Your Prompt Won’t Make the Video: AI Video vs. Traditional Video

Can AI-generated video replace traditional video production? In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras speaks with Dustin Schultz, founder and executive producer of Union Video Agency, about the differences between AI video and traditional video production, and how businesses can decide which approach best protects their brand credibility.

Discover why effective AI video production requires more than a well-written prompt, when traditional video remains the better choice, and how companies can balance production costs, creativity, and authenticity. Dustin shares practical insights on AI video workflows, brand perception, legal and compliance considerations, and why human strategy and creative direction remain essential to producing effective B2B video content.

Guest & Resources

Dustin Schultz | Founder & Executive Producer, Union Video Agency

Explore Dustin’s work in AI-generated video, traditional video production, and creative campaigns for healthcare, pharmaceutical, and technology brands.

• Union Video Agency
• Connect with Dustin Schultz on LinkedIn

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More From Your Host, Linda Fanaras

Explore books by Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency and host of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, on branding, business strategy, and professional growth.

• Claim Your White Space
• Passion + Profits

About Millennium Agency

Millennium Agency helps complex B2B companies clarify their positioning, strengthen their brands, and turn strategy into measurable growth.

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Full Episode Transcript

Linda: 

LinkedIn says, type a great prompt and out comes a finished video. I’m not buying it. So my guest has shipped an AI video for two years, including a monthly campaign for a major insurer. The prompt is the easy part. What happens around it decides whether your brand looks credible or cheap. This is B2B Brand180. I’m Linda Fanaras and today’s Sacred Cow AI video is prompt to finish. Write it well enough and the machine does all the rest for you. So Dustin Schultz is here. He’s the founder and executive producer of Union Video Agency in Connecticut. His team makes videos for health, pharma, and tech brands. And for the last two years, generative AI for clients. In the next 15 minutes, you’ll get how he actually decides between AI and traditional video and what the real workflow looks like and where an AI video breaks down. 

Dustin, great to have you here. I’d love for you to give a quick hello. 

Dustin: 

Yeah. Hey Linda and anybody listening, glad to be here. And I love that intro. I think that was very well said. 

Linda: 

Great. And one quick line from you on why traditional production companies lean into AI instead of fighting it. 

Dustin: 

Sure. It’s just another tool. 

Linda: 

Just another tool. And Dustin has worked with some big names, Pfizer, Walgreens, Canon, Yale Health, just to name a few. So – and cites Emmy and Telly Awards. So this should be a really good informative discussion. So let’s get started with the myth. So a CEO sees an AI video posted on LinkedIn. So what do they think happened and what’s actually happened? I’d love for you to get your feedback because sometimes I see these and I’m like, I still can’t figure it out. And of course some people can. 

Dustin: 

To put my mind in any sort of CEO’s head, I guess leading an agency, I’m somebody who also watches the bottom line over here. Budget discussions are always something. So this isn’t from a standpoint of being standoffish to somebody who needs to make sure a business is profitable. But I do think there’s this real big promise of the ability to hop into choose your gen AI video platform, put in a paragraph prompt in a certain specific way and a finished piece of content comes out and it being really efficient and people go from you need less people and you need way less time and it’s basically free and so why can’t we do this? And I think these are all really reasonable questions. And even running a studio, not being the one typically who’s hands dirty with the actual production work, but working more with our clients on strategy, I’m probably that person still too who goes, “Well, if we prompt this one, it’ll just take a couple days.” And they’re like, “You got to get your hands dirty.” So in all fairness, I think it’s a good question that they’re asking their teams, but the expectations need to be aligned with the experiences of the people actually doing the work. 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s a great point. And so the prompt isn’t the product, the thinking is. So AI speeds up production. So we all know that today, but it doesn’t do your strategy and it doesn’t make a flat idea super interesting. So it needs a little bit more work than that. So I’d love to get your feedback on how to get there from here. 

Dustin: 

Sure. Yeah. I think even this morning, we have a campaign that we’re developing some creative on and I’m an early worker. For some people it’s maybe not so much, but I like to get up at four and just get some quiet hours of deep work done. And when you’re in creative businesses, not having multiple people as a sounding board can be kind of a dangerous place for developing ideas and sharing though. And so I will say AI has become a very junior sounding board to bounce ideas back and forth with. And a lot of them are terrible, but often I’ll hear something that maybe takes me to a different space, but it instigates my thinking. And so I think in early stages of production creative development, there is a fine place to just… Ideas come from everywhere, and this is just another place where they come from. 

