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David Vass, Head of Production at Mito, d.vass@mito.hu
May, 2020 · 5 min read
Most of the content created in the last few weeks focuses on one main topic: the virus sweeping through the world.
This article is no different, so let’s skip the exposition and take a look at how all this affects us advertising people and particularly the field of production.
This article tries to explore and discuss some alternative possibilities. We’d bet a large amount of money that the list below is gonna be even longer in a couple months. We have a lot of experimenting ahead of us, but let’s see where we are right now.
In the first few days, the agency was flooded by a tsunami of decidedly panicky video calls trying to appraise and manage the situation, such as:
As you can guess, projects started to go under in rapid succession in the wake of these ominous calls.
From the ashes of the ruins, new, sometimes experimental projects started to rise up like phoenixes – projects that would have been inconceivable a few months ago, because thoughts like
would have kept repeating in our minds. We had to seriously tweak our mindset to be able to quickly adapt to the situation before getting down to work. Let’s put our cards on the table: we have to use what we can.
It’s nothing groundbreaking: we have done it before and now we’ll do it a bit more for a while. An animation works if it was intended to be an animation. The idea may come up to rethink already existing projects that were about to start filming – in cases like these, it usually does not work to adapt the live action material into animation in its entirety, so it’s best to take a step back and decide what can be preserved and what needs to be let go of.
This has happened too – and we are not saying it wasn’t weird. As if all of us – the director, the production team, the creatives, and of course, the actors – were sitting in front of a virtual video assist monitor, while everyone (or almost everyone) was in a different district. Of course, for this to work, the material needs to be compatible with the concept that filming with not_professional_cameras only makes it more authentic.
Like this one: Telekom – Hello Business
No question about it, amateur videos recorded with a phone are of dubious quality in most cases. Stock materials are perfectly suitable for use in projects that are less product-specific. Nowadays, there are numerous sites offering premium materials, but it doesn’t hurt if you have a few photographer or cameraman buddies whose footages you can use, because that makes it less likely that you’ll come across the same material in someone else’s project.
We are starting to get used to it that someone plays the guitar live on Facebook every day and that we only see a row of talking heads in chat windows, called colleagues. For brands and the users of social platforms, entry-level streaming is easier than ever, with no real need for a crew, as the technology is available: if you have a phone and stable internet, all that’s missing is the content, and it’s our job to provide that. The term ‘entry-level’ should be double-underlined in red: for more complicated streams, it’s best to bring in the heavy artillery, both for cameras and sound.
We shot Borsodi – Kanapé Kvíz with the entry-level solution.
Moving the small photo studio of the agency home can do wonders if you need to shoot simpler, less actor-centric materials. If you have a good brief, it’s totally doable by one person. If you don’t have a studio, you can quickly order the basic equipment from most rental companies – what you need will fit in a small downtown flat. Incidentally, there are already several sound studios offering fully separate recordings – only the audio engineer and the narrator are on-site. And sometimes the narrator can even record the material at home and it is mastered later.
Nowadays, phones are able to record in quite high quality, but they won’t be a match for our usual filming equipment for a while yet. However, the current situation requires us to settle for them – and shooting alone at home sends a better message than using a whole camera crew – sorrynotsorry. Right now, a lot of materials like this are running on social channels and on TV as well.
An example for using phones: Borsodi
If all else fails and none of the above solutions work, we take a risk and shoot with a minimal crew, taking the appropriate health precautions. In our case, this means a few people at most – we’ll have to forget about shooting with a crew of 50-60 people for a while. Only those should be on site who absolutely need to be, everyone else works remotely – yes, maybe the director as well, even if that sounds unimaginable at first.
OTP Bank social content was shot with a small crew, only 1 DOP on-set + talent.
This responsibility falls on all members of the triumvirate: the client, the agency and the production team as well.
Do as many steps remotely as possible. Additionally:
Precautionary measures on set:
This may be the easiest one:
the post-production processes and steps can all be performed from home, sitting in our chair – or at least the ones we need most frequently.
If you decide not to create any new content, it’s still advisable to look over the already existing on-air materials in light of the virus: for example, don’t show large crowds and pay special attention to the portrayal of elderly people.
The Hungarian Advertising Self-Regulatory Board has published a recommendation titled “Advertisements at the time of the health crisis” which covers this topic: what’s recommended and what’s not.
If you have to let go of a concept, do it. Rethink.
