Digital media professional Art Stiefel saves thousands on studio fees by recording mmhmm video

As a professional and educator in advertising, marketing, and communications, Art Stiefel has built his career out of understanding how to capture and keep people’s attention. Whether he is conducting new business presentations, doing a lunch-and-learn with his team, or teaching online courses in the evening, he uses mmhmm to make a connection with his audiences—without fancy equipment or the need to travel.

“Over the years I've done tons, literally hundreds of webinars live and also recorded elements. For all those things, at the higher end especially, we had to use studios and things like that. What I'm able to do with mmhmm as a platform is groundbreaking. It really just makes things easier. It makes me look good and makes the presentation that much more engaging,” he said.

“[mmmhm] makes me look good and makes the presentation that much more engaging.”

Art Stiefel

Senior Director of Engagement Strategy at AbelsonTaylor

Stiefel works as marketing engagement strategist at AbelsonTaylor and also teaches at Temple University as an Adjunct Professor in Digital Media and Advertising. Though his agency is based in Chicago, he is able to conduct much of his business from his home in Philadelphia. Stiefel travels less than he did before the pandemic, so he relies on mmhmm to improve engagement with the clients and students he connects with online. “Using the different tools and layering things in gives me the ability to create something that is unique. It’s not going to be the same old cookie cutter PowerPoint presentation.”

The videos he creates also help him cut down on costs. Before mmhmm, he might have had to go into a studio to create sales videos, spending thousands of dollars a day to hire a team to record and edit. Now he can use mmhmm to easily record videos that he can share with many people. “In mmhmm, you can do multiple takes, you can do your editing, and it is really very easy. And you're able to have something that is of value,” he said.

He enjoys using mmhmm for presentations because it helps him break through what he calls the “2D video wall” of video conferences by integrating his face with any content he wants to share. With mmhmm, instead of feeling like a talking head in the corner, he feels like he is in the room with the people watching. ”We're able to look more connected, more engaged. You can have a presentation up and you can actually kind of touch the presentation. It's very different from just flipping through slides,“ Stiefel said.

Stiefel has been using mmhmm for years now and hopes more people become as proficient at it as he is. “The more people know about it, the more I think we'll start to see better meetings and better engagement,” he said. “I just love how it breaks down the walls.”