How Unpolished Content Became Mainstream During This Pandemic

Covid-19 has made all of us adopt many new trends, including consuming self-made content. Many brands have made such lo-fi videos during these times. This is really because when it comes to video, people often care more about the message than the format and production quality. Due to this very reason, brands put in all their efforts to generate solutions that connect with people on an emotional or practical level.

Very recently I saw a Cannes Lions’ video, where RPA Advertising's Tim Leake spoke about how raw and unpolished content became mainstream this year, where he also shows us the beauty of ugly and he believes, connecting with the consumer is more important than the quality of the content created.

As I believe, bigger budgets don’t always lead to better ideas, and at the same time, self-shot content enables brands to keep moving through the pandemic and capture genuine moments, with an added benefit of lower costs. Above that, brands need to create content continuously to maintain the consistency in putting out the message to improve the top of the mind brand recall.

Also for audiences, consuming self-generated media and content, will make the essence of that content more relatable from an individual's point of view. 

A professionally crafted production approach to advertising will still benefit brands in the future, and also to re-purpose at a later stage. However, we should also embrace the smartphone as a strategic option that offers an alternate approach for brands.

We came across so many beautiful pieces of such content during this lock-down. Sharing some of them that caught my attention during this time:

1.Parked Cars Can Run Families by Acko Life Insurance: Here we can see the ad uses humor to encourage people to support their household staff. The landlord is making a salary transfer to his driver and when he’s called out on his bigheartedness, he points to the fact that paying household staff is the right thing to do and is easily done from the savings of not running the car during this time. The entire video was shot in-house, to be precise, they were shot at the actors’ house itself.

2. Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hein by Asian Paints: Asian Paints featured scores of real home videos showcasing various moments from people’s homes as they spend time together. In its line accompanying the advertisement, the company said, “Ki jab sab Ghar mein ho… Ghar khilkhilata rehta hai (When everyone is home, the home keeps laughing)”. 

3. COVID Pandemic saw a major change in the way how photo-shoots were happening, Globally and locally. We could see how virtual photo-shoots were happening through Face Time. This enabled photographers to do the shoot virtually when the models are at their homes. This opens up a huge opportunity in this particular sector.

4. Digital content creators have kept all of us engaged throughout during these tough times, and those content were also shot lo-fi, but what kept us engaged was the essence of those videos and also the way how various props are used to create various characters. One such great example can be Danish Sait, who made brilliant characters like Bevarsi Kudka, Ram Murthy Avre, Jaya, etc. with just normal props like cloth bags, spectacles, toys, etc. Also Building uncle series by Rahul Subramanian, which he started posting them on Instagram, but he eventually started posting them on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn TG can actually relate to that particular series of content.

Though in many parts of our country, we can see full-fledged production is back, We may still use smartphones to create quick, digestible pieces of content that will be relatable and also will cost lesser. I would say, we have just started to explore the potential of smartphones. There are a wide plethora of things that content creators and brands are yet to explore with this format of content.