So I think in terms of a starting point, in terms of a jumping off point, that’s one of my favorites is just to begin to see what gets fleshed out. Most of it’s terrible, but that 10 or 5% of something that’s like, “I think there might be something there. We need to evolve it more.” 

Linda: 

Yeah, I know. I think in a lot of cases, AI will flatten a lot of things versus adding that creative element, which we’re used to seeing over the last 20, 30, 50 years or so, that making these changes can… I think we have to just be careful that we’re not flattening some of the things that are getting out there versus being creative like we’ve had that tendency to do in the past. 

So let’s get to the decision. So let’s say a CMO comes to you and they say, “Should this be AI or traditional?” What do you walk them through? What’s the scenario you’d walk them through? So I’m the CEO, I’m like, “What should we do?” 

Dustin: 

I mean, to me, when it comes to the consideration of even choosing whether to do AI or not, I often ask why they’re bringing the thought of using that tool to the table. I’m always just seeking to understand. And that usually uncovers something like, “Well, it needs to be done quickly or we don’t really have much budget and I just hear that things can be accomplished faster.” And that’s always been the promise of any tool that has evolved within production. You’re doing something maybe better or faster or more efficiently. And so I don’t think this fully brings you from 100% cost to 1% cost comparatively. So just asking what’s the reason helps reveal a lot. Once we know the reason, I like to ask the brand consideration that if your viewer knew that this content was created with AI, especially fully AI, like generative AI, what would their perception of you be what you want it to be? 

I think it’s a big brand question because at this point, even though sometimes it takes three or four frames in or shots in to be, that’s definitely AI, you still tell by the end. There’s just the giveaways, just the way people move, it’s just not fully… We’re too human to be… I think about, they say bank tellers with dollar bills used to be able to go through so fast and they’ve just seen so many that eventually they see the fake. I think we’ve encountered so many humans that eventually we just know that’s off. And so that ends up being, I can’t make that decision for someone. There’s no right or wrong. If they knew and that’s fine, excellent, proceed to the next step. Understanding why this tool is being considered and saying if somebody knew that you were using AI to generate this, would that perception of your brand line up with how you want to be perceived? 

I think those two are your… If you’re saying if the reason makes sense and the association makes sense and you check those two boxes, cool. Now you can move on to, okay, what are we going to make? Creative development kind of begins as normal as you would with any production. 

Linda: 

Yeah. I mean, I think your point on brand, so if you take any company as an example, that CMO, CEO needs to decide, does this line up with who we are? Having AI is not exactly authentic. So if a company stands by being authentic, maybe it’s just not a good idea. So in that case, don’t use AI, use traditional video instead. So tell me, is there one clear case where you tell a client, do not use it? 

Dustin: 

What you just shared is a very good one. It’s very valid. If you need real human authenticity, you’re experiencing that in healthcare, financial services, things like that where you really want this high, high trust, high expertise. The other place I would say… So that’s a high level idea. As you get a little lower, there’s one especially where I would never encourage anyone to do testimonial based campaign with AI. Surprisingly, I’ve seen some, and not crazy placements, but not really… Well, I guess I think I’ve seen it in YouTube pre-rolls and stuff where someone will be saying, “Oh, I used X, Y, and Z product and look at my garden or look at whatever.” And I’m just so baffled watching an AI person say that because I’m like, “No, you didn’t. I doubted it before when I knew it was an actor, but at least I let it slide.” It’s like when ChatGPT gets back to you and says, “I know how you feel.” And you’re like, “No, you don’t.” So that’s probably a great example. 

If someone’s trying to do testimonials with that like, “Oh, I used this and it worked this way.” I don’t know. I just think it’s really asking a lot from the audience to bypass that. 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. So I’ll push on a key point. I think your business makes more money if clients say yes to AI retainers, right? It’s just easier. 

Dustin: 

Sure. 

