Welcome to the spellbinding world of Surrealism Marketing, where reality blends with creativity to offer new experiences to users looking for ads with added value. Surrealism Marketing reshuffles the cards of creative and brings new opportunities for 2024.
What XR trends for 2024?
After a very sustained hype in the second half of 2023, we will see a democratisation of XR use that will continue to offer more potential and become normalised in content production. In this sense, it will potentially lose some of its innovative character in the most classic uses while keeping its strength in terms of experience.
It is thus interesting to see XR both as an element to enrich the always-on content strategy and, separately, to test it on new approaches, notably by integrating it into offline media strategies. The Surrealism Marketing phenomenon (also called Extended Reality, or XR) marked 2023, notably through its rapid rollout among Luxury & Premium brands and then across all verticals.
How to explain the success and wide adoption of XR?
In a Social universe where users are heavily solicited by brands, media, influencers and their friends, brands need to stand out to regain visibility and create surprise through innovative set-ups.
The popularisation of XR, notably with JACQUEMUS content, strongly impressed. Quickly taken up by set-ups for Victoria Beckham or Maybelline in London, they were very widely shared. It is the promise of creative power and the strength of engagement that created strong brand interest in this approach.
Moreover, XR makes the most incredible things possible, notably the insertion of giant products or logos in the city or in unprecedented situations. Users often doubt, unable to fully tell whether the situation is real or fictional, and this prompts many comments that generate even more virality. 3D graphic design tools such as C4D, and smartphones with their shooting quality, give brands the means to turn their vision into visual reality.
The surrealism marketing effect
The effect produced on audiences is an intriguing combination of wonder, surprise and curiosity. Surreal visuals create a feeling of escape from reality, immersing viewers in a universe where the rational is intertwined with the irrational. The question that then comes to mind is: is what I just saw real?
The effect of Surrealism Marketing transcends the boundaries of the traditional and predictable, leaving a memorable imprint in consumers’ minds. Brands that master this strategy create deeper connections with their audience by stimulating their imagination, making them smile and prompting them to think. This powerful effect places XR at the heart of a creative revolution in the world of Social media.
A few successful cases
Drawing on the California of his childhood and his adopted French culture, Ian Padgham, better known under the pseudonym Origiful, injects a dose of magic into our daily lives through 3D. Followed by more than 200,000 users, he has won the favour of big names. With hundreds of millions of views across multiple platforms, his personal works and those of his clients have been featured in major publications and have received numerous awards.
The tigrz teams also tried their hand at the exercise with the Foir’Fouille case for Halloween.
Want to get started?
Here are a few tips from Tastee to take the step and develop your first XR content:
- The concept
You need to define the subject of your content: an it product? A service? A logo?
Then, a place. One that speaks to everyone? In the city? By the sea? Inside your store?
And finally, a creative idea. What will your product’s behaviour be within your environment? What scenario will hold the audience’s attention? - Pre-production
For the technical part you will need to equip yourself with a smartphone with high-quality shooting. This same shot must be made with: little movement, few people or elements interfering with your environment and weather offering a nice light if you are outdoors.
In addition to this shot you will need to make a 360 photo capture of your environment in order to integrate the 3D element realistically. - Production
This is where the magic happens, starting with the modelling of the product, the creation of the scene from your video and photo assets, then adjusting lights and textures in the 3D software. Then, in a second stage, we work on the animation before finishing with the compositing step, which boils down to harmonising the different assets contributing to the content working well. - Make it viral
Deploy your community management best practices to optimise engagement on the post: choose the right publication timing, maximise resharing of the post across all possible spaces, mobilise your ambassadors/creators if needed and control visibility by using media to boost the post’s reach.
Going further. This topic continues with our approach to content creation and influence and producing content at scale.
On the same topic: « The rise of AI in content creation: the scheduled end of content creation as we know it? » and « How creative AI changes the game: producing differently, not just faster ».
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