Strategy guide: 3 STEPS TO BUILDING BETTER SHORT-FORM ......There are many channels to consider when planning your content strategy. The aforementioned options, however, are an ideal

3 STEPS TO BUILDING BETTER SHORT-FORM VIDEO CONTENT

Strategy guide:

According to Cisco’s VNI Forecast1, video consumption will exceed 80 percent of total internet traffic by 2019. Nevertheless, there’s a disconnect. While consumers are seeking out video across many digital channels, marketing leaders are unsure of how to create the type of video content that their audiences will enjoy.

Ultimately, those who can execute compelling strategies are the ones that will succeed in this new era of video marketing.

Still, addressing that disconnect is easier said than done. Brands must create content that speaks to consumers’ personalized interests, and then optimize it across a variety of channels. And when that personalization is combined with shifting preferences and evolving digital channels… the challenge becomes even more daunting.

Modern marketing teams must begin to think differently about their visual content strategies. While traditional video still holds a critical place in brand

VIDEO IS AN EVER-EXPANDING CONTENT FORMAT.

communication, the emergence of channels like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook Stories work best with short-form, vertically-oriented video.

Mobile devices and social applications have led to an exponential increase in vertical video content. It makes sense, as both viewing and recording video is more comfortable when a device is held vertically instead of horizontally. In fact, mobile phones are used in portrait mode an estimated 98% of the time2. And according to ZenithOptimedia3, mobile devices will account for 58% of online video watching worldwide in 2017.

Just a few years ago, creating vertically-oriented video, or investing resources in content with a 24 hour shelf-life would’ve seemed like a waste. However, behavioral trends have led brands to recognize this medium’s potential for educating, and ultimately converting customers.

So, how can you get started?

First, adapt your strategy to include a broader range of visual content. Historically, brands have thought of visual content as one or the other: static image or video. As a result of greater access to technology, visual assets can now fit into a myriad of category formats, including horizontal or vertical video, static imagery, and increasingly, dynamic animation. In order to make the most of your existing static assets and maximize on the opportunity of additional formats and channels, Olapic has created a solution we call Content in Motion (CiM). CiM enables brands to extend and amplify their existing creative assets, turning static imagery into rich, dynamic content that can be deployed across channels.

Diverse assets provide unique opportunities to connect with consumers in their preferred domain. And when content is deployed thoughtfully, brands can not only tell more effective stories, but also create an environment for ongoing story creation as well.

Sounds great, right? In theory, but brands still must find efficient (and affordable) ways to test their visual content programs… and it can be hard to find a solution that scales.

While traditional consumers engaged with television, radio, and print, modern consumers interact with media on short-form digital channels. That said, your customers are seeking inspiration across a myriad of channels. And when they see a product they like, they expect to learn more about it regardless of where they are engaging with your brand. Of course, it’s important to note that traditional channels still play an important role for consumers, but their focus is shifting toward digital communication.

Since its launch, Instagram Stories has achieved 200 million unique daily users4, with 70% following a business5. Incidentally, one-third of its most-viewed stories are created by business accounts. On Facebook, 500 million people6 are watching at least one Facebook video per day, and users are spending a total of 100 million hours7 consuming video on the platform per day. According to Brightcove8, 67% of people surveyed said they watch more video on social networks than they did

DYNAMIC CONTENT PERFORMS ACROSS CHANNELS

a year ago. Plus, 46% of respondents reported making a purchase as a result of watching a brand video on social media.

Consumers are scrolling through social feeds to find inspiration from friends, brands, and influencers. They are sharing their latest purchases, and discovering new ones along the way.

And it’s not just social channels that have become more effective because of animated content. Consumers are now interacting with dynamic content through email, display advertising, and offline (in-store) channels.

Our team works to merge human creativity with intuitive technology - helping brands create more innovative marketing experiences. As a result, we have developed a three-step process to help brands take advantage of their own unique stories to achieve visual marketing success.

Many brands understand that they need a video content strategy, but skip one important step during development: Research. Digital engagement with consumers allows brands to analyze trends and usage, then categorize insights by channel, audience segment, and more.

Pinterest, for example, offered Promoted Video because they noticed a 60% increase9 in videos featuring everything from workouts, to DIY projects, to hair & beauty tutorials. The platform found that 75% of the total content people enjoyed came from businesses. The feature provided a seamless video experience for discovery and inspiration, making it a natural fit. Instagram has also accommodated video in its advertising program, offering 15-second Stories Ads for businesses. The platform has found that roughly 70% of users watched the stories with the sound-on10, which can inform creation strategy for participating brands.

On mobile screens, dynamic content gives brands an advantage in capturing consumers’ attention through immersive experiences. As dynamic content creation scales, the potential for more robust insight into performance as well as individual topics and messaging trends will grow as well.

STEP ONE: RESEARCH

Once these insights are pieced together, brands can prioritize ongoing creation and distribution methods. First, designing a path to capture customers’ attention, and ultimately inspiring purchase behavior.

