Milos Armus

They ask who buys video and arrive at CMO, VP of Marketing, or Marketing Director.

• But one production service solves different problems inside the same company, and each problem sits with a different owner.
• His method is to start with the reason a company might need video and then follow that problem to the person closest to it who has enough influence to act.
• Seniority alone is not relevance, he says: a Content Marketing Manager can be nearer the actual need than a CMO.

The mapping Armus gives is concrete: a brand campaign belongs with Brand or Marketing, a product launch with Product Marketing or go-to-market, a trade show with Events, Marketing, or Sales, a complex product explainer with Sales Enablement, recruitment content with Employer Brand or Talent, and internal video with Internal Communications.

• A manufacturer with a three-person marketing team may still need product demonstrations, dealer training content, trade show videos, sales presentations, and explainers that help distributors sell, and the person responsible may not work in Marketing at all.
• He also notes a LinkedIn post about why Surge looks at revenue alongside employee count helped sign a client, which he uses as evidence that demonstrated thinking attracts buyers.

Armus extends the idea from departments to career history.

• Someone whose current role is Business Development but whose previous roles ran through Brand, Content Marketing, and Creative understands both the commercial side of the business and creative production, so targeting that only searches for a title misses strong prospects.
• His summary of the shift: a title is a label, a career path is a pattern.

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A brand constantly publishing product videos, branded content, customer testimonials, and social campaigns can look like an ideal client, but on closer inspection it may have internal producers, full-time editors, a creative department, or its own production facility. The more useful question is whether there is a reason the company needs external help, and sometimes the answer is no.

He lists the signals Surge looks for instead: a new product launch, a major campaign, a capability the internal team lacks, or an upcoming production that exceeds internal capacity. Internal teams can still be good partners for overflow work, specialised projects, and larger productions, he says, but the difference between a company that values video and a company with a reason to hire a studio is significant.

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He argues the missing piece is frequently timing. Events and changes inside a target company create a reason to start a conversation, even though they guarantee neither a project nor a budget.

The moments he names include a brand preparing to launch a new product, a manufacturer getting ready for a major trade show, a company bringing in a new Head of Marketing, and a business expanding into a new market. His conclusion is that good outbound is not only about finding the right companies and the right people, but about understanding why now might be the right moment to reach out.

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Most studios ask how many companies they can reach; he asks how many of those companies should actually be reached. A larger database does not automatically mean a better pipeline, and qualifying companies before outreach begins is treated as a production step rather than an afterthought.

He contrasts 5,000 companies in a database with 500 carefully selected ones and says he would rather build the smaller list. The screening questions he suggests are whether a company fits the studio, operates in an industry where the work makes sense, could plausibly invest, and would genuinely be a client the studio wants.

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They should, he says, but they rarely explain the thinking behind those projects, such as why a particular creative direction was chosen, what business problem the video was designed to solve, and what the client needed to accomplish. A portfolio shows what a studio can produce; the thinking shows what it might be like to work with it.

He backs this with a first-hand example from Surge: a LinkedIn post explaining why the company looks at revenue alongside employee count when building outbound campaigns helped sign a client, without being a case study, testimonial, or sales pitch.

• What it demonstrated was how Surge thinks.
• He suggests that for many studios the better way to attract clients is to show more of the reasoning rather than more work.

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His diagnosis is structural rather than about capability: when everyone is shooting, editing, pitching, and delivering, prospecting gets pushed to Monday, then next week, then next month. He concludes that business development needs a person consistently responsible for it, especially when everyone else is producing.

He illustrates this with the experience of Frank from Team Bubbly, a client who described the problem in a testimonial for Surge.

• Frank had previously brought in sales and business development people without much success; over three months working with Surge, the company generated eight to nine meetings with relevant potential buyers and landed two jobs, according to that testimonial.
• Armus draws a measured lesson from the case, saying it does not mean every studio needs an outbound agency, and the outcome is presented as the client's reported experience rather than a guaranteed result.

