat us as a tool in their tool belt. Similarly, someone who does real estate photography could even think of us as just a part of their offering. Maybe the highest tier of what they do is they also handle this part, and not quite white labeling, but a partnership, so to speak. That's another way, if they already have the business, that they can generate some more revenue for themselves as well. Dan Smigrod: -Could you show us those artists' cards again? Michael Martin: -Sure, physically? Dan Smigrod: -You have a business card and an artist card. So this is the music artists that you've worked with and on the back, same thing. I think what I'm hearing. Michael Martin: -Shout out, Rock B. Dan Smigrod: -While it's super-easy and super-fast to go to www.Unstationery.co and order one or more cards, there's a bigger opportunity here that's not limited to the mailings that Unstationery can do for you. It could be any medium that triggers the video being played. I think to help explain this is if you could take us back. I know that you graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in physics. Actually, also an artist. Can you take us back to when you and your friend, Sean, collaborated on some artwork? You know the story. Tell us about that mashup that you did initially. Michael Martin: -Sure. A while back, I think this was 2017, I worked on a painting and collaborated with Sean, his artist's name is [www.ayecrtv.com]. We collaborated on a painting of an anatomically accurate heart, then as far as I know, this is the first augmented-reality painting. We created one where if you pointed your phone at it, at this time, it was an app. It wasn't web-based, but if you pointed your phone at it, it would come to life with an animation that I created, that was really meaningful to me at the time, and the heart would beat. We showed this at an art show in Brooklyn that same year and people loved it. There was a crowd around it the entire night, and by the end of it, someone purchased it. For all the artists out there, we got the sticker really early on in the night where this piece is taken. That was the first signal. We might be onto something here. From there, we created a couple of other paintings. One of them actually is in Penn Gaming, in their office. They've got one of our early paintings, as well, that we did. So a really pre-Unstationery, but the seeds that led to this idea. Dan Smigrod: -I think what I'm hearing is that you were saying, "Oh! I can mash up augmented reality (AR) using WebAR and use an image as a target to trigger a video." You were doing that as an art project. Did that help inspire building Unstationery? Michael Martin: -Yes, absolutely. After a couple of those paintings, we weren't really sure where to take it. Then we've got hired on to do a mural at a high school. Then we gave a talk to technology class there, and again, we got to see this really visceral reaction. People were having to actually seeing this thing; seeing this wall inside of their school come to life. We kept leveling up. If you don't mind, I could share a quick one of a cool project we did. Dan Smigrod: -Yes, that's great. Well, while Michael is getting set up. A reminder, you can go to www.Unstationery.co ... Use the promo code -- UNWGAN -- to save 25%. Again, while Michael is getting set up, www.Unstationery.co ... Promo code UNWGAN to save 25%. Michael Martin: -That's exactly right. Let's see. Let me try this one more time. Yes, this is the one. Let's take a look at this. Here's a little looping video. Dan Smigrod: -Because of all the technology we use here to do WGAN-TV Live at 5, it's still taking some time for your screen to launch, and so I still just see a black screen. Michael Martin: -Oh, thank you. Let's try this. Do you see it? I'm pressing Resume. Share. Dan Smigrod: -It just tell me that you have started screen-share, but unfortunately, we're not seeing what's coming up. Michael Martin: -That's okay. I can just explain it. If you visit our [@unstationeryco], you'll find a bunch of this or [www.Unstationery.co] will have a lot of this stuff posted pretty soon. It's actually a really interesting segue into something else I want to talk about later. But the mural we did at high school was, again, a turning point for us. We realize that this is a really good -- again, this is a showstopper. People love to see this. We were approached by a foundation in Philadelphia in honor of a young woman by the name of Bianca Roberson. Unfortunately, she passed away in a gun violence and road rage accident. In her honor, there's [www.MergeWithMercy.org], and that foundation wanted to do something really special in the city of Philadelphia. If you are in Philly, There is a place, I believe in West Philly that has a 50-foot-tall mural that comes to life using our technology. That is one of quite a few installments that Unstationery has done with Sean. But I'm skipping a couple of steps. You asked about the inspiration. That's the evolution of the whole project. Dan Smigrod: -First, let me just put a button before we move on: Instagram: @unstationeryco Michael Martin: -Yes, sir. Dan Smigrod: -Sorry for your loss [Bianca Nikol Roberson]. I think before you move on is just to point out that, wow, the whole side of the building is a mural. You can now print your video as a ginormous mural on a building. Michael Martin: -That's definitely a much more custom project. It requires quite a bit more than usual. But for the cause that was for, it was a no-brainer for us. Dan Smigrod: -But I suspect that Apple might be watching here and with the Apple Vision Pro coming out. They're looking for something to help explain the magic. Just to digress for a moment, I recall reading a [www.WGAN.info/MichaelMartin], an interview with you back in September of 2022. This is before Apple [announced] Apple Vision Pro or announced the Apple Vision Pro. You nailed it. You said, obviously, this is what they're working on. Michael Martin: -Yes. Absolutely. It was pretty clear based