A lot of brands on social media have been maintaining visibility and presence for the sake of it, because the need of the hour demands it. But very few have been able to make the cut with regards to creating content that makes people sit up and take notice. They are backing good, unconventional and even borderline bizarre ideas which go only one way - and that’s ‘viral’.   

While the obvious shift from traditional forms of advertising to digital happened quite a few years back, the shift from traditional thinking to creative thinking is happening now. Brands are now ready to take the risk and give equal attention to awareness as they had been giving to strategies that are inherently sales-driven.  

Social media is an ever-changing space and has an ever-evolving topography. The content format and genre that had shown massive results may not work right now. Consumers also are becoming smarter and they have started identifying product placements and paid associations. This led to us going back to the drawing board and really getting down to the basics of it all. How to draw a consumer in today’s age characterized by a flickering and thinning attention span and also meet a brand’s marketing objectives?  

So, we decided to go beyond the usual product posts, wish posts and content calendars where there is hardly any differentiation in strategy and decided to build capabilities that would provide consistent content output that is visually different. That would make people stop scrolling and draw a reaction that consists of surprise, awe, wonder or simply a smile. That’s what led us to introduce visual effects in our storytelling.  

In India, we realized that visual effects are only used for big-budget productions and not for the kind of frugal content that is created on social media which meant that there was a need gap to be filled. We joined hands (virtually, of course) with some of the brightest minds behind visual effects in the world and quickly got familiar with the workings. Our first brand association was with Bombay Shaving Company where we got two celebrities who had starred together in a very popular web series and created intrigue around the product by plugging it in seamlessly in the storyline.  

Using visual effects is more about the experience that needs to be built up in a quick span of time. For Nescafé, we built an entirely new experience with AR and VFX coming together, making it a real tech innovation.  

While we believe that the visual trick is enough to capture the attention of the consumer, but somewhere we need to go beyond it to really hold their attention. That’s where the storytelling capabilities come in, and that's what we did with Maggi where we took relatable instances from life and just when the audience least expected it, came the surprise element with VFx.  

To create these videos, we have realized that all the parts of the vehicle need to be working in sync. The conceptualizer, scriptwriter, videographer, editor all need to be aligned to create something together by breaking creative barriers. At every point, one needs to push themselves and sometimes, even think like the audience. The audience on social media is bored but they are also extremely receptive to anything that is fresh. They are always ready to hit the share button, be the first to ‘add to story’ or share with their friends. They are quick to appreciate, quick to criticize and even quicker to ignore. With visual effects, we are putting our money on them doing the first.  

Visual effects are the perfect element to bridge the gap between concept and execution because while everyone talks about creating visually disruptive content, this does it. For instance, the videos we have created for NiYo is all about being visually different from the rest of the banking videos out there that talk about their offerings in a matter-of-fact way.  

With visual effects in storytelling, the opportunities are countless and the challenge for the brand to break the clutter is being tackled head-on by doing one thing and one thing only, telling stories in a way that’s not told before. 

Because with visual effects, anything’s possible.

The author is Rohit Reddy, Founder of Eipi Media