To create high-quality assets efficiently, brands need to incorporate technology that will help them scale their content creation and centralize their assets for distribution across channels. After all, creation is both an art and a science, and consumers expect branded content to be consistent and personalized.

However, it should be noted that personalization doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. Brands can benefit from recycling existing visual assets to increase cost efficiencies. For example, one way to satisfy demand on ephemeral channels like Snapchat and Instagram Stories is to repurpose existing assets.

When visiting ephemeral channels, users are often fully-attentive, and seeking inspiration about new products and experiences. These inherently receptive audiences give brands a unique opportunity to highlight new products, seasonal trends, or tutorials that address audiences in more personalized ways.

According to research conducted by social media management tool Buffer, 83% of marketers would like to create more video content, but don’t due to a lack of time, resources, and budget. To fill this gap, Olapic has developed an innovative approach to help marketers keep up with demand across channels.

In the report, Buffer noted that 26% of respondents planned to add Instagram Stories to their marketing programs, while 22% planned to add Snapchat. Interestingly, 71% admitted to not testing either

STEP TWO: CREATE

channel… thus proving there is ample opportunity being left on the table by brands.

An Olapic client tested video on Facebook, and learned that viewers were dropping off 10 to 15 seconds before their completion. With attention spans shrinking, this wasn’t too much of a surprise, but helped inform future content creation.

By using tools like Content in Motion, brands are able to develop the type of short-form content consumers increasingly expect, all while reducing costs and more efficiently showcasing new products, trends, and brand messaging. Additionally, dynamic content complements brand creative to continue the customer journey on digital channels, while eliminating creative fatigue.

No matter the channel, the unique media mix you choose to deploy should take into consideration both audience preferences and brand positioning.

ACTIVATION CHANNELS TO CONSIDERWhen building an activation strategy for your content, it’s important to understand the benefits and limitations of individual channels. The following are some ideas to consider for each:

Organic Social

By now, brands recognize the need to participate on social channels, but many have taken a passive approach. Many brand profiles serve as a digital complaint department, fielding responses from unsatisfied customers. Smart brands are taking a more proactive approach to social outreach, and by distributing motion-based content, including video and animation, there is an opportunity to drive traffic continually back to a page whether it’s for product launches, news, and brand updates.

Paid Social

As organic traffic gets throttled by social platforms, in order to optimize efforts, brands also should invest in paid social activities. Ideally, paid social represents a significant portion of a brand's overall digital budget. Relative to other touchpoints, paid social offers a cost-effective way to increase engagement on content. Specifically, paid social provides an opportunity to drive desired behavior from a highly-targeted audience. Utilizing motion-based content on paid social channels will help brands stand out and create “thumb-

STEP THREE: ACTIVATE

stopping” moments for consumers as they peruse their newsfeeds. Remember that audience expectations vary by channel, meaning that brands should look to create content specific to social spaces and audience needs, rather than repurposing longer-form content originally designed for another medium, such as television.

Website Integration

A brand’s website is always one of their most valuable touchpoints -but for e-commerce companies, this is especially true. For this reason, marketers may be hesitant to change existing site strategy unless there is a clear opportunity. Still, with the emergence of third-party sites and resellers, it is increasingly difficult for brands to keep customers engaged on-site. Motion-based content can create more visually-stimulating experiences for customers, and can be used to drive attention to specific pages. When deployed properly, brands can achieve higher time on site, page views, and even a lift in revenue on key products.

Email Marketing

Take off your marketing hat for a moment. How many emails would you say you receive on a daily basis? How many do you ignore? Truly, standing out in a consumer’s inbox requires a fresh approach, and brands must find ways to drive purchase behavior. Many of our clients have deployed animated content in email as a way to stand out from the noise—enticing a user to take the next step in their journey.

In-Store

Declining foot traffic to retail brick-and-mortar locations is a concern… but it doesn’t have to be. While some say we’re witnessing the end of traditional retail, we believe it is a mandate for brands to create better in-store experiences if they want to succeed. As consumers no longer need to visit stores in order to make purchases, brands need to make

sure they are designing unique, comfortable in-store environments. Many brands are infusing motion-based content on in-store screens to demonstrate product usage, showcase varying styles, and to share targeted information or messaging.

There are many channels to consider when planning your content strategy. The aforementioned options, however, are an ideal place to start when testing the animated content’s potential for your brand.

To further demonstrate how real brands are activating short-form assets, to convert customers more efficiently, check out the below success stories.

BRAND BENEFITS OF CONTENT IN MOTION

Cost: Budget-conscious packages ensure brands can find the right content program for their digital marketing needs

Speed: Our platform enables brands to create templated video content on demand, and fully custom animations in less than two weeks

Quality: Extend existing brand images and assets by creating on-brand, dynamic content

10+ channels activated

49% decreased CPM on average

93% average lift on completed video views on Instagram

43% average lift in social engagement

CONTENT IN MOTION SUCCESS STORIES

Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants makes life better for travelers away from home. The brand relies on human connection to build experiences that resonate with travelers. Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants Group is a subsidiary of InterContinental Hotels Group.