off of -- they filed a patent 10 years ago that I caught wind of. It wasn't what you see today, the Apple Vision Pro, but it seemed like they were trying to take a swing at the Google Glass thing, which most of these companies would say was a failure. But definitely, the first version of this thing that we all imagine. I had a sneaky feeling -- Dan Smigrod: - It seems like the piece that's super-exciting. Sometimes a little bit hard to explain to people -- Augmented Reality -- AR meets target on a piece of paper. I think Apple is going to help lift all boats where people are like "oh yeah, of course, I'm looking at that mural. I wonder if I can just hold up my webAR app and have that come alive?" It's taken probably 10 years for people to look at a QR code recognize that and know, "oh, I need to scan that in order to activate something." Oh, I just got this card and I'm starting to see all these instructions pop up about launch the app, take a picture of the QR code, and scan the photo." I'm sorry, I digress. You were starting to talk about your vision that was a result of doing all these creative projects and going, "Ah! I think there's a business here." Michael Martin: -Through some of these art projects, we weren't really sure what to do with it. We had just finished this talk at the high school and we were hunting for other opportunities to use this and thinking about new applications. One of the things I just worked on as a solo project was I started shooting music videos. I live in LA, so a lot of people around me are musicians. I started shooting music videos, but I didn't quite want to take that step into sharing them just directly to the Internet. I wanted to get a couple of shots up before I started branding myself that way. Then I thought, how could I do that? It became really clear. It's like, well, we've already built something that might be useful here. What we decided to do is I asked each of these artists to gather physical addresses for some of the fans that they think would be interested in this. They did. We created postcards where it did exactly what Unstationery cards do today. It was really the first version of what we're talking about is we sent postcards with a music video that was so to speak, digitally embedded inside of these cards. We send them out and people love them. That again, it was the reaction driving us. It was just, we realized how passionately people were reacting to them. How many videos I would get. Which is another interesting layer we haven't even discussed, is that part of the value of what we're doing here is that the people that you're marketing to are potentially creating content on your behalf because they're so excited about this thing that they're receiving. That was the first version. We did a couple of different iterations of that. By the third one, we actually had ad space on the back of the card. It was just like, "we're collaborating with this artist, would you like to purchase a little ad space?" Same way you would in a yearbook or something like that. Really simple model. That was interesting. Again, we got a signal. At that point, it didn't even have the name Unstationery. Again, was an art project that it started feeling like we have momentum like there's something else going on here. That's when I ran into my co-Founder. He got his hands on one and I love telling the story. He's looking at this card and he's blown away. He's really excited about what he's seeing. He's telling me how much he loves it. Then he goes on to tell me this anecdote, which it really sticks out in my mind. He's like, "are you familiar with 19 Crimes wine?" Now for those of you that aren't familiar with it, 19 Crimes wine has their own app where I think Snoop Dogg is actually a partial owner now, where if you aim at the label, the label comes to life in a very similar way to the way ours works. It's app-based, so it's a little different. But he told me he's like, I don t know if this wine is good, but I bring it to most parties because it's such a cool party trick. That's when it clicked for me. I was like, "wow, there are people that are interested in this just for the sake of it." The experience. They want to be the early adopters. They want to show people this thing. That's an interesting way, again, to evangelized, a certain group of people that tend to be early adopters of technology. That was really the turning point where it's like, I think we have something here. You start looking at how much how many greeting cards are sent every year, just in the U.S. alone, how much direct mail is sent. Then going back to some of the points that make us a little stronger, than the traditional versions of greeting cards and direct mail. It became really clear. This is something we can't ignore. This is a really big uptake. Dan Smigrod: -I can imagine at some point, Hallmark Cards learning about it, perhaps watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. "This is really cool. We should license this. We should acquire them. We should have a conversation with the Unstationery team who are obviously tech savvy, understanding how to do this." Michael Martin: -Sure. Dan Smigrod: -I will not put you on the spot. Switching gears: hologram. Michael Martin: -We talked about a mural. We talked about a couple of other more customized cases. What we're launching soon and what we've been working on for quite a while now is a way to separate some of the more cutting-edge work, the things we're really pushing the boundaries of WebAR and computer vision. We want to separate that from our core offerings, which are the things we've been talking about so far. Because first of all, they require much more work and really the nature of the work is much different. What we've decided to do is launch Unstationery Creative Lab. This is where we can engage with companies or artists to create something that requires a little bit more muscle on the development side, a little more work, little more problem-solving. It's a place