The biggest compliment is for a client to want you back — Alex Porter Smith — Talk Marketing 062

Martin Henley
4 min readJul 26, 2022

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The biggest compliment is for a client to want you back — Alex Porter Smith — Talk Marketing 062

Today’s guest holds a master’s degree in business administration. She has video experience going all the way back to 2012 when she served as an apprentice with Creative Scotland. She is currently producer at High Tide, the video production company she co founded in 2017. High Tide is a video production company that enables big thinkers to connect meaningfully with the audiences and wins awards, and has won clients including Just Eat, Tesco Bank, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Crabbies ginger beer, Glenmorangie and other alcohol brands. Today’s guest is left handed and has no appendix.

Today’s guest is Alex Porter Smith.

00:00 Introductions

07:12 How are you qualified to talk about video production?

15:44 Do you have to know business to be in a film business?

23:38 What is the value of a video?

43:15 How competitive are film making businesses?

1:02:53 Who do you work with and how do you add value to their lives?

1:11:32 What is your recommendation to get better at video production?

1:14:04 What should people read?

1:18:29 Who can you introduce us to who might enjoy to be a part of the Talk Marketing series?

Martin Henley

So question number one, how are you qualified to talk to us about video production?

Alex Porter Smith

Great question. Then I start to think am I? I mean, I’ve made a lot of videos with my team. So I would say that’s probably the first thing. But to as you said, in your intro, I started, I suppose my career by leaving school year early and doing an apprenticeship at Creative Scotland. Creative Scotland is like the equivalent of the Arts Council in Scotland, and there was two of us to apprentices there. They just chucked us in at the deep end and said, right, here’s all the projects that we fund, go and pick one, go and film it and that we just did that for a whole year. Here’s a camera off you go. So we just made and made and made and it was just a brilliant, brilliant experience.

Alex Porter Smith

So, you know, we made a lot of mistakes, there was a lot of content that we made that did not go up there, did not go on their website. But you know, it was just such a baptism of fire and such a fun one and such an amazing one to have at the age of 17. You know, we couldn’t go to the pub with the rest of the office because we weren’t awesome. So, you know, that was a really good starting place. Then I went to uni and actually studied film for two years. And then I started to really get into, you know, what role do I want to do here? and where do I see myself in this industry, and I quickly realised that I didn’t really want to touch a camera that there were so many other avenues within this. I wanted to do the business side of filmmaking, which is ultimately is producing. So I thought, actually, this course doesn’t teach me that I’m going to jump ship to business. So I jumped ship to business, in the same university, and finish my degree in business. Then I did Masters in Business.

Alex Porter Smith

I was always still trying to, like, keep my toe in the water, like I lived with people who were on the film course and then my dissertation was about the Scottish film industry. So, you know, I was always kind of trying to bring it back to film one way or another, I wasn’t just changing what I was doing and then just as we finished, you know, we decided right, we’re going to start a business and because we’d been working part time, just freelancing the whole way through uni. Neither of us had part time jobs. So we just been like, I will film this my film that will do this for 100 quid and, you know, just doing absolutely everything. We thought, right? We’ve got the skills and experience now to jump ship and do this as a business. So six months before I left uni, so it was business. And then yeah, here we are five years and in the last five years, we’ve made a lot so so maybe that’s what qualifies me.

Martin Henley

Okay, that sounds like it qualifies you The thing is, there’s a guy I always say this at this point, there’s a guy spoke to Tony Morris and he’s like, because I always say, like I said to you before we started speaking, like everyone’s got an average 20 years experiences 1000 years of experience here. But Tony Morris, his thing is, he could have done something for 20 years and been really bad at it. You know, I mean, I’d rather have five minutes of excellent experience than 20 years of bad experience. Or he that wasn’t, that wasn’t the exact words that he used. But it’s that idea. So the thing about video production, I think, is that doesn’t everyone want to be in video production? So doesn’t just the fact that you are employed in your business or your business is employed, and is working with these brands, and you are doing this all day, every day? That qualify? Because quite a lot of people go qualification, they think certificates. I couldn’t care less about stiff guts. I’m like, Do you know why me?

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Martin Henley
Martin Henley

Written by Martin Henley

Martin has built a reputation for having a no nonsense approach to sales and marketing and for motivating audiences with his wit, energy, and enthusiasm.

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