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A brand asks for a proposal, then a creative concept, a treatment, suggested locations, a revised budget, and possibly another creative direction, all before anything is signed. He understands why studios do it, since a strong pitch can decide whether a project is won, but argues there is a fine line between showing a client how the studio thinks and giving away the thinking the client is meant to hire them for.

His additional point is about opportunity cost: hours spent pitching are hours not spent producing or developing other opportunities, and the pressure is sharpest when several studios compete for the same budget. He leaves studio owners with the question of how much creative work they are willing to do before a client signs a contract.

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When one client doubles its video budget and starts consuming half a studio's capacity, the studio may turn down other projects, hire around that workload, let business development slide, and become exposed to a single budget cut. His position is that growth should make a studio stronger, not more dependent, and that a great contract is not automatically a great business decision.

He pairs this with a project-mix comparison: one $150,000 commercial against six $25,000 corporate videos for the same total revenue.

• The large project might bring a stronger portfolio piece, while the smaller projects can mean more client relationships and less dependence on a single contract, but they also mean more proposals, production cycles, and client management.
• Neither option automatically produces better margins, and he says the right answer depends on what kind of production company the owner is trying to build.

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This post explains why that list is too narrow and gives a reusable method for finding the person closest to each video need.

Armus argues that video solves different problems inside one company, and each problem sits with a different owner: a brand campaign with Brand or Marketing, a product launch with Product Marketing or go-to-market teams, a trade show with Events, Marketing or Sales, a complex product explainer with Sales Enablement, recruitment content with Employer Brand or Talent, and internal video with Internal Communications.

• Same production service, different buyer.
• The recommendation is to start from the reason the company might need video and follow that problem to the person closest to it.

For brands planning a campaign

Segment an outreach campaign by video problem and assign each segment a buyer role instead of sending one senior-marketing pitch to every account. A product launch sequence, for example, belongs with product marketing or go-to-market contacts.

Armus says CMOs, VPs of Marketing and Heads of Marketing can be excellent buyers, but seniority does not automatically mean relevance.

• A Content Marketing Manager, a Product Marketing lead, a Sales Enablement contact, Internal Communications or Employer Brand can be closer to the actual project.
• The question that changes a campaign is: who is closest to the problem this video solves and has enough influence to act on it?

For brands planning a campaign

Score contacts on two axes — proximity to the video need and ability to influence a budget — instead of ranking by title. This stops a list from defaulting to the most senior names available.

Armus describes a manufacturer with a tiny marketing team that could still need product demonstrations, dealer training content, trade show videos, sales presentations, technical product explainers, and videos that help distributors sell.

• None of those depend on a large marketing department, and the person responsible may not sit in Marketing at all.
• The useful question is where video creates value inside the business, not how many marketers it employs.

For brands planning a campaign

Remove marketing headcount as a disqualifier. Look instead for internal functions — sales, training, distribution, events — where video output would solve a visible problem.

Armus uses an example of someone whose current role is Business Development but whose previous roles ran through Brand, Content Marketing and Creative.

• That history suggests the person understands both the commercial side of the business and content production.
• Targeting that only searches for a title misses people whose past roles make them unusually good buyers or partners for video work.

For brands planning a campaign

Add career-history signals to prospect screening. A contact whose earlier roles touched brand, content or creative production may support a stronger conversation than their current title suggests.

Armus describes the frustrating scenario directly: the right company, the right responsibilities, a strong portfolio, and still nothing.

• The missing piece can be timing.
• He names moments when video needs emerge — a product launch, preparation for a major trade show, a new Head of Marketing, expansion into a new market.
• None guarantee a project or a budget, but they provide a relevant reason to start a conversation.
• Good outbound is not only finding the right company and person, but understanding why now is the moment.

For brands planning a campaign

Build trigger-based sequences around observable events. Reach a prospect when a launch, trade show, leadership change or market expansion makes the video conversation timely.

Armus says Surge spends a surprising amount of time removing potential clients from outreach lists.