As the first boutique hotel and restaurant company in the US, the brand was challenged to stand out in a crowded marketplace while maintaining its unique identity. Kimpton was already testing and using cinemagraphs on its site and wanted to find a more cost-effective approach for distributing content across additional channels.

To overcome the challenge of creating enough video content for emerging channels, the brand partnered with Olapic and activated its Content in Motion solution to address its audiences with tailored, short-form, video content. Thus far, Kimpton has used the assets to amplify messaging on display advertisements, and has even utilized the animations on its site homepage.

KIMPTON HOTELS & RESTAURANTSTravel & Hospitality

Aussie is a P&G-owned hair care brand that delivers products to help its customers achieve naturally beautiful hair. The brand’s complete line includes shampoos, treatments, stylers, and finishing products.

Aussie wanted to create high-performing motion graphic content to eliminate creative ad fatigue and drive better results at a lower cost than traditional video creation.

Aussie tapped Olapic for its industry-leading visual earned content platform, and built a library of user-generated content. From there, the brand activated Content in Motion to turn its customer imagery into beautifully animated short-form assets.

Content in Motion assets were deployed across the brand’s Instagram feed and e-commerce website to engage customers at each step in the purchase path. Early results showed a 33% increase in engagement on social posts – demonstrating the power of targeted content in online environments.

AUSSIE HAIR PRODUCTS

“This strategic partnership truly reflects the Aussie brand – relatable, playful, and irreverent. Using Olapic’s platform we were able to create short-form motion content faster and at scale. We are excited to be innovators in this new digital format”.

— ANNE-CATHERINE GRAF, GLOBAL BFO BRAND MANAGER, AUSSIE

Beauty

Moen, the number one faucet brand in North America, offers a diverse selection of thoughtfully designed kitchen and bath faucets, showerheads, and more.

The brand wanted to diversify its digital marketing content strategy. After previewing Olapic’s Content in Motion solution in late 2016, the brand recognized the solution’s potential for generating more cost-efficient content, at scale, without compromising brand aesthetic and quality.

Moen partnered with Olapic to create and deploy dynamic animated content across its social and paid media channels, including an Instagram Feed Ads campaign. When Instagram Stories Ads was released, Moen wanted to measure the effectiveness of CiMs in this new vertical format, which was purchased on a cost per impression (CPM) basis. Moen ran a split test using two different pieces of creative, with the same spend and audience targeting. The performance of the test was then benchmarked against one of the brand’s November ads that had a similar spend.

After the test, Instagram Stories Ads returned a 49% lower CPM over Moen’s standard Instagram ad buys, proving the value of the targeted ephemeral stories format. While the initial ad had 75% higher spend, it only achieved 45% higher impressions, further indicating the efficiency of Instagram Stories Ads. From a content perspective, in the A/B test, Moen found that animations focused on close product views performed almost equally to animations that showcased broader room views.

Home GoodsMOEN

CONTENT IN MOTION

Content in Motion enables brands to extend and amplify existing assets, creating thumb-stopping moments that demand attention across channels. With this tools brands can create video content with speed, scale, and efficacy - all while staying on-brand and on-message.

Using either motion graphic animations or custom branded templates, brands use our platform to create hundreds of engaging pieces of dynamic content, at a fraction of the cost of their normal video production. This opens up new opportunity for brands to address new channels, markets, and audiences with specific and targeted visual content that performs.

We developed Content in Motion as a way to help brands create “thumb-stopping moments” that would stand out from the overwhelming quantity of content on social channels. One of the important considerations for us as we built the product was that it could enable quick, efficient creativity that maintained brand quality expectations.

Through this self-service platform, brands can now use branded templates or request custom motion graphics to help them keep up with increasing need for a cohesive, engaging omni-channel customer experience.

SOURCES 1 “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021.” Cisco. June 7, 2017.

2 Tode, Chantal. “Audi sees 80pc higher completion rate with vertical mobile video ads.” Mobile Marketer. Aug 24, 2015

3 “Mobile to drive 19.8% increase in online video consumption in 2016.” Zenith Media. July 31, 2017.

4 “200M People Using Instagram Stories.” Instagram. April 13, 2017.

5 Sloane, Garett. “Here's How the New Vertical Video Ads Will Look Inside Instagram Stories.” AdAge. Jan 11, 2017.6“Mobile to drive 19.8% increase in online video consumption in 2016.” Zenith Media. July 31, 2017.

6 Wagner, Kurt. “Facebook Says Video Is Huge -- 100-Million-Hours-Per-Day Huge.” recode. Jan 27, 2016.

7 Wagner, Kurt. “Facebook Says Video Is Huge -- 100-Million-Hours-Per-Day Huge.” recode. Jan 27, 2016.

8 “The Science of Social Video.” Brightcove. 2016.

9 B., Mike. “Introducing Promoted Video.” Pinterest. Aug 17, 2016.

10 Cohen, David. “Full-Screen Ads Coming to Instagram Stories; Insights, Too.” Adweek. Jan 11, 2017.

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