About Oscar and Un Cafe Con Motta
How do you turn your passion into profit? It's easy... some creators are missing the ability to auto-translate video for any audience!
What's your passion?
The truth is, we all have secret passions we dream of turning into profitable projects. It's human nature. There is something that excites all of us, and every now and then, it tempts us to leap into the unknown and do something different. For Oscar, his passion tempted him to take the leap and he did.
About Oscar's passion project
As an avid coffee drinker and proud brewer of over 10K coffees, Oscar Motta-Quintana had always dreamed of building a community of coffee enthusiasts like him through video online.
But as with all dreams, for a long-time, they stayed just that, dreams.
Unlike most digital creators working to build communities, Oscar’s creative career started before he began building a personal brand.
Oscar's agency
As the Co-founder and Managing Partner at La Mesa Agency, a branding and marketing studio based in the UAE, his passion projects were on the sidelines.
After years of running a successful agency, working with a creative team and building up an impressive portfolio, Oscar wanted to apply his marketing skills and build a real community around something he loved.
"I love coffee and I wanted to share my passion with others like me," said Oscar. "And my way was through creating content about everything I have learnt on my own journey."
That is how Un Cafe Con Motta, Oscar’s personal brand and YouTube channel, was born earlier in 2021.
The challenge
Global content is at the heart of Oscar's work.
Colombian-born and Dubai-based, Oscar's passion for accessible content in any language is his secret weapon to successfully scaling communities with video translation. He just didn't have time to translate videos manually.
Why did video translation matter to Oscar?
At La Mesa ('The Table' in Spanish), his agency aims to bring value to 'The Table' for its clients through globally-focused marketing strategies.
"We really focus on delivering value for our clients, be that with content that can reach a global audience, or impactful campaigns– we're always thinking outside of the box!" said Oscar.
When focused on Un Cafe Con Motta, he creates bilingual content with translated subtitles to enable anybody to explore the world of coffee.
What were Oscar's goals with his content?
What makes his channel unique is his commitment to translate video and include everybody, no matter the language they speak. Oscar wanted to automatically translate his videos from Spanish to English for his English-speaking audiences using translated subtitles.
"My goal as a content creator is to translate video content and produce engaging videos online that answer practical questions in a fun and accessible way," said Oscar. "That's why I prioritised sharing valuable, accessible and engaging content in two languages. "
The two languages being his native language, Spanish, and his non-native, English.
But to generate subtitles for foreign languages takes a lot of resources. And for Oscar, it hasn't always been this simple.
What motivated Oscar to seek out a solution like Subly?
To upload your video online and target multiple foreign markets with localised and translated content is challenging for enterprises, let alone small brands like Oscar's. For Oscar, to create and translate video has always been time-consuming and expensive.
Still, Oscar knew the importance of accessible and translated subtitles on this content and accounted for the time and budget it would require to transcribe and translate video.
"To transcribe, subtitle and translate your video can be very time-consuming. It took me a couple of hours to transcribe my videos each time and took me another couple of hours to translate video," said Oscar. "It would easily add up to 110 hours of work for each batch of content."
For Oscar, a typical video workflow looked like this:
- Scripting your content
- Filming
- Transcribing
- Generate subtitles (AKA manually add!)
- Translate your video into different languages
- Upload your video
This is what he repeated every time he created a video. But, that wasn't his entire workflow. He also did not have a simple tool to generate SRT files. So, he would have to format them manually. He would spend another 45 minutes correcting the positioning of subtitles in his video to create a readable SRT file.
Was this really sustainable?
As an experienced digital marketer, Oscar understood that this process wasn't sustainable, he needed better tools. Especially if he was serious about scaling his brand using video translation into a real community and eventually an actual business with translated video content.
"This is how I understood that I may need a tool to help me scale my channel," said Oscar.
So, he embarked on a mission to find the tools which could automate the translation process and automatically generate subtitles for him.
The solution
Oscar knew that ensuring language accessibility with translated and automatically generated captions for his content was key.
He had heard that subtitles can increase engagement on video content by up to 80%.
But, he needed a tool that would help him create engaging content as easily as possible to support his growing community.
"As I started this journey alone, scripting, filming, and editing consumed most of my time," said Oscar. "I needed a practical, powerful and affordable solution to optimise my operation to scale further."
What solution did Oscar need?
Oscar needed something that would help to automatically generate subtitles and automatically translate them, too. Above anything else, he really prioritised finding a tool with easy video translation because he knew it was the easiest way to reach a wider audience, without paid strategies.
"I just didn't want my growth to come from paid strategies, especially because I just didn't have the budget for that," said Oscar. "I wanted something that made it super easy to translate your video, and then upload your video online."
Oscar wanted a quick, simple and budget-friendly content translation solution to create content for his English audiences.
How did he go about finding the right tool?
When Oscar mentioned his struggle to a friend, they suggested trying out Subly to scale his content globally.
"I was prepared to pay for multiple solutions. I didn't know you could get two-in-one– to translate your video and subtitle it!" said Oscar. "So because I was only looking for transcription and translation separately– Subly was a pleasant surprise!"
Oscar was intrigued by the ease of automatic translation, transcription and subtitling through the platform.
The result–"Subly helped me to auto translate video for YouTube and grow my channel!"
Subly empowered Oscar because it gave him the ability to translate video and have all his content subtitled regardless of what language he spoke, or what language his audience spoke. All in one editor, within minutes.
What is Oscar's workflow now that he uses Subly?
He can now create engaging translated content for his English audience without spending more time to translate or edit video and without hiring translators to scale his operation.
Oscar simply uploads his video to Subly, transcribes in the original language and makes minimal tweaks. He then translates the video automatically and downloads a video or SRT file. His goal to reach more international audiences through translations is now a reality.
Also, easily resizing his content for social within the Subly editor means that Oscar can also quickly repurpose his YouTube videos as Instagram posts.
So how has engagement improved?
Oscar has seen a 45% increase in views on his Instagram blog since he began repurposing his translated content.
That's the sort of scale he was aiming for. Now many of his followers are non-Spanish speakers listening in another language.
And which are his most used features?
Oscar's most used tools within Subly are:
- automatic subtitling
- automatic translation
- export SRT subtitle files
- and of course resizing his videos for social!
"My audience is now skewed to 60% English speakers and 40% Spanish-speakers!"
How has Oscar's YouTube improved since implementing this strategy?
In under three months after launching his YouTube channel, Oscar has improved the engagement on his videos by 20%.
He has helped over half of his audience, who don't speak Spanish, access his content through translated subtitles.
"I'm just starting, so I need more time to have more conclusive metrics. But so far, the translation results have been great," said Oscar. "My audience is skewed towards 60% non-Spanish speakers and 40% Spanish-speakers. It's incredible given my videos are all in Spanish!"
He saw results from translation almost immediately.
Subly has allowed him to scale his translated content without:
- extra hiring costs
- manual translators
- additional time editing
What's next for Oscar and Un Cafe Con Motta?
Oscar has grown his YouTube channel from 0 to over 200 followers in just over two months. These numbers may seem small, but they are mighty.
He aims to one day transcend YouTube and Instagram to create other types of content and products like courses, community events, and branded products for his community.
Oscar continues to work at La Mesa, his agency, to scale content globally for his clients across the UAE regions.