• The question is not how many companies can be reached, but how many should be.
• A 5,000-company database may contain few genuine fits.
• He would rather work from 500 carefully selected companies than 5,000 loosely matched prospects, and he describes qualification as something that happens before outreach begins.

For brands planning a campaign

Treat qualification as a production step, not an afterthought. Define what a good fit looks like for the studio and cut the list to that definition before any outreach starts.

A LinkedIn post explaining why Surge looks at revenue alongside employee count when building outbound campaigns helped sign a client — not a case study, testimonial or sales pitch.

• Armus uses that to argue production companies share finished projects far more often than the thinking behind them: why a creative direction, why an approach, what business problem the video solved.
• A portfolio shows what a studio can produce; the thinking shows what it might be like to work with it.

For brands planning a campaign

For a studio's own marketing, publish the reasoning behind work, not only the output. Use that reasoning in outbound as the proof point that starts conversations.

Armus notes that brands publishing many videos — product videos, branded content, customer testimonials, social campaigns — can look like ideal clients.

• But they may have internal producers, full-time editors, a creative department, or their own production facility.
• Sometimes they need overflow or specialised help; sometimes they do not.
• Surge looks for reasons a company might need external help: a new product launch, a major campaign, a capability the internal team lacks, or a production that exceeds internal capacity.

For brands planning a campaign

Replace the filter 'publishes a lot of video' with need-for-external-help signals. Target accounts where a launch, campaign or capacity gap creates a specific reason to hire outside production.

But the same production service can solve different problems inside one company: brand campaigns sit with Brand or Marketing, product launches with Product Marketing or GTM, trade shows with Events, Marketing, or Sales, complex product explanations with Sales Enablement, recruitment content with Employer Brand or Talent, and internal video with Internal Communications.

• Seniority does not automatically mean relevance; a Content Marketing Manager can be closer to the actual need than the CMO.
• Armus also looks at career history, because someone in Business Development may previously have worked in Brand, Content Marketing, and Creative, making them a more informed buyer than their current title suggests.

Start with the reason a company might need video, then follow that problem to the person closest to it who has enough influence to act.

For brands planning a campaign

Build target lists from the project reason and business problem, not from a title filter. Include non-Marketing roles such as Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, Events, Employer Brand, and Internal Communications, and treat career history as a signal of whether a buyer understands content and creative production.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4

Sometimes the missing piece is timing.

• Relevant moments include a brand preparing to launch a new product, a manufacturer getting ready for a major trade show, a company bringing in a new Head of Marketing, or a business expanding into a new market.
• These events do not guarantee a project or a budget, but they give a relevant reason to start a conversation.
• Good outbound is not only about finding the right companies and people; it is also about understanding why now might be the right moment to reach out.

Identify events and changes inside target companies that create a reason to talk, then use that reason as the opening rather than a generic portfolio pitch.

For brands planning a campaign

Monitor trigger events such as launches, trade shows, marketing leadership changes, and market expansion. Use trigger-based messaging to open conversations, while treating triggers as reasons to talk rather than proof of budget.

Examples: Source 1

It may have internal producers, full-time editors, a creative department, or its own production facility.

• The better question is whether there is a reason the company might need external help: a new product launch, a major campaign, a capability the internal team lacks, or a production that exceeds capacity.
• At the same time, a small marketing department does not mean there is no video demand.
• A manufacturer might have a tiny marketing team but need product demonstrations, dealer training, trade show videos, sales presentations, technical explainers, or videos that help distributors sell.
• Armus says Surge spends significant time removing potential clients from outreach lists and would rather build a list of 500 carefully selected companies than 5,000 loosely matched prospects.

Qualify for a plausible reason to hire an external studio and for where video creates value inside the business, including outside the Marketing department.

For brands planning a campaign

Score prospects for external need and buying triggers rather than video output. Look for internal capability gaps, capacity overflow, launches, and campaigns, and be willing to shrink the list before outreach.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

They should, but they often do not explain the thinking behind the projects: why that creative direction, why that approach, what business problem the video was designed to solve, and what the client needed to accomplish.

