Loading summary
Transcript27 lines
- [00:00]
A
Here's a better way to tell your brand story. CGI has been a trend for the past year for product based brands specifically. And I'm really loving this emergence in animation because it's a fantastic way to sell your product without selling your product. What a brand, what a brand, what a brand, what a mighty good brand. Say it again now. What a brand, what a brand, what a brand, what a mighty good brand.
- [00:29]
B
Like to me what CGI is, obviously it's been around a long time, but it's a way to get attention in a marketplace where everybody is trying to get attention and so you kind of have to stay current on how to tell a story or get eyeballs. And so if you're doing things the way it was done five years ago, it's not effective. So now that CGI is trending, people are paying attention to it. I think from my perspective, we don't focus enough on what does the human brain pay attention to? Yeah, understanding it from an evolutionary biology perspective. They pay attention to things that look normal and then have something that looks unnormal and then does something we don't expect that attracts our eyeballs to it to pay attention for longer. It's not just kind of, you know, standing there and saying our products are unique when they're all the same. Like you have to, you have to really be bold in a way to capture attention. And CGI gives you the flexibility to do way more to capture the attention of your customers.
- [01:24]
A
No, totally. And you bring up a great point. You know, CGI has been around for a while, but the access to a small brand is new. Right. Like you're getting access to these really talented animators that can, can bring a new element to your brand. It's an artful expression. And why I'm loving CGI for especially brands that don't have a founder that's investing in personal branding. There's a cap or a limit in which your socials can be interesting. We don't want to be sold to on social media. So if you want your brand to stand out and you don't have a person that's a vehicle for educating or entertaining on behalf of the brand, CGI is a great way to create content that isn't like a high fidelity photo shoot of celebrity holding perfume bottle. And there's a great example of this, this brand out of Australia. It's called who is Elijah? And it's a perfume company and they had done this CGI ad and they launched it on the same day that they were in person at Bondi beach in Australia. And basically the CGI ad is one of their perfume bottles, like, blowing up almost like this, like, big balloon on Bondi Beach. And that's really all that the ad is. But it was launched on the same day that they were there handing samples out. And it actually got a ton of controversy because the people who were on the beach that saw the post were like, where's the bottle? And they were frustrated that they couldn't experience that bottle in real life. But the brand ended up getting like 40,000 followers from this one post alone. And when you look at their page, it really is an ad. You know, it's showcasing a product. It's just doing it in a way that's more interesting than has been done in the past. Like, there's a cap to how many bottles on shelves we want to see or celebrity holding bottle that we're interested in previewing. It provides a different element to the brand that includes surprise and delight.
- [03:19]
B
It shows the movers from the average people because there's old ways of doing things. And you can just keep chucking out content the old way and hoping it works and blowing your money, but using. Now that CGI is accessible to medium and smaller businesses. In the past, it was only something big. Production companies, movies.
- [03:39]
A
Yeah.
- [03:39]
B
Now it's accessible to you in a cost. It's actually way more cost effective to make content with CGI than to do a brand shoot filming humans.
- [03:47]
A
Yeah, true.
- [03:48]
B
But the takeaway for me is like, for God's sakes, people, you have to. You have to take risks with your content. Like, that perfume company didn't really even take a risk, but what they did was create a beach scenario and then show something materialize that looked real. And the human brain was like, is that real or is that fake? Is it. You know, that got their attention.
- [04:08]
A
Yeah.
- [04:08]
B
In the process, as they're focusing to see if it's real or fake, they're actually looking at the name of the company. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's drawing the attention in. So you're seeing the brand and you're patterning it into the.
