This interview is with Ben Hemmings, Founder / Executive Director, Mainspring Agency.
You left law and finance to build a video agency; how did that pivot shape your philosophy on branded storytelling and the way you run Mainspring?
My career is split into two distinct lives. The first was in the corporate world, studying law and working at major financial institutions in the UK. The second is the creative and entrepreneurial path I’m on now. Honestly, there is almost zero overlap between those paths when it comes to the actual storytelling and creative work we do at Mainspring. I definitely got really good at developing spreadsheets, which has proven valuable in running a business, but beyond that—very little overlap!
However, when it comes to running the agency, my corporate background serves as a guide for what to avoid. I found that environment suffocating. The rigid hours and the expectation that work always comes before family are the fastest ways to kill “outside-the-box” thinking.
At Mainspring, I’m intentional about building the opposite of that grind. We’ve stripped away the agency bloat and the corporate hierarchy to make room for actual creativity. If you want people to be honest and reliable for a client, you have to treat them like humans first, not just cogs in a target-driven machine. We’re a strategic media arm, but we run on human experience, not a corporate handbook.
When a marketing or philanthropy leader approaches you with a goal, how do you diagnose the trust gaps to decide whether a corporate video, short-form impact clip, or documentary approach will move the needle?
When we onboard a new client, we have an hour-long call where we run through our onboarding questionnaire. This gives us a good understanding of the client’s brand, marketing approach, and the role our team will play in the development and production of the finished piece.
As we are a video agency and production company, some projects involve developing the marketing strategy, while others involve producing high-end video content for another agency or for larger organizations with in-house marketing and communications teams.
For projects where we are developing the strategy, we typically go through the client’s backend data to identify their target audience, the platforms they are using, and how they prefer to be communicated with (tone, style). We then begin developing a creative approach based on that.
Sometimes it’s short clips, sometimes it’s a TV commercial, and sometimes it’s a three-minute documentary. Different clients, goals, audiences, and objectives require different tools.
Once you’ve chosen an approach, what does your end-to-end process look like—from pre-interviews to field production to post—to craft stories that sales or fundraising teams will actually use in live conversations?
Everything we do is built to give a salesperson or a fundraiser a tool they can actually use in the moment, not just a link to a “pretty” video. Our process is about finding the specific friction points in their live conversations and solving them with proof.
Phase 1 – Strategy & Pre-production: We start by identifying exactly where a sales team or fundraiser is losing people. If a donor doesn’t believe in the impact of a program, we don’t just “research”; we conduct pre-interviews to find the one human story that makes that impact undeniable. We skip the generic scripts and use storyboarding to map out a narrative that addresses real-world objections.
Phase 2 – Filming: In the field, we operate as a production team, crewing up to support our creative vision where required. Our directors and cinematographers focus on capturing the raw, unpolished truth of the work. This “human-first” footage is what makes a story feel verifiable when a fundraiser shows it to a high-level donor.
Phase 3 – Post-production: Post isn’t just about color grading and graphics; it’s about creating the most effective marketing and sales material possible, selling emotions, and answering questions.
Phase 4 – Tracking & Performance: Once the content is out there, if required, we manage the deployment and track how it’s being used. We optimize social media, YouTube, and work with salespeople to refine and develop future material based on audience retention rates and ultimately sales.
You often reference “backpocket assets”; what are the hallmarks of a clip that a Director of Philanthropy or AE will confidently text right after a meeting?
Everything we create is designed with our clients’ sales funnel in mind.
After a sales call, the lead will typically be halfway down the funnel, ready for the proposition. At this point, we’re no longer looking for a 15-30 second “about us” video. We need to sell the customer a product or service directly.
For one of our clients, that would mean producing an impact video about one of their projects—an emotive story showcasing the on-the-ground impact that a donation to a specific project would make.
For another client, the focus would be on demonstrating how they could reduce months off their construction project by choosing the right plumbing company.
These videos can be a little longer. They still need a strong hook and effective storytelling to keep viewers interested and engaged, but they should directly promote a product or project.
In my opinion, this represents the highest value ROI from using a video marketing agency, and these are the videos that most companies tend to overlook. While the company overview “corporate video” is effective for opening doors, it merely serves as an introduction to who you are—top of the funnel. These videos close deals and are likely your best investment.