• A LinkedIn post explaining why Surge looks at company revenue alongside employee count helped sign a client, not because it was a case study or sales pitch, but because it showed how they think.
• The portfolio shows what a studio can produce; the thinking shows what it might be like to work with them.

Pair work samples with the rationale, client problem, and decision logic behind the project.

For brands planning a campaign

For a production studio campaign, develop content that demonstrates process and problem-solving, not just finished output. Use thinking-led posts as outreach assets that give prospects a reason to trust the studio before a project exists.

Examples: Source 1

When a studio is busy shooting, editing, pitching, and delivering, business development gets pushed back.

• Frank from Team Bubbly had tried bringing in sales and business development people without much success; after three months working with Surge, the company generated 8 to 9 meetings with relevant potential buyers and landed two jobs.
• Armus says the lesson is not that every studio needs an outbound agency, but that business development needs someone consistently responsible for it, especially when everyone else is producing.

Assign consistent ownership of new business development rather than treating prospecting as work that happens when production slows down.

For brands planning a campaign

Assess whether the creator can help a studio install a repeatable outbound function with clear ownership. If using reported client outcomes, present them as the client’s reported experience rather than a guaranteed result.

Examples: Source 1

The studio may turn down other projects, hire around that workload, let business development slide, and become exposed to a single budget cut.

• A great contract is not automatically a great business decision.
• He also compares one large commercial project with six smaller corporate video projects for the same total revenue: the large project may bring a stronger portfolio piece, while smaller projects can mean more client relationships and less dependence on one contract, but they also mean more proposals, production cycles, and client management.
• Neither option automatically means better margins; the right answer depends on the kind of production company being built.

Connect prospecting choices to the studio’s desired client mix and tolerance for concentration risk.

For brands planning a campaign

Target a pipeline that reduces dependency on a single client and fits the studio’s intended model, rather than chasing only the largest possible contracts or the highest volume of small projects.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

A brand asks for a proposal, then a creative concept, a treatment, suggested locations, a revised budget, and maybe another creative direction, all before anything is signed.

• A great pitch can win a project, but there is a fine line between showing how a studio thinks and giving away the thinking the client is supposed to hire them for.
• The hours spent pitching are also hours not spent producing or developing other opportunities.
• Winning new business matters, but so does knowing when the cost of winning becomes too high.

Set a boundary around unpaid creative work during the pitch and qualification process.

For brands planning a campaign

Use campaign conversations to qualify serious buyers and clarify pitch scope. Content can address how a studio shows its thinking without giving away the work it expects to be hired to produce.

Examples: Source 1

Armus often frames a common assumption, tests it against real situations, and asks readers to compare their own experience. The posts are written for video production company owners and focus on prospecting, buyer selection, business development, pitch economics, and client risk.

Use a short diagnostic structure: name the assumption, show the practical consequence, offer a concrete alternative, and invite the reader to reflect or respond.

For brands planning a campaign

If collaborating with Armus, expect a direct operator-to-operator tone suited to LinkedIn. The format can support campaign content that teaches a specific targeting or business-development decision rather than generic promotion.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5 · Source 6

His formal relationship with Surge is unstated in the cited posts.

View example

The practical, diagnostic framing is close to Armus's approach.

Rohit's subject is content strategy for high-ticket consulting and IT services, with recurring prompts to book a strategy call. Armus applies a similar operator lens to video production studio prospecting and buyer-role mapping, not content distribution.

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Like Armus, Curtis writes from enablement and sales-operations experience and asks operators to look past labels.

Curtis focuses on AI, sales enablement and software buying decisions, and built Fide AI. Armus stays on video production studios, outbound lists and client-risk decisions, and does not discuss software procurement.

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The diagnostic, question-led format parallels Armus's operator posts.

