Hasta La Motion!

The first day of Zee Melt 2017 kickstarted at NSCI, Worli on 31 May and was packed with a plethora of conferences by experts and veterans of the industry. Under the Osmosis Conferences, the first half comprised of a session on ‘Creativity & Effectiveness’ which was conducted by three speakers – James Hurman, Arun Pattabhiraman and Samir Singh.

James Hurman is a New Zealander who founded an innovation company Previously Unavailable after a career as a strategic planner in the advertising industry. In 2013, he was named the world’s #1 planning director in the Big Won Rankings, and has authored The Case for Creativity, a book about the link between creativity and effectiveness.

James Hurman

He started his session with a debate which has been going around in the advertising agencies – creativity is harmful for effectiveness. Quoting Germany’s FMCG marketing director, he said, “Creativity is irrelevant at best. Often, it is downright harmful to advertising success.” Another view however said, “Other things being equal, creativity is an advertiser’s best bet.” So the fundamental question he raised was: Does creativity work? Agencies that were sceptical of creativity are of the opinion that only creativity without planning and strategy is detrimental. Due to these contradictory schools of thought on creativity, Hurman carried out his own research of ad agencies and found that more creatively awarded ad agencies only won the effectiveness awards. He gave example of brands like Volkswagen, Addidas and Coca Cola, which had consistently used creative ad campaigns to lure consumers.

His company Previously Unavailable took up a challenge of rebuilding an almost dead beer brand, DB Export, in the country of New Zealand and they were successful. DB Export did become the most consumed beer in NZ, thanks to Previously Unavailable’s creative methods of selling it. “Creativity is not only associated with ad,” Hurman stated. “It is used in product management, strategy, customer service, sales, promotions, and everything else to do with the product.”

Arun Pattabhiraman

The next session was by InMobi, vice president and global head (marketing), Arun Pattabhiraman on ‘Mobile Video Done Right’. InMobi is a mobile advertising and discovery platform. With more media time being spent on mobile devices than desktop computers, there is a rise in the urgency of advancement in mobile video advertising and effective formats for doing that. People today are spending 90 per cent of their device time inside apps and hence, video on these devices must be re-imagined in order to capitalise on this shift in consumer behaviour. Pattabhiraman, with his deep experience in global mobile and internet business, spoke about the value that mobile video advertising can bring to marketers and media decision makers, and the increase it can lead in brand awareness as well as ad engagement and interactivity rates. He explained the four major challenges that are currently faced by mobile video advertising –

a. Mobile videos don’t load quickly enough: Mobile video ads take over five seconds to load and user attention steeply declines after the two second mark. This latency severely damages the consumer experience and contributes to user drop-off.

b. The legacy of desktop and VPAID: Mobile video advertising continues to be powered by outdated browser-based technology that is unsuited to mobile native environments.

c. Concerns with mobile video: Advertising messages load slower than the content. Hence, the consumer taps off before the ad loads. These issues with video viewability have occurred due to consumer experience not being optimised towards the native behaviour of the device.

d. Mobile video creatives aren’t mobile-optimised: Most clients do not focus on building a unique and relevant experience and are simply repurposing desktop or TV video creatives and running 30-second landscape creatives. Video ads across connected devices have to be explicitly designed, to make use of those elements of a mobile device that facilitate interaction.

Samir Bikram Singh

He then suggested ways of doing the business right, with

1. Focus on in-app mobile video
2. Work with independent MRC accredited partners for viewability
3. Leverage mobile optimised video creatives and
4. Scale campaigns with programmatic buying.

“Doing mobile video right is a win-win situation for consumers as well as buyers,” he said, concluding his session.

Last up was a talk by Samir Singh on ‘Capturing Attention in a Mobile Video Nation’. An industry head of agency business at Google, Singh works closely with the advertising agency ecosystem to help brands leverage the full value of digital. In the India of 80s, reach was difficult but getting attention was easy. “Now, reaching the mass is easy but getting attention is almost impossible,” Singh said. He stressed on the factors – sight, sound and emotion to tell a story that grabs attention. In a nutshell, he stated that marketers should focus on watch-time to reach, capture and hold the attention of the viewers.

With their proximity to digital media and research on consumer experience, the speakers provided the latest insights and problem-solving techniques for products and brands, and left the audience deeply satisfied.

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Shotgun Software released Shotgun 7.2, the latest version of its cloud-based review and production tracking software. Strengthening Shotgun’s commitment to simplifying workflows and helping studios of all sizes collaborate, this latest update transforms integrations with content creation tools and streamlines the review process.

Studios can now take advantage of out-of-the-box integrations with content creation tools to accelerate artist workflows. Updates to RV also make reviewing media from the cloud seamless and includes SDI functionality as standard. The release also builds upon Shotgun’s role as a secure foundation for many studios by adding single sign-on to give IT departments centralised control over user access and permissions.

Shotgun panel

“Our goal has always been to help facilities simplify their pipelines so that artists can focus more on the creative process. Shotgun 7.2 brings significant improvements that will help make media collaboration easier and faster. We also know that security administration is critical for studios of all sizes and we continue to deliver more in that area,” said Autodesk, head of product, James Pycock.

Shotgun 7.2 highlights include:

Plug-and-Play Integrations: It’s now easier for Shotgun users to connect their content creation tools with Shotgun. New plug-and-play integrations first auto-discover Maya, Nuke, Photoshop, Houdini, 3ds Max, and Flame, and then embed the Shotgun Panel, loader, and publisher directly within them without requiring any manual configuration.

