Los Angeles Video Marketing: Digital Video Predictions for 2018
With 2017 almost over, it may be worth it to start looking into the trends that are going to dominate the marketing industry next year. From a Los Angeles video marketing perspective, we’ve gathered four potential game-changers that are already starting to make pretty big waves. Jumping in on the bandwagon this early on may prove fortuitous when crafting your company’s video marketing strategy for 2018. Take a look.
Projection Mapping
Projection mapping is a stunning visual display of how powerful video really is in appealing to the aesthetic senses. Part of experiential marketing, projection mapping videos capitalize on the user experience.
The video is projected onto a 3D surface to create the illusion of larger-than-life elements. Think of the side of a building or a large brick wall. Even people can be considered a 3D surface, making them essentially a part of the video experience. Check out Coca Cola’s One Brand video for a truly breath-taking example.
Projection mapping (also referred to as spatial augmented reality) can redefine the event video production field in 2018. Rather than immortalizing the event on film, this video technique can actually add to the quality of user experience of the event.
360 Degree
360-degree videos have been picking up steam for the past couple years. When they first started out, the technology, coding, and user experience was still being refined. Usually tourism websites and photography websites utilized 360-degree pictures, which allowed for fun interactions with normally static images. And then video broke into the scene, and suddenly “interactive content” took on a whole different meaning.
According to Marketing Insider Group, 2018 may be the year 360-degree videos finally blow up. With obvious practical application in online shopping (check out the product pages from Woman Within; see how you have the option to switch the product photo to video?), 360 videos may set the new standard for product videos and corporate videos alike.
Square Aspect Ratio
Back when YouTube was the only platform you could watch videos on, production companies in Los Angeles were all about the widescreen. Although 4:3 was considered “standard definition,” people who wanted to look good and come off as professional made sure their standard was 16:9. It was very close to the 1.85;1 of widescreen cinema, which is what people wanted to achieve.
Now that we’re all watching more video on our smartphones and tablets, it’s starting to look like square aspect ratio might just trump widescreen for title of the new standard. On social media platforms like Instagram and Facbook, a square aspect ratio allows the video to take up more of the screen when viewed on a smartphone. It also works well when viewed with the default portrait setting of smartphone screens, which in turn makes it more social platform-friendly.
A widescreen ratio will automatically shrink to fit the screen, forcing users to turn it sideways if they want to watch it in larger detail. Since not a lot of people like interrupting their scroll through social media for just one video, the odds are that they’ll ignore the video and move on. This 2018, up your Los Angeles video marketing game by optimizing all your videos for social media. If that means producing the same video with different aspect ratios, then so be it.
Muted Videos
Now that companies have wizened up to Facebook’s auto-play-but-also-auto-muted feature for timeline videos, it’s not too much of a stretch to predict that 2018 will give rise to the “muted video”—a video that plays just fine and can be understood just fine with or without sound.
More and more brands have been experimenting with ways to make their social videos watchable and engaging even with the audio taken out of the equation. From big title cards to simple and subtle subtitles, different brands have found different solutions that work best for them and their type of content.
Because of this, the Los Angeles video marketing goal of a muted video is now twofold. The endgame is still conversions, of course, but your secondary aim should now be to make visuals so engaging and visually satisfying, viewers will want to turn the sound back on.