Tell us about a specific project where a documentary-style brand film directly influenced revenue or donations.
The best example of this is the Andes Project film we produced for One Tree Planted.
In 2018, when we first started collaborating with them on retainer, they were at roughly $300,000 in annual revenue. Over five years, we acted as their strategic media arm, helping them scale to $50 million. The documentary-style content wasn’t just about “pretty pictures”; it was about closing the trust gap with donors who needed to see the actual work on the ground.
The results were direct and measurable:
- Total Fundraising: The Andes Project video helped the organization raise over $4 million in total.
- Major Gifts: A first-time donor committed $1 million specifically because of the Andes film, citing it as the reason they chose to trust the organization.
- ROI: That single $1 million donation alone provided a 20x return on investment for this one production.
For a nonprofit, this kind of storytelling is a massive growth strategy. Donors have a high BS meter—they don’t want a glossy corporate pitch; they don’t want decks; they definitely don’t want AI slop—they want to see the impact. By prioritizing the emotive, on-the-ground truth of the reforestation efforts, we provided a tool that their fundraising team could use in live conversations to prove their mission. As Rachel Greenman, their Director of Philanthropy, noted in her Clutch review, our videos have been the “driving force” behind their annual fundraising success.
For corporate clients who want polish without losing truth, how do you balance brand guidelines with the messy human moments that make stories feel real?
Honestly, almost everything we make falls into this category. The goal is to bring authenticity to a corporate campaign without it feeling forced or artificial.
We’ve worked with small owner-operators all the way up to tech companies with multi-million dollar revenues. The production value and the level of collaboration change, but the principles stay the same. You can have all the gloss in the world, but if the message doesn’t feel real, it will trigger the BS-meter of the average audience.
Creating content that feels authentic is about finding a truthful, consistent message and presenting it realistically. The level of polish doesn’t change the core guiding principles we use to close the trust gap. At the end of the day, people don’t connect with brand guidelines; they connect with stories.
How do you measure the business impact of corporate and documentary content beyond views?
Our clients’ metrics are the only ones that matter. We measure success by the specific job the video was hired to do—anything else is just a vanity metric.
If the goal is influencing five MPs on Parliament Hill to move a policy, that’s our benchmark. If we’re building a sales tool, we measure success by closed deals and top-line revenue. For brand equity campaigns, we track impressions and awareness. We judge our performance based on the actual result, not just the technical quality of the footage.
We act as a strategic marketing agency that specializes in video marketing campaigns, which means we align ourselves with the client’s real business problems. If a film doesn’t solve the friction in a sales meeting or move the needle on a fundraising goal, it hasn’t done its job. Our clients don’t hire us for “pretty pictures”—they hire us for utility and results.
Where are you currently using AI in your video or PR workflow at Mainspring while protecting authenticity?
AI is a collaborator at Mainspring, not a creator. We use it to crunch numbers, analyze opportunities, and I personally use it a lot on the Business Development side—so we can focus on the human parts of production that can’t be automated.
On the video side, we use a range of AI tools to research the specific friction points a client’s sales or fundraising team is facing. It helps us identify the “Why” faster so we know exactly what story we need to go out and film. We don’t use it to generate synthetic footage or scripts because that’s the fastest way to create inauthentic, average videos. In the long run, this business thrives and grows by creating genuinely impactful, human-first content that moves audiences to tears in campaigns that our clients thought were going to be mundane or boring.
Ultimately, AI helps us save time, plan logistics, and gather thoughts into cohesive structures without us spending the time on formatting. It frees us up to spend our time developing a product that genuinely stands out in the noise of AI-generated content.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Storytelling only works if the audience believes it. In a world of synthetic media and declining trust, choosing “organic” content—real, human stories that capture actual emotion and energy—is soon going to be a radical growth strategy. The organizations that thrive will be the ones that realize authenticity is the only currency that still moves the needle.
It comes down to utility and ROI. Why settle for an AI-generated video that costs a few thousand to make, requires you to manage it all yourself, and only returns $10k, when you could invest $20k in a professional video marketing strategy that returns $200k? That’s the difference between a DIY project and a strategic partnership that drives growth.