The creative and the production teams should move in together. But only digitally.
Now is the time to take the road less travelled.
Use mask, gloves, wash your hands often and stay at home whenever possible.
Thanks for your attention!
Feel free to look around and check out all the stuff we do!
A kosárlabda csapatok 5 fős felállásban játszanak. A nevezett csapatokat csoportokba osztjuk, a sorsolást a tornát megelőző héten minden csapat részére kiküldjük. A mérkőzéseket hivatalos játékvezető vezeti. A mérkőzések egy pályán zajlanak. A csoportok első két helyezettje az egyenes kieséses szakaszba kvalifikálja magát. Az egyenes kiesés szakaszban a csoportmérkőzések során első helyezett csapatok a másik csoport második helyezettjével játszanak, ezt követően a vesztesek a harmadik helyért mérkőznek meg egymással, majd a győztesek vívják a döntőt.
Csapatlétszám: 5+1 fő.
Játékidő: 2×10 perc (szünet nélkül térfélcserével)
A mérkőzéseket 3×2 méteres kapukra játsszuk.
Page speed has become an important factor for website owners and SEOs since Google began focusing more and more on user experience factors. If companies don’t adapt to this new mindset, they will lose their organic power.
Nokia has experienced an extensive page load time on most of its pages, but lacked proper measurable information about the performance of the website. It is challenging to adapt site-wise technical modifications without understanding what is really behind the curtain.
Mito introduced a multifactor, multi locational-targeting page speed measurement and reporting system across different devices.
Our focus was to develop a measurement system from scratch that is able to report on different page speed KPIs so we can better understand what additional analyses are needed to increase the pages’ performance. We did not only focus on a page level measurement, but also grouped pages to page types that assists us in making more educated assumptions.
We paid attention to location modularity in order to extend the number of analysed locations to additional countries by adding new Virtual Machines to our framework.
We are able to measure different KPIs on both mobile and desktop so we can see how the site performance is realized across devices.
Our measurement system and dashboard provided us insights on what type of elements of the different page types might cause low speed performance and it helped us to further analyse the loading curve, just as the opportunities in Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations for the different page types.
We set up the measurement system and the dashboard that reports on website performance and opportunities.
Through properly tracking the page speed improvements, Nokia becomes a more powerful organic participant in the telco market in Google search, while they provide a better user experience for their visitors.
An international business of this size requires a comprehensive measurement strategy including responsible data collection, consistent management of tags and measurement codes, personalized website tracking and purposeful conversion rate optimization (CRO).
We kicked off Analytics projects from January, 2020, beginning with extensive Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics audits. Besides inspecting the different system settings, we also optimized the measurement and pixel implementation processes within Nokia in order to increase efficiency and reduce implementation periods.
After the key adjustments and process harmonization, we have moved forward and started to work on the website and landing pages’ efficiency, including several conversion rate optimization tasks such as heatmap analysis and A/B testing.
Nokia is receiving continuous support from our analytics team to ensure the client’s measurement and data is reliable. Due to streamlined processes, implementation periods are shorter and we eliminated unnecessary website tracking codes which cause longer loading times.
Nokia launched a digital campaign to educate the market that their industrial-focused LTE solutions are the key in accelerating the ultimate benefits of digital transformation and realization of the fourth industrial revolution.
The goal: to build brand awareness and create demand for Nokia private Industrial Wireless solutions in new vertical markets, especially infrastructure or asset-heavy industries where digitization has been mostly restricted to point solutions without general network connectivity.
We’ve developed a multi-touch global digital media campaign, which covered the entire user journey of business leaders, from education to making a business decision.
Our main goal was to make Nokia visible on a large scale through automated solutions and smart targeting to reach people when they are reading, talking, learning about or searching for private wireless networks.
To archive this, we’ve utilized the combination of digital media platforms, including industry specific content sponsorships, social media ads, paid search, programmatic hyperlocal and Digital out-of-home ads in front of target company HQs. We’ve made sure that when our key audience is browsing the web, using social media on their phones or just walking outside of their offices, they see a relevant Nokia ad.
The campaign has reached over 80 000 business decision makers and influencers in 3500 target companies, across 5 industry verticals globally.
Private wireless solution specific brand search volume increased by 70% during the campaign period (YoY). In Q2 and Q3 2020, Nokia Enterprise had a double digit year-on-year growth in net sales and new customers.