I know both Wochit and one of their competitors like the back of my hand because I used them both when we launched Wada7. To be honest, when I first looked at them both, I thought that Wochit’s competitor looked easier and quicker. However, after a few weeks of extensive use of both platforms, we gave up on the “text-to-video” platform, since we realized very quickly that it was extremely limited. We couldn’t make our own templates or write our texts where we wanted, we couldn’t use the video outro that we picked and even select the part of the videos we wanted in the media section.
Within a couple of weeks, we could make quality videos that looked like no one else’s on Wochit in less than 20 minutes. The proof was that we were able to produce about 20 videos a day and I already felt at that time that Wochit had much more potential than any “automated video creation” platforms we used before.
When I was hired at Prisma to launch videos for Voici I was told that they were using the same text-to-video solution for their web site as well as other brands within the company. It was obvious that all videos looked alike and I wanted something different for Voici. I asked if I could use Wochit for social media because not only did I feel more comfortable with it, but I knew I could make something unique.
I am no technician. I am a journalist. I have been working for TV and radio as a journalist for 20 years. During my career, I edited thousands of videos…with the help of an editor using Premiere or Final Cut sitting next to me listening to my orders. When I started using Wochit, I realized that I could create my own videos and that I was finally “free” and could make quality videos at scale. So when I got to Voici, we picked our own font made by a graphic designer and had it integrated into Wochit, as well as our graphics.
A good video is a video you are proud of and that you want to share. I wanted people to be proud to share Voici’s videos. So there I went. We started small. Just me and my community manager, whom I trained on Wochit in 40 minutes.
In February I was appointed Head of Digital at Voici and we needed to make better videos that didn’t look like slideshows. But I needed my team to be happy with the platform they used. And there was no way I would make a choice for them. Because they would be using it, not me.
The team had been using the online video editor created by the same Wochit’s competitor for months. It took them 10 minutes to make a single animated slideshow and over 5 minutes to render it. When they took the first look at Wochit they were quite reluctant, it seemed to take longer to edit a video. They tested it and they were unanimous. It was fun. It was fun to make videos and they got the hang of it after creating a couple of them. After 3 or 4 attempts, they managed to make high-quality videos in 10 minutes. What they were really impressed with was the rendering time: less than a single minute.
The results:
- We started producing 5-6 videos a day.
- Voici’s social videos were launched on October 18th.
- 45 million views on Facebook in March.
About the author:
Myriam Ferrus is Voici’s Editor in Chief of Digital, Videos and Social. Before joining Prisma, Myriam worked for over 20 years in TV and radio as a journalist, director, producer and editor in chief for France 2, BBC Worldwide, TF1, BFMTV, and Endemol.