where we can explore things that we've been thinking about for a while and try to execute things that haven't been done in this space. A really good example of that would be, let's see if I can pull this one up. Let's try one more time. I might restart it. Dan Smigrod: -I know we've got a lot of tech that we use to do WGAN-TV Live at 5 and I can imagine it's us; not you that's causing the challenge of trying to share your screen right now, but it's not coming up. I now see -- Michael Martin: -There we go. Cool. This is a really interesting thing that we worked on. It was a collaboration between us, a company called Metastage, and the Department of Defense. What we did was, [www.Metastage.com], they capture what people in the industry call volumetric video, which is really a fancy way of saying a hologram like from Star Wars. They capture that with a series of cameras surrounding you. Since we originally created this, that technology has come so far thanks to AI. But here let me show you a little bit of how this would work. I'll talk through this as it's happening. This is a [volumetric] video recording [projected into a space with AR]: it is not an animation. This is a recording of an actual person. This is a person in real-time. What you're seeing is all the little micro reactions and all the expressions that would otherwise be pretty difficult to perceive like in an animation, really like time-intensive. We're just recording a person and you can even see the back of them. This is an example of what Unstationery Creative Lab will do going forward and it's part of our history already as a company. We're segmenting some of these more customized experiences to do exactly this. Dan Smigrod: -To make a leap there, is that mean at some point you might be able to project a hologram of that soldier into a space where he's 'there'... but he's not really there? Michael Martin: -That's exactly what you just saw. So sorry. I should have explained that. The way that you actually get that soldier in the space with you is -- Dan Smigrod: -AH! What we just looked at -- the soldier was that 'there' but he was projected in 'there.' But it looked like he was actually 'there.' You've already accomplished that! Michael Martin: -Exactly. ;-) Dan Smigrod: -You're looking for the client that wants to use that? Michael Martin: -That's exactly right. We did that for a [U.S. Department of Defense] conference. I guess the angle there was it could help train soldiers up on how to maybe interact with cultures they're not already familiar with. You get to see these things in real-time, but the way I would like to spin off. Go ahead. Dan Smigrod: -Let's pause there and say, that's a whole another WGAN-TV Live at 5 show. You'll come back and you'll talk to us about that. Just to wrap it up on Unstationery. Do you feel like Unstationery there was a question I didn't ask you that I should have asked? A topic that we should cover before we say bye? Michael Martin: -I guess, you've been peppering this throughout the show. Use the promo code -- UNWGAN -- and create a card, send it to everyone in your family, or just get an example yourself. But for those of you that want something more custom. Dan Smigrod: -That's go to: www.Unstationery.co and use promo code: UNWGAN Michael Martin: -That's correct. Dan Smigrod: -Use promo code: UNWGAN to save 25%. Michael Martin: -That's exactly right, but if you need something more custom, the [www.Unstationery.co] card creator has limitations on what we allow you to create. But as you can see through some of these examples I've shown you, we can do quite a bit more. Here's a really good example of something we did for Taco Bell. We did a card for Taco Bell. They actually did the first legal wedding in the metaverse and we did the invitations. Dan Smigrod: -Show to us that again, it blurred in and out a little bit. Michael Martin: -Sure. Right here, this is a wedding invitation to the first legal metaverse wedding. We did the invitations to photographers, celebrities, whoever it is they wanted to send to. This is an example of something that required quite a bit of customization. If our card creator doesn't allow you to do exactly what you want, then there is a place from the same website -- www.Unstationery.co -- where you can inquire. You fill out a quick form, we'll reach out and we can come up with a solution that really fits whatever your marketing goals are. Dan Smigrod: -I'm hearing two things. One, go to: Michael Martin: - www.Unstationery.co [Coupon Code: UNWGAN saves 25%] Dan Smigrod: - www.Unstationery.co and place an order, mail one to yourself. Mail one to a friend. Take a look at it and start thinking about how you might use that in your business. Then second you're thinking really big. Even though it was super-easy and super-fast, the place one or many, using the existing size, layout, border. You got a big press run in mind and you want to talk about that, there's a form for that on: www.Unstationery.co ... Last question, Michael. We've been talking for about an hour here. How do you possibly summarize Unstationery in 30 seconds? Michael Martin: -Unstationery lets you connect with people on a more personal level by printing videos on any form of print marketing. But we happen to be really good at printing them on cards and mailing them out for you. With just an Internet connection, you can have a really strong interaction with whoever it is a loved one, or potentially a customer. Dan Smigrod: -Michael, thanks for being on the show today. Michael Martin: -Dan, thank you so much man. I can't wait. I hold you to that other episode too, we're going to get the one on the books. Dan Smigrod: -Awesome. We've been visiting with Unstationery co-Founder and CEO Michael Martin. For Michael, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com] and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
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WGAN eBook-Win More Listings-Print Listing Videos on Cards via Unstationery18916