MediaMonks has been awarded an Epic MegaGrant to explore the next frontier in automated tabletop and production using Epic’s Unreal Engine, the world’s most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool built by the developer behind Fortnite and other high-profile videogames.

Product packaging and tabletop production are table stakes in the advertising industry, as bespoke assets are needed for a single brand in every market around the world. Producing assets, packaging and labels at speed and scale has never been without challenges—and in 2020 it was upended by COVID-19. That’s why MediaMonks is setting out to automate an age-old process, leveraging Unreal Engine to maximize quality, speed and efficiency in advertising production through innovation. 

“A tremendous amount of time and money is spent on product photography and videos for food, drinks and other consumer products,” said MediaMonks SVP, Growth Tim Dillon. “These shoots are costly, slow and must be repeated with each new product, or product version, for each region on a seasonal basis. It’s an aspect of the advertising industry that has been slow to innovate and could benefit from the speed, flexibility, repeatability and quality controls that Unreal Engine delivers.”

These benefits go well beyond the short-term solution of safely and efficiently producing creative in a time of social distancing. Virtual production in game engines like Unreal Engine are particularly attractive for global brands that seek to deliver a cohesive experience for consumers across markets. These 3D assets could also be ported to other touchpoints, including immersive experiences and more tangible product listings for ecommerce, making virtual production an approachable starting point for CPG brand virtualization.

A team of Monks in India has been especially hard at work, creating and iterating in Unreal Engine to translate these ideas into tangible outputs. With a keen eye for creativity and storytelling, they’re harnessing the power of this new technology to advance and disrupt. India CCO John Paite says, “From an artistic standpoint, I see so many opportunities to up-level our creative outputs in Unreal Engine, blending creativity and technology to shape better content and stronger stories that propel the industry forward. Having witnessed what the team has accomplished so far, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”

“In a constant pursuit to further disrupt the industries we innovate in, I’m thrilled MediaMonks has received this support from Epic,” said MediaMonks Director of Creative Solutions Lewis Smithingham. “With our MegaGrant we have a great opportunity to develop an Unreal Engine-based solution that empowers advertising agencies and commercial production companies to efficiently, and cost-effectively increase flexibility and customization, while also improving quality.”

MediaMonks is proud to join the Epic MegaGrants community, backed by Epic’s commitment pledging $100 million to support game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing amazing things with Unreal Engine.

“At Epic Games, we are working constantly to give creators, agencies and brands the freedom and control to deliver cutting edge content, interactive experiences and immersive virtual worlds,” said John Buzzell, Enterprise Licensing Lead for Unreal Engine in the Americas. “Our customers work at a pace that demands innovation, collaboration and iteration—all at high quality. MediaMonks shares this vision, and I’m honored to invite them to the Epic MegaGrant community as they work to reinvent production processes with Unreal Engine.”

Around the world, MediaMonks’ future-forward teams are identifying opportunities to leverage game engines to drive efficiency across a variety of industries and sectors. MediaMonks aims to foundationally disrupt the production process for speed and scale, pushing the industry forward through branded 3D content that connects consumers seamlessly across digital ecosystems and builds brand love.

As consumer needs change, so do business strategies. Realizing the importance of purposeful, personalized digital experiences to their audiences, future-thinking B2B brands have seek to engage their audiences in new ways, humanizing their brand stories in the process.

In essence, this means adopting a “business to human” approach through customer-driven digital experiences. Today’s B2B customers expect an experience that is similar to the shopping they do in their personal lives. “The B2H model involves maintaining coherence while extending your offering across context and environments, and being able to break down your brand’s message into personalized variations that are relevant to a myriad of customer interests,” explains Remco Vroom (Global Head of Business, Platforms and Ecommerce, MediaMonks) and Tobias Wilson (VP Growth APAC, MediaMonks) over at Marketing Interactive.

Even with traditional production hampered by social distancing, brands can still achieve the above through more personalized, customer-driven digital experiences. Powered by CGI content, virtual demos and influencer validation, these small experiences are relatively easy for brands to begin building and offer the opportunity to plug into larger content strategies—here’s how.

Build Tactile Brand Stories Through Interactive Experiences

In B2B services, there exists a gap in delivering interactive, branded digital content that provides potential customers with the information they need to make informed purchases. According to data from Bizfeel, more than half of consumers say that the biggest drawback to shopping online is the inability to touch, feel or try a product. Without being able to try a product themselves, they turn to other avenues: 80% of business decision-makers look toward articles rather than ads for brand information.

These findings highlight a big need for brands to own their brand storytelling through interactive content that provides a good “feel experience”—a tactile experience that immerses the audience—and differentiates the brand by showcasing product features and stories. A gorgeous example is the Blue Canyon Technologies website, which features 3D graphics developed by MediaMonks. Each 3D model portrays a product in the company’s fleet of spacecraft as well as the specific components that set them apart. Visitors are invited to click on these features to learn more about them in depth, demystifying the technology against the backdrop of deep space.

CGI Content Enables Scale

B2B brand stories are powerful because they help customers better understand processes that might seem complex and abstract. To help build awareness and understanding of the HP Indigo Digital Press—an industrial printer differentiated by a unique component that allows for shorter runs—we used an existing set of CAD designs to develop a fluidly animated CGI walkthrough of its inner workings.

“When you’re looking at presses this big and complicated, you can’t move around them or look inside very easily,” says Chris Bryne, Global Program Director at MediaMonks. “It’s a way of letting people see under the hood.”

The use of renderings to produce the video also came out of a particular constraint: the product wasn’t yet manufactured, which meant there was no physical product yet to film. Today, as so many brands are experimenting with new ways to produce content while social distancing, CGI serves as an excellent example of how to tell a compelling brand story through video without a traditional shoot.

“CG assets are easy to update if features change or things are replaced,” says Byrne, noting that the technology is economical for scaling up and retailoring to other formats, too. “Experiences like these result in extra assets you can use to power different experiences across platforms.”

For example, following a video walkthrough, brands might want to add greater tangibility and intuitiveness by crafting an interactive demo with those assets, tying it into a larger customer obsession strategy. For HP, we built on the video offering by adding a WebGL demo that lets users get up close and personal with the LEPx technology that powers the Indigo printer. This way, users gain a tangible understanding of the product specifications through discovery.

Validate Your Brand Story Through Influencers

When you consider tailoring a B2H story to other platforms, don’t forget another strategy that’s risen to much fanfare in the B2C world: influencer marketing. Yes, influencer marketing does have a place in the professional world, too; in fact, 91% of B2B transactions are influenced by word of mouth.

Influencer strategies can plug into customer advocacy (lending legitimacy through success stories), employee advocacy (adding relatability through employees’ experiences) and expert advocacy. The latter includes the thought leaders and industry experts who lend credence and validation to a product or service.

Each of those strategies fit within different channels, whether you intend to raise awareness or support audiences in the consideration stage—for example, validating the decisions that customers have made. On this note, Byrne cautions that before brands get too far into establishing what kind of content their audiences need, they must first consider where those audiences fit within the customer decision journey. “Focusing on awareness or conversion gives your content a very different purpose.”

Purpose is key to delivering on the needs of your B2B audience. Whether it’s authentically relating with your audience via influencers or scaling up virtual product demoes through CGI content, seek ways to humanize your brand story by injecting interactivity through unique, personalized digital experiences.

It’s time to go Business to Human.