- [04:20]
A
It's. It's purely intriguing. Right? Like, it's just intriguing. It's interesting. And we had a really great conversation about it offline that I want to bring back onto the show. That. That the way that you were looking at it is you were kind of seeing it as more strategy. And you're like, you know, what is the. So what. What is the takeaway? What can brands learn from this and in my perspective I saw Rains. Rains is a fabulous brand. They've got great socials. I had the opportunity to work with them and I saw them doing CGI almost a year ago. And when I see it in the internals of the brands, like where brands struggle, especially product brands, is how do you keep putting out three to five posts per week and staying interesting and following this framework of creating content that people want to see on social media. And one way to do that is to have an artful expression. So Rains is a perfect example of a brand using cgi. They like, they do a bunch of pop ups all over the world. They're constantly introducing new products and they use CGI as a way to talk about a new location. They just posted one as of the recording of this where they're talking about a new pop up and they have this crazy CGI art where it's like torrential rain coming from the ceiling and it's talking about a new pop up and a new product that's coming and that's more interesting than a graphic that says something exciting is coming, you know, or.
- [05:42]
B
Yeah, but I think you can fall into the same trap that happened with advertisers. All of the great books in the 70s, ads that were fascinating to observers but had no brand impression. There are many like magazine ads that they would do these studies and they'd say okay, of a thousand people who read the magazine, what's the ad you remember without knowing? And they'll say but what's the company? I don't know. Right. So you have to kind of couple the create, create advertising that's intriguing but it has to have a brand message or for impressions. So that has an effect.
- [06:18]
A
Well and that's where the execution and the strategy comes into play.
- [06:21]
B
Right.
- [06:21]
A
And that's where also working with the right CGI artist because it, it can't just be copying what other brands are doing. And that's another great, great piece is Rains. CGI is very on brand for Reigns. In fact, it's more of their brand in my opinion to have CGI than if they didn't have it. I don't think they could execute the coolness of their brand without this element of art. Because bluntly stylish raincoats are just not that interesting, especially in climates where we're not as rainy as Denmark. So for them having this global expansion strategy and they've been very successful all over the world, the brand needed a coolness factor that they've relied on this contemporary kind of new age, avant garde art style. And that really works for that brand. But what's interesting to your point is CGI comes into a way of like testing where you should be leveraging different mediums and seeing what works for your brand, obviously through the lens of strategy. Because we're no longer in a place where you have one ad for the quarter and it needs to, you know, it needs to really sell that, that new product line. Now we're in an age where we're talking about three to five posts per week indefinitely, forever. And within that mix, you need to constantly be doing things that are interesting, that allow your followers to, for you to be worthy of their follow.
- [07:47]
B
It's different. Like, the interesting thing is if you have an Instagram post that has CGI and it's got a shop now, you can actually track how well the ad does. But if you're a product, like a product brand and you're doing it, you can get those metrics of views and likes, but you don't know if they actually remember the brand and will purchase.
- [08:08]
A
Okay, that's a great point. I do want to differentiate though on the use of CGI based on that point. So I am seeing more especially beauty brands using CGI as a way to launch a new product. Bali Body is a perfect example of that. They have this great CGI ad that's all over Instagram. That's a great way to track if it works. But where I'm seeing with brands like Reigns that are more a contemporary avant garde brand, it's more to stay top of mind and to provide value as being a brand that's worth buying. So for these brands that are kind of middle of the pack, they're not luxury, but they're pushing the like the boundary of premium. Like Reigns does fashion shows during fashion weeks, right? And they're doing Runway and they're, they're not a luxury brand, but they're, they're trying to mimic like this strategy that brands like Road and Kiff, these kind of street wear, higher end brands are doing. The CGI ads aren't designed to create sales. They're designed to establish the brand as a cool brand, as a, as a brand that even almost doesn't have a personality. Like there's almost this like emptiness, this intriguingness, this vagueness to the brand of Reigns where CGI really works. Whereas a brand like Road and Kith, they're more reliant on like the right celebrity endorsement or having the right model. So it's a really cool if it works for your Brand way to move away from like human studio photography and.
- [09:38]
B
Say, okay, I'm going to tell a visual story that attracts an eyeball with a view to getting person X to at least get an impression or believe. Reigns is this. And what I would think, what I would say to Reigns, what I like about your explanation is CGI makes it easier to kind of describe a brand journey. Like what would be interesting is with cgi, I could see Reins as a brand or a wearer of rains going through a journey of, you know, in a rainforest, in a, in a, in the Himalayas, in Europe, in a rainstorm. Like it's easy to create a brand journey without having to go to all these locations to film.
