As we near the end of 2022, it’s clear that internal workflow needs and client expectations for content have changed. In the world of commercial and e-commerce production, it is expected that it will continue to change at the same speed as digital advances — which seems to be every day.
Brand expectation within e-commerce in particular has been completely redefined. There is now a consumer expectation pushing forth the narrative that we should be viewing more than one product at a time with the intention of purchasing them together, and digital production needs to follow and deliver. This means that all brands have had to rethink styling, product assortment, photo and video shoots — changing viewership altogether.
For many brands and companies, this led to a technology overhaul. Metadata on the backend needed to be stronger and tech allowed for intel related product assortment and product challenges needs to be solved. Today, that means brands are spending a lot more budget on below-the-fold content. They are investing in more than just PDP.
Because brands can now closely identify what content they need and on how many channels, the use of studio operation platforms have increased — even while live, on-set. Brands are shooting more frequently to keep up with customer demands making the physical and e-commerce connections closer as one converts the other. Production and post production need to allow for this agility and a reduced time-to-market.
Backup and velocity on-set have become more important than ever, and cloud platforms are more and more accessible. Platforms like Frame.io and Globaledit.com allow shooting directly to the cloud, which in turn speeds up post production. Each of these works intuitively with a photo-heavy workflow, and with that saving both time and money, leaving clients with more time to focus on marketing. There is a paradigm where prices are getting pulled down on production and post production studios, but we see an increase in adjacent content quality and volume. This content looks familiar to broadcast in quality, but is now considered e-commerce or digital.
Digital workflows need to follow, and cloud applications allow that. Trends are clear regarding the growth of video in the e-commerce world. There is a growth of video content even for PDP, and currently the data in Globaledit shows that 18 percent of SKUs are getting a video component. This is a sharp increase compared to 2021, especially for fashion and beauty brands. Our clients already informed us that their 2023 budget will include an additional 15 to 20 percent of SKUs getting a video for their e-commerce-focused websites. By result, this shows that the growth of e-commerce video production is just at its infancy and will continue to grow.
Mathieu Champigny is Group CEO of CoCreativ and CEO of Industrial Color (www.industrialcolor.com). CoCreativ sits atop a portfolio companies, including Industrial Color, Smashbox Studios and Globaledit. The company offers end-to-end creative production at any scale with a nationwide network of talent and studios.