Levin's examples come from paid media and conversion paths, not video production sales. Armus maps video needs to internal buyer roles and qualifies studios' outbound lists; Levin diagnoses campaign-to-outcome breaks across the marketing stack.

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Rohit K's two supplied posts attack a different stage of the same outbound problem: whether published content makes prospects arrive at a sales conversation already educated.

• One post gives a concrete test — ask the sales team whether prospects are arriving better informed — and describes the goal as starting further down the buying journey instead of spending the first 25 minutes explaining why the problem matters.
• The other argues that three strong content ideas, each rewritten across formats, beat twelve thin new ones, and lists an order for doing it: start from one real customer problem, write the deepest version first, pull out the strongest opinion, turn the framework into a visual, answer one objection in a video, then expand in a newsletter.
• For a studio whose outbound produces polite interest but no traction once a conversation starts, that is more directly useful than buyer-role mapping.
• The tradeoff is scope: nothing in these posts covers list building, which roles own video work, timing triggers, or qualification, so the targeting half of the campaign still has to come from elsewhere.
• The posts also end with a standing invitation to book a strategy call for inbound and outbound system building aimed at consulting and IT-services firms, which identifies a commercial offer but says nothing about video production buyers.
• Treat Rohit K as a content-and-sales-enablement contributor to a campaign that already knows its target list, not as a replacement for the buyer-mapping method.

Leaves targeting, role selection and list qualification uncovered, and the documented offer points at consulting and IT-services businesses rather than production studios.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Michelle Curtis's supplied posts make one argument that overlaps with Milos Armus but in a different setting: a title does not describe the work.

• One post lays out why companies that cut roles for AI have rehired or regretted it, and separates work that is pure output from the judgment, escalation and reading-a-room parts of a job, noting that a sales enablement manager at one company may be a trainer and at another a data analyst.
• For a studio trying to work out whether a target account really has an internal video owner, or trying to explain an evaluation decision to a client, that framing is a sharper diagnostic than a buyer-role map.
• The other post announces Fide AI, a buyer-side software evaluation service that says it is not funded by vendors, and describes the range of honest answers it gives, from buy now to wait to nothing solves this.
• The tradeoff is that this is a different campaign: the topics are enablement careers and software purchasing, not video or outbound prospecting, and two posts are not enough to judge how the ideas hold up against a real outbound pipeline.
• Michelle Curtis also has a named product to promote, so an engagement looks like a commercial relationship around Fide AI rather than paid or unpaid commentary for a production studio.
• Use this work when the studio needs help reasoning about role ambiguity or buyer-side honesty, and keep the targeting method with Milos Armus.

The subject matter is enablement roles and software evaluation rather than video or prospecting, the evidence base is thin at two posts, and the documented commercial interest is a separate product.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Cynthia Levin's two supplied posts are about diagnosing marketing as one system rather than one channel.

• The first argues that a channel can be working while the system fails, lists the specific breaks — landing page not matching the promise, unclear offer, too little trust, too much asked for next, weak follow-up, incomplete tracking — and names how paid media, the website, email, SEO and analytics affect each other.
• The second makes the same point about paid media: a healthy click-through rate can still send people into a weak experience, and increasing budget makes that problem more expensive, with questions about whether the landing page delivers on the ad, whether the offer reads quickly, whether there is enough proof, whether the next step is obvious and what happens to people who are interested but not ready.
• For a studio whose outbound opens conversations that go nowhere, this reframes the problem as the step after the reply.
• The tradeoff is that it does not address prospecting at all: there is no view on which companies to target, which roles own video, or how to qualify a list, and the recommended lens points the studio toward paid media and conversion work, which is a different budget from outbound targeting.
• Two posts also give no sense of how these checks perform on a real account, so treat this as diagnostic framing rather than a tested playbook.
• Keep Cynthia Levin for the post-click half of the same campaign and keep Milos Armus for the list.

Covers the post-reply path only, not targeting or list qualification, and steers attention and budget toward paid media and conversion rather than outbound research.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2