- [10:17]
A
Well, what's interesting though about rains actually specifically is they wanted to completely move away from that like fall Raven kind of Patagonia feel like they didn't want to be another outdoors brand they don't want to compete with. I always call it Acertex, but I know that's not the name. Acertex, the Canadian kind of weathering proof brand. They don't want to feel like a Canada goose. They want to feel more like a Korean kind of like or European avant garde like almost like a high end fashion brand. But what's fascinating about Rains is if their product is designed for the rain and is best used in the rain, it's very hard to produce a large amount of rain photography and videography because you have to wait for the weather. So CGI in their instance actually makes quite a lot of sense. But to your point, CGI is, is a tool that you can use as a way to create surprise and delight and an element of interest that's more interesting than studio photography. But it doesn't work for every brand. So that's another important element is if you're like a luxury fitness brand and your shtick is like getting the cute girls of Instagram like alo. I can't think of a creative concept where CGI would perf typically fit into aloe. Like that's a brand that may make more sense to have studio photography or iPhone photography, but brands like Canada Goose, you know, like they could put like a jacket in the middle of this like crazy like arctic snowstorm and have like a polar bear walk by. That makes perfect sense because that's easier to create in CGI than to rent the polar bear. You know, go, go to the arctic, like have this floating jacket. So there's certain brands where what CGI can do makes sense for the brand identity and the brand core to establish the brand online and to provide that feeling for how you want consumers to feel.
- [12:09]
B
Yeah, they're just. You're just always competing for attention. And so you have to use positioning, eyeballing what is available. And then if you get around to it two years later, it's generally not as effective.
- [12:20]
A
And I think that's where it's like, get ahead of it now. Start leveraging it, start testing it, but don't overdo it. Right. Like your brand. If your brand also becomes cgi, it becomes a bit uncanny. Right. Where you need to have that element us that's your brand. And for Reigns, I think it works because their whole, their whole approach is like lack of personality. Like, it's, it's very avant garde, it's very contemporary. It's even kind of gentle monster. It's like, you know, what is it? You know, but so it's a very cool brand. They're killing the cgi. Ballybody's doing a great job.
- [12:47]
B
And where I see the. The highest value use of CGI is still in the creative area where you. It just can't be flashy or interesting. Like, you need to be bold in your messaging. You need to create a contrast. Self deprecation can work like not taking something too seriously. Like people like to kind of laugh at a brand or a person that takes himself too seriously. But. And then show like a solution from a product but, you know, try to be controversial or identify a social truth in your marketplace. And you can use CGI creatively to kind of create a connection between a social reality that might lead to your product. Right. And then show it in a way that.
- [13:28]
A
Or even one that doesn't exist, you know, like Burger King. To say like this meal is fit for a king and you know, like they can have through cgi this like someone that looks very much like a real person. No, I would even thinking like almost like Jack and the Beanstalk kind of style. You know, this huge king reaches down into the Burger King. You know, the ceiling crashes in. He pulls it out. Like you can do so much more with CGI than Martin Luther King.
- [13:54]
B
Well, he's a king. Fifth for king, Lion, King. I don't know, like any type of king, but you just have so much more freedom of movement because you can go to somebody and get them to do cgi, but the value is in what you're asking them to do. In the thought process before.
- [14:08]
A
No, totally. And it's just, it's such a fantastic tool. But you brought up a great point. It needs to be tied to strategy. So, like the who is Elijah? What they did well is that their post, I believe, went more viral because they were also at Bondi beach, which is like packed every weekend because when the weather is nice, everyone goes to the beach in Australia. So you had a surplus of people seeing a brand, searching it on Instagram, when they're getting a sample, seeing this massive bottle at the beach that they're at, asking people, commenting, sharing it to other people, being like, let's see if we can find this on the beach. And it created that social moment. So they used CGI tied to in person. Larger, more guerrilla strategy to create a bigger impact and bigger effect. And that's where strategy comes into play. So by testing it, by doing a one off, what can you tie to it to make it more interesting?
- [15:05]
B
Very cool.
- [15:05]
A
Cool.