BridgeClimb Sydney is putting one of Australia’s most iconic experiences back on the itinerary of international travellers, with a new campaign from independent creative agency Now We Collide.
For just the second time in history, Australia played host to the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup, and in a first, ESPN would be broadcasting a major sporting event, live from Australian shores. Now We Collide was given the task of creating a social media led creative campaign that targeted a wide Australian audience alongside basketball fans to drive tune-in to ESPN’s live broadcast.
The creative strategy involved featuring high profile Opals players delivering inspirational lines to camera from a New York training camp, which NWC managed remotely. We then combined this footage with unique cell animation, game footage and commentary stings to set the scene for the home town showdown. Multiple exports were created with different calls to action. The first was to create awareness in the lead up to the competition, we then tailored messaging to game specific tune-in as each game approached. The creative was then A/B tested with sound on and sound off versions across different platforms.
We ran the campaign using a blended social media strategy with the goal of reaching the widest possible audience and combining this with ‘active engagement’ to achieve video view completions.
The Opals did Aussie fans proud in the world cup, bringing home the bronze medal after narrowly missing out on the gold medal match. The USA claimed their third championship on the bounce but there was another winner out of the competition and that was the success of the sound on, vertical format video in our creative campaign, something that Now We Collide has been championing for a while now - Vertical video keeps soaring.
Sound on environments such as TikTok and Instagram Reels proved to be a great format to drive reach and engagement where we used the celebrity and inspiration of the Opals players to deliver piece-to-camera with a more ‘native’ feel to the TikTok/Reels world during the campaign. Also, because people tend to actively scroll TikTok and Reels as opposed to the more passive scrolling provided by other formats, audio becomes more relevant and powerful when making creative choices on these platforms. The TikTok campaign also included some tactical enhancements such as premium placement in feed and Super Like interactive add on.
The campaign reached over 2.5 million viewers across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok while engagement and 100% video views performance achieved was significantly above benchmarks and KPIs set. Not only that, and most importantly, the event has become one of the most successful for ESPN Australia in terms of audience numbers and viewing figures.
SUGGESTED:
Just over 2 years ago we wrote about the “Rise of Vertical Video” and how we saw it as “one of the biggest opportunities for brands” at the time. Shift forward 2 years and it's clear that the prediction has become a reality. During that time we have seen the exponential growth of Instagram Reels, in 2021 Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram announced a focus on video and the tripling of Reels maximum running length to 90 seconds (while ads have a maximum running length of 60 seconds) – with over 1 billion active Instagram users every month the move into vertical mobile video has been one of the driving forces behind the success. Reels has now been expanded to Facebook as well which in turn increases the views and discoverability of Reels across both platforms.
Ultimately though, Reels was a response to the growth of what was then a new-comer to the vertical video scene – TikTok. TikTok has grown rapidly and whilst we recognised 2 years ago that they were a serious competitor to the incumbent leaders in social video at the time (Facebook and YouTube) we didn’t foresee quite how big they would get. In fact, data from the recent Hootsuite / We Are Social report shows that TikTok now leads in average time per month spent in app across Android devices globally:
TikTok’s undoubted success has been driven by their AI algorithm and the ability to curate and recommend the most relevant content to keep viewers hooked and scrolling for more. In this sense, TikTok has become a quasi social media and entertainment platform in one. TikTok now has over 1 billion monthly active users itself and is projected to reach somewhere between $8bn - $12bn in ad revenue in 2022.
Not to be out-done, in late 2020 YouTube launched their own YouTube Shorts vertical video and short-from platform for videos 60 seconds and less. YouTube Shorts is already driving 1.5bn monthly views and has in our eyes the advantage over both Instagram and TikTok in that it plugs into both the creator community of YouTube and the overall Google ecosystem, particularly search. Demand for YouTube Shorts has been soaring, in April this year Google CEO, Pichai announced that YouTube Shorts, is generating 30 billion views per day, which is four times more than the same time a year earlier.
So what does all this mean for brands and advertisers? In a word, plenty. There are the obvious creative ramifications we discussed in our original article – vertical video needs to be filmed or produced with the vertical 9:16 format front of mind mind – utilising all the available pixel space to maximise engagement with a feeling that is native to viewing and platform experience. With videos across all vertical platforms primarily watched with sound-on, this means that dialogue, sound and sound design has become more important than ever and revokes many of the previous recommendations around creating for a sound-off viewing experience.
This also means that video content including people and dialogue directly to camera within the creative has become more important than ever – driven by the success of a plethora of content creators – and for advertisers this is an important consideration. We have run a number of organic and paid campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube in which we have A/B tested different creative and we have interesting findings where for certain categories and demographics, people speaking directly to camera and engaging with audience one-to-one, have significantly out-performed all other creative.
