Callibrain Animated Review Library
From 2012 to the end of 2015, I created over 30+ hand-animated book reviews for Callibrain, Inc. Callibrain was a software startup that brought me on as Creative Director to help with the creative side of their business strategy. The videos are still present on YouTube and have garnered over 2 million + views and 20k+ subscribers.
The book reviews (which are technically summaries that review the big ideas of the books) were an effort of collaboration, content, and audience building. We conscioulsly chose to keep things ‘low tech’ and have each video be hand-drawn and at the time they were made were among some of the first ‘animated reviews’ on YouTube.
Video Process-The Making of Callibrain Animated Review Library
The Callibrain Animated Book Review was a creation all it’s own. It began with myself (Creative Director) and Sameer Bhargava (CEO of Callibrain, Inc.) talking about possible ways to connect with an audience that would be interested in software built for leaders with the desire for more engaged work teams .
At the time, I had done several animations for my own self related to some ideas in books I enjoyed. I also had some knowledge of using search engine optimization to reach audiences via specific search terms. I thought it would be a good idea to suggest to Sameer that we look into leadership and business books and use the content within those books to make unique ‘remixed’ content of our own. And if those interested in leadership and business liked the content we offered, they may be more likely to check out the software that Sameer and his software team had created! Sameer was on board with the suggestion and he gave me the green light to forge ahead!
The great thing about working with Sameer is that he had a great eye for keeping things simple and functional, and he was very blunt in his feedback about that. In my first storyboards for the first few reviews we created, I didn’t initially think of them as single screen videos. Sameer suggested that we limit the parameters to a single page and screen and voila, a new art form was born! While you’ll see the complete image samples of the videos on this page, the images are meant to be watched in time to a voiceover in a time-lapsed video form (which you’ll see below). The single-page format reminded me of doing a comic page (with a title for hierarchy and then cells that had you read from left to right) and over time, they evolved more in that direction.
My main job was to do a list of things for every review. Those things were: decide which books to review and get sign-offs from Sameer, read the books and take notes, pick out the big ideas from the notes and piece them together to write a review, get the written script reviewed and edited, record the voiceover, create an original music track using Garage Band, storyboard imagery based off of my written review, record the live-drawing of the animations, ready the footage for edit, send off the footage for final edits, and then do keyword research before publishing the video.
Creating these videos for several years ws an effort that required several people to make work consistently, with Sameer having the final say and sign-off on things.
In our first reviews, our video quality was subpar and we were still feeling out how to structure the reviews. But it was the success of our first reviews (even in there imperfect state) that let us know we were onto something! A big early success was our review of The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, which quickly gained thousands of views and was continuously trending upward.
For the first 5 or 6 reviews, I worked with a colleauge, Priya Dua, on thinking through concepts that would stick. In the concepting stage of this video, I worked Priya on figuring out how to frame it and presented some options to her and Sameer. I remember Priya specifically suggested the football storyline for the 7 Habits of Highly-Succesful People animated book review and Sameer helped me think through some theoretical scenarios.
Priya would leave Calibrain and pursue other opportunities and then we sought some help in editing the videos in her absence. This helped me stay focused on keeping the reviews coming!
We brought on two people to help with things: P.J. Schenkel of Three Hat Media and Pamela Coyle of Content Connects, to help with video editing behind the scenes and in front of the audinece.
With P.J., his expertise made the reviews a little more interesting to watch specifically via his use of sound and the way the camera would move toward the end of the videos. He stayed on to help with things on the back end until the very end! His touch and Pam’s touch (she had an awesome idea to create a Google Drive document where viewers could interact with our video) can be seen on one of the first animated reviews videos they collaborated with me on, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson.
Pamela Coyle was an uber talented writer and editor that really helped us sharpen up the reviews and had great feedback for making things better all around. As we got to the last 10 or so reviews, we really began to refine how we presented things. You can see an example of the change from the earlier days of reviews like the 7 habits to reviews like the one below, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
One of the cooler things that happened that we didn’t overly plan for was that we got a lot of inquiries to using the final images-we even encouraged people to reach out to us so that we could share our work with them!
People reached out for training and education purpose, for self-enrichment and learning, and for their own projects. We became an authoritative source of sorts for presenting ideas for easier learning! Though our software was changing and evolving on the fly, we did have good positioning with leaders and teams in the space we created for ourselves.
Our book review for Switch by Chip and Dan Heath got a lot of traction and engagement on that front for its connection to behavior change. We also looked at it as a way to practice and foster our own form of leadership, which started at the top with Sameer’s generosity.
We even did a paid video project with an author – Joe Currier- and his book 10 Leadership Contracts. Joe was very kind and knowledgeable, with time spent consulting with the Baltimore Ravens. His book review was created with promotion of his company and book in mind and so it had more focus and color to it. It’s the only book that was placed in our lineup that was a paid project and it fit right in. We chose to share his book and were proud to have it on display to our audience! Behind the scenes, we also created a couple other animated videos for others too.
Being a big part of creating Callibrain’s efforts to create one-of-a-kind content for leaders and for those with interest in running business as leaders was a time of great creativity and enjoyment. I loved figuring out new ways to help ‘people ‘get it’ in a unique art form. I also loved and learned a lot from Sameer via his acts of generosity for empowering us to create artifacts that can still be watched and enjoyed and benefited from today.
It all started with an idea, a CEO’s belief and backing in that idea, and the time and space to create the Callibrain Animated Review Library. I’ll be forever grateful for being involved with such an impactful and enjoyable project. Thanks for reading about my journey with Callibrain!