'Premium social': the rise of motion and what it means for brands

The brief

We created a thought-leadership article for PR Week from the perspective of the creative team at London-based production studio The Operators, highlighting their disruptive workflows tailored to today's creative challenges.

The story

Viewers are said to retain 95 percent of video messaging compared to only 10 percent of text. So many statistics – but what do they all mean for your brand?

In short, a basic image isn't going to cut it anymore. In 2018 you need to think about video – and you need to think about how to do it effectively. Algorithms on many social platforms now give preferential treatment to multimedia assets, as demonstrated by Facebook’s recent crackdown on static images. The richer the content, the further up it goes in display priority. After all, why put something static on a digital device, when you can tell more of a story?

Marketers and PR agencies are shifting to investing huge amounts in high-end, high-volume video. The pipeline presents a challenge, however – especially in a world where every organisation is a publisher, all outreach is personalised, and content is constantly in demand.

In this new landscape, we can no longer rely on traditional production methods. Customised, en-masse content needs a different approach from the traditional video shoot. Integrated approaches to production are taking over – we need to think about 'premium social'.

Premium social refers to high-volume, high-quality online content that upholds the standards of television production, but is managed on a much smaller budget and adapts to restrictions across a range of social channels.

It means being nimble, experimenting with processes, and thinking about the mediums available to us when we embark on a project. No budget to close the streets for a live-action shoot? Film with GoPros and make that the aesthetic. Need to do a zoom shot but don’t have the specialist tech? 3D camera mapping can achieve the same look. The approach doesn’t matter – what matters is that the story is told well and that the content is engaging.

Today’s video campaigns are stretched across Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and beyond. A singular focus won’t cut it. Consider the shot carefully: how can it be easily manipulated or reworked into different formats later down the line? If you do this, when that eleventh-hour request comes in to add YouTube to the mix, you won’t need to reshoot.