One thing we have also been working on as an agency is optimising video creative for 95%+ or 100% video completions. This is because the video platforms are often optimised to reporting on a 3 second or up to 6 second video view and while this might be relevant for the platforms themselves to report on, this isn't necessarily a true gauge of how consumers are interacting with a brands content or ads. While there has been lots written on the demise of the average attention span there is also plenty of evidence available to confirm that if you reach the right people, at the right time with content that is relevant and of interest/engaging, they will dedicate as much time as needed. So we believe a truer reflection of campaign success is to understand and report on those higher video completion rates and optimise the creative and media strategy accordingly.
Data from numerous campaigns we have run here at Now We Collide over the last 2 years has shown that the growth in vertical video has been accompanied by much higher video viewing completion rates and the associated cost efficiencies which can be achieved and by optimising video to the vertical format, even higher engagement and efficiencies can be achieved.
So for now at least the rise of vertical video continues and is now an essential part of any digital and social media strategy and should be integrated into the channel mix accordingly.
Vertical video campaigns have been growing in popularity for a number of years along with the rise of in-app video viewing and mobile sharing. Snapchat was no doubt one of the pioneers of the format and they have continued to stick with it, while Facebook and Instagram have joined in with 'Stories' and Instagram's latest product IGTV. This is primarily being driven by the growing number of consumers now using their phones for their daily video consumption. The VideoInk provides an interesting look into Vertical Networks, launched by Elisabeth Murdoch with a focus on producing short-form video for mobile devices, and their "data-driven content strategy".
Talking of mobile video reports that Tesla is adding Atari games to the in-car display have been followed up with confirmation they are poised to bring in-car video to their next software update via an Elon Musk Tweet claiming that video playback will be available with "version 10" of Tesla's car software.
An interesting article from Variety on the journey Netflix has undertaken from DVD postal distribution company to the world's leading OTT entertainment company - "Netflix’s original-content push took off in earnest on Feb. 1, 2013, with the debut of “House of Cards.” Five years later, the streaming service has grown to the point where it is projected this year to deliver more than 80 new feature films (original and acquired) and an astounding 700 new TV series."
The campaign which caught our eye this week if the Smirnoff US campaign developed by 72andSunny with clever use of the media as the message using Ted Danson and a dash of humour to call attention to YouTube's 6-second bumper formats. It feels like Smirnoff missed a trick by not integrating the campaign across any other channels with no thought for extension across their website or other social channels.
Written by Keir Maher, CEO at Now We Collide, an independent creative agency based in Sydney, Australia. We use insights, strategy and clever, creative thinking to produce contagious advertising campaigns and content for today's connected brands and consumers.
Here at Now We Collide we work with brands looking to engage with customers and build a broader fan base with meaningful and relevant content. Mobile video campaigns are often a great way to do this. Because we are consuming more and more video online via mobile through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other big native video players and publishers.
Mobile-First Video Campaign Best Practices
Here are the 5 summarised steps from a recent study from Comscore:
Hook the viewer quickly: You've got two or three seconds to grab the viewers attention before they scroll by.
Come in close: Engaging the viewer demands special video editing. Use close-ups, quick cuts, interesting imagery and strong point-of-view angles.
Go big: On-screen text showing product info needs to be clear and large enough to read on a tiny mobile screen.
The silent treatment: Viewers probably have their devices on mute. Therefore you need to develop creative content that works well with no sound too.
Tell them what to do: Include a simple call to action. Use the same message in the text around the native video ad unit to reinforce your message.
“Native mobile video campaigns not only work but can be especially effective when following creative best practices,” says Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at ComScore.
“It’s important for brands to make an impression quickly and engage with the consumer on a more visual level to drive campaign success.”
In conclusion, this is all true for native video formats, but of course the same can be said for mobile video campaigns too. They are good rules to follow no matter what video content you are producing. What do you think? Feel free to leave your comments below.
Now We Collide partnered with ESPN to develop a new video led brand campaign. It was a move to cement the growing interest in U.S. and international sports among a younger Aussie male audience.
Watch this short documentary about how it all came together.
The video content created merges pivotal sporting moments from the world of NBA, American Football and X Games with murals drawn by graffiti artist Sofles. The time-lapsed amalgamation of sports and street art created a social buzz among the 18 to 34-year-old demographic and prompted them to share the content across their networks.
The brand campaign that became shareable
ESPN Marketing Manager, John Webb told Mumbrella “It’s one thing to make a great TV commercial that we can run on our own platforms but we wanted to build a brand campaign that will become shareable, that strikes gold and potentially goes viral.” he said. The video quickly became the most viewed and shared across ESPN Aust/NZ social networks drawing massive social reach and advocacy.
“We wanted to design a brand campaign that goes beyond our hardcore fan base and hit those casual fans who are on the fringes who we want to bring into the network."
“Using Now We Collide and Sofles was the perfect way to design something that we could use on Instagram and Facebook and hit the demographic that we are congregating on those platforms.” - John Webb.