The delineation of creative and production

We walk into 2024 with a lot of cynicism and suspicion even. Given the current technological climate, it is almost impossible to say what is a red herring and what is transformational, especially given the multiple wrong bets the industry is guilty of making in the last 2-3 years. So maybe for once it might not be a bad idea to indulge ourselves in an exercise of honest observation rather than trendspotting. 

The delineation of creative and production

The volume of digital assets that a brand creates has increased exponentially in the last 4-5 years. From creating about 5 ‘posts’ a week for social platforms to hundreds (thousands in some cases) across social, D2C, commerce and influencer assets today, the creation and production process has never been more complex for a brand manager to oversee. 

The need for consistency in brand experience has never been more important and achieving it, more challenging. Add to this the unique needs and requirements of specific platforms, and customizations for language and culture, you have a potentially overwhelming mandate to just keep things going. 

It is hence clear that brands need to move from looking at content through just a ‘creation’ lens to a ‘life cycle management’ lens. This means taking an assembly line perspective to content – one that is data-led, efficient in production, machine-led and most importantly, process-led. While the creative gods will always be the best bet to deliver a direction, production needs an expert’s skills - in platform, design and the production process itself. Think of it as a house you are building. While your architect might be best placed to deliver the blueprint to your house, her skills are not something you can use in the actual building. You will need engineers to take over from there. With everything that is happening in the world with virtual production, super shoots and machine-led adaptation, you need an engineer’s precision to content as well. Hence the delineation between creative and production has never been more Prominent.

Return of the moment of truth and why commerce content is critical

It is quite amazing how far we have come from our management books that spoke about the ‘moment of truth’ as something that happens in the aisles of a supermarket. In the last decade, we were introduced to what I call a ‘zero moment of truth’ – one in which we hear about a product from a creator or an influencer who we trust, way before we actually encounter it. However, the aisles have caught up in the last few years, except this time it is on e-commerce. The importance of great-looking commerce content today cannot be overstated. Customers expect the same brand experience that they see on TVCs or the Instagram pages on commerce as well. Probably more. If you really think about it, customers buy content on e-commerce first. The product comes later, post delivery. So, commerce content can no longer be a place where we recycle banners or social creatives. It has to be customized heavily for each commerce platform – whether D2C or marketplace and curated. In reality, this is actually the only ‘always on’ content that matters. This then again becomes a job for specialists. Not generalists.

The full decentralization of pop culture

The era of a full decentralization of pop culture is well and truly upon us. And one of the biggest ways in which it has manifested itself is how there are no superstars. If you need quick proof of this, look at the Indian artists who will be playing at Lollapalooza 2024 in a few days. How many of them do you listen to? Everyone’s spectrum of streams is different and while there are stars in each of those, there are very few stars that transcend multiple streams. Hence the need for addressability of content has never been more important. 

What do I mean by that? 

If a brand’s objective is to use sub-cultures as a way to appeal to an audience cohort, it can no longer be broad brush strokes. Intricate connections will need to be made between audience data and content we are creating to be able to achieve this. This is a less-cool application of AI that will not make it to Instagram reels or news headlines, but will probably be the most effective application of that tech. AI might marginally change creativity in the short term, but it will absolutely revolutionize the marriage of data and creative operations. Like the other two above, this is not the future but the Present.

This article is penned by Karthik Nagarajan, CEO - India, Hogarth.

Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.