Linda: 

So why should anyone trust your don’t use it list? How do they know all about that? 

Dustin: 

Yeah. Well, I think in one hand, we call ourselves medium agnostic. So as a video agency, we’re producing motion graphics, content, explainers, animation, we do all of that. We do lots of big live action campaigns and we have AI production, including retainers. And my willingness to look at this more from a perspective of a tool that will then achieve a goal is level setting. The other aspect that I would consider is that for the most part, we’re a project-based agency, campaign focused agency. So your results determine your percentage chance of coming back to work with us again. I have the same vested interest in your success that you do, not just seeing if we could do something for the cheapest possible for as long as you’re willing to deal with it. Also, I did say that for the most part, I’m not hyper hands-on with actually writing prompts and stuff, but it’s also not to say that I haven’t done that and I have done actual prompting for client work to generate things, especially in early ideas as I begin to play with, oh, could this work in this way or can we use this to help demonstrate an example of what we’re imagine doing? 

Because communicating creativity in the sales process is always challenging. You’re asking people to make a leap, and so AI can usually help close that gap a little bit further. I think that is another benefit. 

Linda: 

Great point. So now the assurance works. So a new campaign every month for a major property and casualty insurer. So walk me through what your month looks like when you’re working with them. 

Dustin: 

Sure. Yeah. So we broke down our month pretty simply where the beginning of each month we meet and do a strategy session together, and that’s focused on what are the business goals in terms of products being pushed, in terms of regions being spoken to, key messages that are trying to be communicated, as well as taking a moment to look back on what historically has been happening, what of spots that have been created are driving more traffic or more closely associated with the benchmarks that we’re looking for in terms of how we rate success. So that’s a quick sprint. We then move into script writing in the traditional way we have. 

Taking the ideas, understanding the brand language, putting it forward and putting it into a traditional two column script. We deliver that. By week two, we’re now working through approvals on the two column script and moving them into a storyboard fashion. We do like to try and do stills of the exact look of what we’re going to be generating and prompting within the storyboards. So at this point we’re saying, “Hey, we have imagery for all of this. In the next phase, into week three, we’re going to be bringing it to life, adding motion to it, kind of wrap up. So we are delivering by the end of the month and then starting the process over again. The funny thing is that I think sometimes people look at an AI piece of content or imagine creating it and think,” Oh, I’m just going to whip this together. 

I’m going to go from zero to complete. “And nobody in a real enterprise environment believes that they’re just going to turn out finished work without steps of approval along the way. It’s craziness. Or you’re just taking five steps forward, then five steps back, five steps forward, five steps back. It just doesn’t work. And so where we deploy AI within each step creates efficiencies. Like in the example of this retainer, we’re doing look like live action capture, but we’re not going and filming. So major time in savings efficiencies there. But in terms of the message, in terms of creating a story, all of those are things that we need to vet out with our client partners that are humans. 

Linda: 

Yeah, exactly. So that brings me to another point because when I think insurance, I think of regulation, legal, compliance. How do you make sure AI lines up with that and abides by any legal rules that are currently out there, whether it’s national, regional, global? 

Dustin: 

In the same way we have with any live action piece is that we’re presenting that script, which we know is going to… We need to bake in that production time for it to go over to legal and be seen by compliance and have things redlined to say, “Oh, we can’t say that. We can’t promise this.” And so then when it comes back to, let’s say the visual aspect of things, there becomes a bit of a softness, I think, when it comes to what is to look alike to a person or a thing or a brand. And so again, that comes down to the legal department to kind of make a call on that, a final call on it before it heads out the door after we’ve assigned our own level of due diligence to the fact that this is a unique piece of content that we have developed. 

Linda: 

So what about the average, not an insurance company, so the average business that generates an AI video, should they run it by legal? Are there things that they should look out for and make sure they’re not really crossing the line? 

Dustin: 

Depending on what you use, a lot of different platforms will have some of their own initial gates where you hit something that might be too lookalike to something that is proprietary. And certainly it depends on the scale of the business. I had brought my daughters to a birthday party a couple weeks ago and it was an Elsa themed birthday and it’s a little mom and pop dress up place for whatever. The whole thing is themed to Disney and you know that at the end of the day, but there’s no royalties being exchanged. It’s just too small and so it just flies under the radar and it will forever. But obviously a large enterprise client or somebody really doing big business is not going to be putting Elsa in their spot and let it go to… So you’ve dramatically crossed a line there. So I would say it comes down to somewhat the scale of what you’re going to get away with in some senses. 

