The next big thing in events content is …
The usual answer to this answer is usually: “forget about the last thing, always do the next thing!”. It is very easy to get distracted and fall into the trap of FOMO. Especially when you have a ton of other things to prioritise and your RoI on content has never been good, or even measured.
We are living in a visual world, where more and more of our daily communications are image-based, be it gifs, photos, loops, stickers, gifs and much more. We post 600+ images on Instagram and we view over 75k of videos every second on Youtube, just to start with.
It is as simple as that: visual content is and will be king. And it needs to be a priority.
What is your first interaction with any brand at the moment online? Visuals. Is it a banner, a hero image or a video. Even on a personal level you are swiping left and right through images on Tinder to find your next date or the love of your life. You are looking at how good the food is. You are seeing the next place you want to visit.
Since smartphones democratised videos & photos, and we all have in our pocket a mini production company, a critical element in our society has changed. You would think that it marked the end of professional photographers or videographers. It did not. To the contrary, I strongly believe it empowered the industry. It created a world hooked on visuals, a world that needs to get their dose on an hourly basis, ripe for the taking of eager visual artists. It also raised the bar, as our customers expect quality, as they have been exposed to it through the myriad of channels that are out there. Their (our) brains are hardwired to “skip” through thousands of images every minute, and focus on the one that delivers the message correctly.
But this is not the main thing that changed, it was just one of the side effect. The main element of this revolution was something that is mimicked throughout our technology overrun world: instant gratification.
We are living in the “now world”, and we need to deliver “instant” experiences, products and content.
So… the next big thing in the events world is not VR, AR, MR, or videos, or photos. It is the instant delivery! Your content can be done on the latest VR headset, it can be the latest AI-powered camera or the smallest most capable drone. If the content is not delivered correctly to be consumed within my attention span, then it is pointless. Can you do that? No? Then it doesn’t matter what tools you are using.
But! And there is a huge “but” here! Don’t forget that your content needs to be of high quality!
We focus too much on the technology itself, rather than the quality of what we deliver. As mentioned before, our brains have evolved to filter through tons of images that are thrown at us every second. That means you need to provide high quality, engaging content, not just any content. It needs to be 5 times better than the one you can take on your phone, so it can pass through the visual filters we have created.
Oh, and personalised if possible, but this is a subject we will talk about in a later post.
Photo: Splento/Bogdan Maran at TechXLR8 2018 AI Summit for KNect365
Contact Splento if you are in need of:
Event Photography and Videography
eCommerce Photography and Videography
Discover the best photographer near me and capture your memories in stunning detail.