Dive Brief:

• After quickly pivoting to work-from-home scenarios and addressing associated challenges, 62% of creative agencies now expect to ramp up their number of video productions going forward, and 34% anticipate their online video output services to increase as well, according to a new IPV report shared with Marketing Dive.
• Creative agencies were confronted with several challenges as production quickly moved to remote workflows during the pandemic, including slow Wi-Fi, limited access to content from outside networks, issues with software licenses on home equipment, poor performance of home equipment, creative slumps and difficulty honing briefs due to remote working.
• Additional findings of the report, titled " The Future of Video for Creative Agencies By the World's Leading Creative Agencies," include that 92% of digital marketers believe video is an important part of their strategy and that companies using video are seeing revenues grow almost 50% faster than those that don't.

Dive Insight:

Creative agencies were forced to quickly shut down any productions that required live shoots during the pandemic's early days. IPV's report suggests that video remains a top priority for creative agencies despite new challenges that come with remote production, which should be welcome news for brands as consumers' video viewership grows during lockdown.

IPV's report looks at how creative agencies Foote, Cone, and Belding (FCB), Wavemaker, GMR and Mustache adjusted to new circumstances such as shifting work to post-production. Additionally, 63% say they want to leverage cloud-based tools to assist with video production.

Mustache adjusted by creating a list of creative assets with in-home studios and professional lighting rigs to allow shoots be remotely directly and files loaded to the cloud for review in near real time, per a blog post about the report.

For shoots that could take place in person, FCB adjusted by keeping crews to the minimum number of people, utilizing private properties, ensuring social distancing and providing protective equipment.

Wavemaker took an in-the-works ad campaign for a client and turned it into a user-generated content competition, with winners selected via Instagram polls and the videos repackaged as memes. The effort garnered 1,300 participants and 5,000 shares. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all facets of business to fundamentally reset, and many brands are rethinking their strategies in how they engage consumers.

A range of brands this year have adjusted to remote production needs. Chrysler tapped actress Kathryn Hahn for a video campaign to promote its Pacifica model. The "Pacifica Mom on Quarantine" ad was shot remotely with an iPhone and directed by a team back in the office. In the ad, Hahn hangs out in her Pacifica in a driveway, using the vehicle to hide out from her family. Alone in the car, the actress jokes about the challenges of family life on lockdown.

Frito-Lay brand Doritos is currently running a user-generated ad competition that calls on fans to create the first new Doritos commercial to air since before the pandemic. Doritos will select 15 winners from the "Crash from Home" contest and splice their videos together in a compilation video.

These examples show how marketing has evolved with in-person shoots mostly shuttered. Creative agencies and production studios have sent out small teams for socially distanced shoots and are relying on archival footage or user-generated video campaigns, illustrating what the future of video may look like.