While it might feel as though the world has come to a standstill in some ways, things are moving faster than ever in others. It’s been only a week and a half since our previous post about seamlessly continuing production in a world changed by COVID-19, but in the interim our film and production team has put incredible effort into developing a safe shooting space for content production—retaining the same level of quality you would expect from a traditional shoot.

Housed in our Amsterdam office, our in-house production studios have been set up to comply within safety standards by keeping members of a lean crew team at least 1.5 meters apart. Other members of the production (such as the director or brand team) observe either from another room or from a remote location via livestream.

This is made possible through an automated shooting process, aided by the use of robocams that have long been used in our tabletop and food-focused content. By consolidating every step of production under one roof—including creative, scriptwriting, treatments, pre-production, set builders to studio crew and postproduction—or remote, the process mitigates risk and places brands within a safe set of (washed) hands.

In Considering New Solutions, Strategize Around Your Output

While it’s reassuring that brands can still achieve a high-quality standard of filmmaking, this moment serves as a good time to stop and reflect on previous production strategies. Might any of the changes they make today carry into the long term? “We’re seeing that you can still do things without the elaborate components, or travel, craft services,” MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar told audiences in APR’s Virtual Town Square webinar. “it’s all a bit scrappier—as a culture, we’ll probably be a lot more mindful about our impact on the world and how we manage to get through this.”

As culture continues to shift toward digital at an unprecedented rate, brands can begin honing their content strategies by first considering what the ideal output should be. For example, ter Haar notes that brands view conversion-based content as a high priority to fill, with a need to develop that content faster and at a greater value.

But consumer needs are also shifting, whether it be aesthetic sensibilities informed by memes and independent content creators or the emergence of new digital behaviors. “There are numerous ways to shift efforts from traditional production,” says ter Haar. “Instead of doing a traditional shoot with 80 people, why not have 80 people do their own shoot?” This twist on shooting style opens up interesting, new opportunities for content, like partnering with influencers or exploring a single theme through different viewpoints.

Find Creative Opportunity Through Constraint

As brands continue to consider the changes they should make to production strategies right now, they should also keep an eye on the future. How can constraints that exist today help us all achieve even better ways of working tomorrow? Ter Haar compares new production strategies with the shift that businesses have already taken by working from home. “While it’s been relatively easy for us to switch to working from home because we’re a global organization, it’s also nice to see that things that felt like they could only work in person are perfectly fine to do in a digital manner.”

This observation drives home the sentiment that while the speed at which the landscape has changed may have overwhelmed some teams, it presents an opportunity to develop new creative solutions—for example, cutting travel costs or becoming less reliant on gathering large teams within a single location. By working with brands to understand and delivering on needs as they emerge, we’ll emerge from this situation stronger than ever.

There are more opportunities to reassess your marketing and production strategies.

With social distancing taking hold around the world, people are turning toward screens and machines now more than ever for connection, comfort and entertainment. Despite this unprecedented opportunity to connect directly with consumers through content, many brands feel hampered by those same social distancing policies, which limit their ability to produce content.

Whether stuck working at home or seeking a partner somewhere in the world who can safely secure a shooting location, there’s never been a more necessary time for speed, quality and value. Thankfully, even if mobility and personnel are seriously limited, you can still strategize around offering impactful content with just a single room, a single actor and a smart media plan, which was the recipe used for our Northgate Market Super Bowl campaign.

We’re confident that resourceful brands of any size can likewise generate high-quality content under great restraint, including at home. Below are just a handful of ways that they can do so, either by themselves or with the guidance of a creative and production partner.

Considerations for Shooting at Home

Livestreaming is a relatively simple alternative for brands seeking to build an authentic, transparent connection to those at home. In fact, TV broadcasters around the world have begun livestreaming their reportage from home offices, sometimes even with a pet in tow. While livestreaming is great for maintaining a connection with audiences, brands should pay special care toward having the necessary equipment setup—even for the simplest of livestreamed experiences.

“Livestreaming has a lot better value than most people think,” says Lewis Smithingham, Director of Creative Solutions at MediaMonks. “But while people don’t need satellite, giant server farms or origin servers, it’s worth asking yourself: what happens if I lose my feed, if my kid kicks out my power cable, or the dishwasher blows a fuse?” Anticipating hiccups like these in a professional context becomes especially imperative given the fact that networks are under strain while millions of people work from home or stream content simultaneously.

Partnering with an influencer can mitigate some of these concerns: they offer that same penchant for authenticity and are well-experienced when it comes to connecting with fans at home. The more casual atmosphere of an influencer speaking directly to their close audience can also ease worry about a momentary loss of connection. In addition, content creators are adept at producing first-rate content at home without the need for having a director “on set” to achieve quality, having all of the equipment on-hand that they need.

And speaking of equipment for producing traditional video: while rental houses may still be open in some parts of the world, you can never be too certain when situations change overnight. This is where there’s still value in leaning on a global partner who can zero in and identify regions that safely and securely enable production.

But a safer bet would be to simply use your smartphone, if nothing else is readily available. Their cameras have become so advanced that any flagship phone is likely to offer a professional-grade output. (If you don’t believe us, have a look at any of these films shot on smartphones.)  That said, different teams using different devices can lead to compatibility issues; for example, some phones might be more difficult to export to post than others due to differences in file type or software compatibility.