Web Streaming in RV: Many Shotgun users work on dispersed teams around the world, and might not always have access to the high-res media for reviews in RV. With the addition of cloud playback support in RV, web-connected artists and supervisors can review shots in context, even if the content is not stored on their computers. Shotgun simply recognises if media isn’t available and seamlessly pulls it into RV from Shotgun on the web.

New Publisher: A new publisher tool enables easy tracking of files in Shotgun and can either run in content creation tools or as a standalone application – giving users the flexibility to publish files from any content creation tools, not just the ones currently supported by Shotgun.

New Publisher – Nuke

Single Sign-On: Single sign-on bolsters security in-house by centralising authentication, making it easy for your IT department to grant, limit, and revoke access and permissions for any user. Plus, everyone at the studio now has the convenience of only having to remember one set of credentials.

SDI Functionality in RV: SDI Functionality, previously only available with “Super Awesome” support, is now available to all Shotgun clients.

Shotgun pricing starts at US $30 per account/per month with “Awesome” support, or US $50 per account/per month with “Super Awesome” support. A free trial can be requested at the Shotgun website.

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Leading kids entertainment brand Nickelodeon is introducing a brand-new collection of interactive, curriculum-driven preschool episodes in its NOGGIN video subscription service, beginning today, 1 June, initially on iOS platforms. These play-along preschool videos were created by an in-house team using a proprietary authoring tool which enables the simultaneous creation of interactive digital content alongside the production of linear TV content.

“The introduction of our play-along videos mark the evolution of preschool interactivity that Nickelodeon initiated with Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer,” said Nickelodeon Group’s executive vice president (digital and new business) Matthew Evans. “We can now transform our linear production capabilities through an authoring tool of our own design that allows us to create complementary interactive, digital video that truly lets kids participate in, and learn from the story.”

Nickelodeon’s play-along videos allow preschoolers to engage with their favourite characters by tapping, touching, swiping or speaking to navigate through enhanced educational experiences that promote science, technology, engineering, math and social-emotional skills – all while having fun every step of the way.

More than 30 play-along videos will be introduced, including Blaze and the Monster Machines, Bubble Guppies, Team Umizoomi and short-form content featuring long-time beloved characters Moose and Zee.

Nickelodeon’s new play-along video authoring tool puts the ability to create interactive digital content into the hands of Nick’s show creators, producers and animators. The tool supports real-time scene editing and a live preview that allows the teams to layer in interactive elements, to create brand-new play-along moments within any episode. Interactive writers and producers can also be integrated into a show’s creative team, allowing them to generate engaging, story-driven interactive videos from the start of a production and deliver both linear and play-along versions of the same episode simultaneously. Additionally, the play-along video player can be integrated into the existing Nickelodeon video apps, eliminating the need to download a separate app.

The videos were also created in partnership with curriculum and research consultants who helped shape the interactions to enhance the existing educational value of the shows. Throughout each interactive adventure, kids engage with content that fosters the development of cognitive, social and emotional skills.

NOGGIN is an ad-free, video subscription service that features hundreds of iconic, full-length library episodes, short-form videos, educational content, music videos featuring preschoolers’ favourite Nickelodeon characters, and more, with new content added weekly. Currently available for iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, Android, Fire tablet and Roku devices, it has 25 series to date including the recently added Yo Gabba Gabba!, Trucktown, Miffy and Friends and Teletubbies. Additional titles in the lineup include Blue’s Clues, Go, Diego, Go!, Franklin, The Backyardigans and Pocoyo, among others.

Consistently ranking at the top of the charts in the Family and Kids categories, the NOGGIN App is one of the top 10 grossing kids apps on the App Store, in addition to being the number-one grossing app for Music and Video in the Family Category on Google Play. It was also selected by Apple as an Apple TV app of the year.

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You may be the one who is not very fond of cricket or the one who loves playing cricket but has wondered what is so interesting about mobile cricket games. Whoever you may be, this Google Doodle (a game actually) will put all that aside.

The 2017 ICC Champions Trophy commenced today at 3 pm IST at Kennington Oval, London and Google, like always, managed to do something out-of-the-box. As you land on the Google Chrome window or Google’s home page, you are greeted by a bat-holding little grasshopper swinging a ball and a play symbol that provokes you to see “what’s in there!”

As you click on the play button, a small screen pops up showing a cricket stadium filled with teeny-weeny colourful insects, a scoreboard on the far end, a team of snails fielding and two grasshoppers stationed at each end of the pitch. When you click on the yellow button, the game starts. The snail swings the ball and you are role-playing as the grasshopper who is the batsman (or should we say bats-insect)! You have to judge when the ball is close enough to hit and click anywhere on the screen to swirl the bat. The grasshoppers start running on their own when they see the opportunity. If you are able to score runs, the audience starts clapping and releases balloons with the number of runs you’ve scored.

The best part about the game is that the only way of getting out is getting bowled! There are no run outs or catch outs or the very dreaded LBWs. Another fun element is that there are no spins or Yorkers too! The only skill in this game is judgement. And if you do get bowled, the grasshopper turns into a duckling with a sad face, which is hilarious!

Google knows that cricket is loved worldwide, hence wanted to make sure that their Doodle works for everyone, including those on slower mobile networks. “We kept the file size fly-sized, and the result is our smallest interactive Doodle ever – even snail networks can load it in seconds.”

For the Doodle, engineering is done by Jacob Howcroft with Mark Ivey doing the additional engineering. Matt Cruickshank is the art director and Leon Hong is the additional sound designer. Project management and production were handled by Greg Capuano and Perla Campos.

Google wishes: “Whether you’re enjoying the tournament at a snail’s pace or bowling faster than the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, here’s hoping you hit it out of the park this summer!”

Here are samples of Google’s test animation and development designs:

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