The small businesses, you can have so much more flexibility because you’re not being pursued. I give it this really soft non-answer because art has always had to be kind of determined and argued about and said, “Well, this looks like this person.” You’re like, “Well, is it? Well, no. So where’s the line?” And I think it’s a big conversation. I know Matthew McConaughey has had some talks where he’s like, “License your image, license your voice and copyright in that sense.” And so that’s an evolving conversation, I think. 

Linda: 

Yeah, no, that’s a great point right there. So give me one thing a leader should do before actually approving their own AI video. 

Dustin: 

Yeah. I would say put yourself in the seat of your viewer and decide as best possible, is this demographic going to perceive you the way you want and take the call to action that you are hoping for, whether it’s simply to know something about you, whether it’s to click something, whether it’s to view something or be made aware of something that’s upcoming. If all of that aligns and the story’s interesting, I think that ends up being one of your final checks and balances before something goes out the door. I think more than ever, we’ve had a lot of controversial creative lately and people, for better or for worse, create a lot of buzz. And so will people do what you want them to do is probably the final decision before something goes off to fulfil its immediate buy. 

Linda: 

Yeah. So let me ask you that tough question. So you’re a traditional video firm, right? 

Dustin: 

Yeah. 

Linda: 

So AI is obviously speeding up production. So do you think AI will put companies like yours out of business? 

Dustin: 

Yeah. I mean, I would say for sure. 

Linda: 

Yeah. Okay. 

Dustin: 

Yeah. I think if there’s ever a race to the bottom and you’re serving… I think there will be certain groups of client types that will pursue just AI content more heavily than others. So it kind of depends on where your niche to… And maybe this will happen in a more dramatic way. People liken AI to like, “Oh, well, I’d hate to be a carriage maker when the car came out.” I was like, “I don’t think it’s entirely that.” But I do remember the era of switching from film to digital, and then the era of digital being big cameras to then DSLRs, and now they’ve kind of gotten big again. And so in any case, if you’ve never followed what’s possible and considered what new technology can do in terms of creating efficiencies, telling stories better, bringing down costs, to shoot something when you used to have to have a camera operator with film and a film loader and all of this versus a 5D Mark three when those came out, it did the same thing. 

So if you didn’t evolve, you died, and that’s just been a thing of business, I think, kind of forever. So yeah, it’ll mess some people up for sure. 

Linda: 

It’s going to mess some people up. I would love Dustin to share how people can find you. 

Dustin: 

Sure. Yeah. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. Dustin Schultz, S-C-H-U-L-T-Z. Very active. It’s my only real social media I’m active on. And if people have questions about what they’re doing, I was just having a message back and forth with a contact of mine who’s doing some AI production based on what their boss had asked of them. And it’s very funny conversation to watch the emotional journey of thinking where it’s going to be. At one point she said, “I think I just need to tell my manager they need to be okay with it not being perfect.” So yeah, LinkedIn would be a great place to connect. Always happy to answer questions or connect or be told I’m wrong as well. 

Linda: 

That’s great. All right, so here’s my takeaway from today’s discussion. Prompts don’t make finished video. AI speeds production, but we know that creativity still is fundamental to the end result of your video. Using AI can make it look cheap and maybe sometimes credible. So you need to make the decision as to whether it makes sense for your business based on your own brand. So have some boundaries around your company and your job is to just prove if it’s real, if it really sits well with your people, the customers and all of that. So thank you for listening today, Dustin. Thanks so much for coming on. You provided some great insight from legal checks, internal checks, and just sort of gut checks on video, especially with AI video. So I’d just like to share with the audience, if your story is complex and you’re not sure your brand holds up, please visit us at mill.agency and fill out the contact us form and let’s connect. 

I’m always happy to jump on a call to help you through any sort of marketing and business challenges that you may have. That is my job, so I would love to do that. Again, Dustin, thank you so much. This has been the Brand180 Podcast. Thank you.

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