Can’t Shoot Anything New? Easily Refresh Existing Assets Instead

This moment offers an opportunity for brands to really get creative and think more agile in terms of content production—and one of the simplest ways to do so is by refreshing or optimizing existing content in a way that quickly results in relevant assets at scale. We’ve taken a similar approach in transforming a handful of existing assets into a social awareness campaign that grew more effective week after week, using performance metrics to continually optimize and drill deeper into audience segments.

This same method could be incredibly useful for brands who must reassess a content strategy, optimizing it to better reach consumers at home via digital channels. When high-quality stock video is added to the mix, you can keep your creative content current by translating the brand narrative to different contexts with the footage available.

But a more unique way to refresh existing content and offer something new is through animation. There are a handful of different techniques used by our global animation team to produce animations for brands, two of which work well with existing assets: the cut-out technique, which animates flat assets and backgrounds, or 2D motion graphics. Both of these methods are highly scalable, adaptable and fast to produce, making it easier to squeeze value or quickly iterate new content when needed.

Innovate with Entirely New Ways to Shoot

Before social distancing, a lot of businesses balked at the thought of remote work—and most of them probably discovered they can remain just as productive from afar after all. The same can be said for shoots on set; consider having a production team—with minimal personnel to ensure regional safety regulations—overseen by your team via livestream, as if you were there in-person. A team distributed across the globe can help identify where and when these opportunities are possible, ensuring they’re executed with safety and security in mind.

Those with bigger expectations in mind can take a cue from game engines. “If I were a camera operator, I’d be learning how to operate a camera virtually,” says Smithingham. “Do an activation within an online game. There are ways around this and do shoots virtually; if you look at The Mandalorian, the whole thing was shot in one room. Brands can lean into that and do wild and crazy stuff.”

Content shot within a virtual space would certainly challenge brands to rethink their content production strategy. But it could also help them be seen as innovators—and become more relevant at a critical moment: interest in videogames has spiked in the past few weeks as a means of entertainment and gathering with friends virtually.

By marrying together a technical and creative mindset, brands can find the most effective and accessible solutions to generating content while working from home. “We don’t think anything is impossible,” says Smithingham. “From ensuring livestreams don’t miss a beat to connecting with content creators who have high-end tools in house already, any challenge is doable or fixable.”

There are more ways to (Re)Activate Customer Obsession.

Each Super Bowl, it’s not just the teams on the gridiron that are in a competitive mindset. Of course, the big game doubles as a competitive play for brands and advertisers, who treat the event as one of the biggest opportunities to make an impression on an unusually large TV audience.

Advertising has become so synonymous with the game that brands have begun releasing previews and prequels to ads in the weeks leading up to the game, drumming up excitement among consumers and effectively building an entire genre in the process. In this environment, how is a regionally based business supposed to capture anyone’s attention? It’s enough to make you think that the day is reserved for only the biggest brands—or is it?

Circus, who joined our big tent at the start of the year, didn’t think so. Through a clever mix of ultra-efficient production, ingenious media spend and close collaboration, a cunning campaign idea was born in 2019. Family-owned supermarket chain Northgate Market pre-empted some of the most buzz-worthy Super Bowl ads with pre-roll ads relevant to their content, a strategy that met so much success (including a Cannes Lion nomination) that we’ve built upon it further this year.

Raising Expectations—and the Bar—on Creative Production

The campaign relies on the relationship that digital streaming has with the Super Bowl ad frenzy. When brands release ad previews, consumers seek them out. And this is where we make a daring play: through a pre-roll offering a “behind-the-scenes” look at the ad viewers are about to see. For example, before watching an Avocados From Mexico spot (which features absurd ways to protect the delicate fruit), consumers within Northgate’s local region see a quick pre-roll in which a crew member on a film set carefully secures and delivers the prop avocado.

“After the success of last year’s effort, we knew there was an opportunity for us to own during one of the biggest weeks for Northgate,” says Nava. “Going into the second year we wanted to make sure we continue building in the same territory. All products you see on Super Bowl ads can be found at Northgate Markets, but this time we wanted to say that actual products being used to film those Super Bowl ads also came from the store by doing a fun, behind-the-scenes replica of each commercial.” This is referenced in the slogan for the campaign, “The big game ads start with us,” which directly ties to the brand’s message that “every visit has a story.”

A Genius Game Plan Built on Trust

The pre-rolls not only show that the product is available for purchase at Northgate Market, but also reference the themes and ideas behind the most talked-about Super Bowl ads: in the one mentioned above, Northgate’s crew member has the seriousness of a secret agent passing along classified information, seemingly elevating the avocado’s safety to national security-level. But because the content of any Super Bowl ad is only known a week or two before the big game, there was crucial little time to carry the campaign from concept to market.

Trust and swift collaboration were critical to the campaign’s high-risk, high-reward success. “There’s not a lot of room for back and forth between agency and client, because there’s no time,” says Nava. “The minute a spot is out, we need to prep and shoot for it, so Northgate was part of the process from the beginning, strategizing which products made the most sense for them to promote.”

While the “Super Bowl hijack” tactic was developed as a way to efficiently produce work within a short turnaround time before a major event, it serves as an excellent example of how brands can overcome a growing challenge that’s universally felt: the need to rapidly produce content around the clock. Whether it’s a need to keep up with the rate of conversation, produce always-on content streams or simply anticipate major cultural moments without being left behind, brands seek new ways to cut through the noise amidst fierce competition and dwindling resources. With full-service social media capabilities and as a leader in multicultural marketing, Circus bolsters our ability to produce and deliver relevant digital content at speed for all audiences—not without pulling some tricks in the process.