Flixel’s Philippe LeBlanc Talks Flexibility for Success
The first time Philippe LeBlanc saw a cinemagraph, he was immediately captured by the subtle movement in what looked like a photograph but was something more.
“When I first saw them in 2011, I was on StumbleUpon and this was when they were kind of going viral and I immediately wanted to create one,” LeBlanc says. “I did some research and thought there was enough that could allow me to create this fast and easy and there wasn’t.”
Reminiscent of moving photos in The Daily Prophet, the wizarding newspaper from Harry Potter, cinemagraphs are mostly still photographs with minimal, repeated movement like a blade of grass swaying or a newspaper fluttering. They are usually in the form of a GIF or other video format.
“It basically takes the best of both photos and videos. An image is immediate, you can process it right away. But video allows you to tell a deeper narrative because there’s motion,” LeBlanc explains. “A cinemagraph takes the best of both worlds, especially for the digital age where people, especially on social media, where they will quickly go through their feed so in order to stop them in their tracks, you really need something that differentiates and the cinemagraph does that.”
Originally from New Brunswick, LeBlanc first set up shop here, pulling a team together to develop software that would make the creation of cinemagraphs simpler for day-to-day users, before moving the company to Toronto. Since there didn’t already exist this type of software, Flixel was set to succeed. Unfortunately, another cinemagraph app launched three weeks before Flixel’s was set to and they were forced to rebuild technically and temporarily abandon marketing efforts.
After a big break in the form of a partnership with America’s Next Top Model, Flixel was back on its feet. Flixel now offers Cinemagraph Pro software for Mac, iPhone and iPad and Persecond, a timelapse video software for Mac.
LeBlanc says cinemagraphs are a great advertising tool for brands and companies because they focus the viewer’s attention on one specific detail.
“You can direct the eye towards your brand, your product or the story you’re trying to tell for your brand in a very concise way,” he says. “We’ve been testing different things but what we’ve been focused on mostly has been social ads and social posts because the nature of social networks, it fits in perfectly with the flow.”
“However, it is very applicable to different areas of the marketing mix so email campaigns, digital signage has huge potential because digital signage, you don’t have sound and too much motion is kind of nauseating and still photos are easy to ignore so this fits in perfectly there as well.”
LeBlanc explains that what prompted the move from Moncton, New Brunswick to Toronto was a lack of qualified individuals for the software engineering team Flixel needed to build what they wanted to. He says many of the talented engineers in New Brunswick were already taken.
“Being that this was a heavily engineering-focused company, it made sense to move the company to Toronto where the engineers were and where the tech team was going to evolve,” he says.
Now that they’ve grown and are past the base developing stage, LeBlanc says there’s the option for remote employees and he’s looking back to New Brunswick to see if he can find talented people for Flixel here.
LeBlanc says that for more startups like his to build and stay in New Brunswick, there needs to be more graduates becoming software engineers and more software engineering-focused programs in the universities.
“New Brunswick has to really push more the universities, the education has to push more software engineering and those types of curriculums that will produce more talented engineers. There’s definitely some financial support that’s now there. There’s an ecosystem of startups … the only thing I think holding New Brunswick to push forward and take it to the next level is just having a lot more engineers.”
Flixel has now partnered with Facebook to allow profile photos to be cinemagraphs. LeBlanc says that will expose cinemagraphs to the 1.6 billion people on Facebook and will spur tremendous growth.