Video advertising

Video Ad for Nestlé

The Swiss Facebook team, based in Geneva, got in touch asking us to help conceive and edit social media versions of video ads produced for Nestlé.

The goal was to show the Swiss food giant that it could get far more mileage out of its expensive video ads than it was currently getting.

Anything extraneous was dropped. This project was a perfect opportunity to put the spirit behind our company name into action: making smart cuts to content so that only the best remained – the best being determined by the goals and the circumstances. As we all know, ROI is key. Facebook sent a producer to the SmartCuts studio. Together, we worked on recasting three of Nestlé’s top performing ads for social media.

Watch the full series of video ads and read the full case study.

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Video for the web and television is, nowadays, almost exclusively made in 16:9 aspect ratio, but this is not ideal for social media platforms, which people often visit on their smartphones, held vertically, and in circumstances where listening to the audio may not be an option.

With the Facebook producer, SmartCuts video editors worked on converting these video ads to 9:16 ratio and adding text bubbles in animation to drive the message in a simple way, replacing the need for audio to understand. We also cut the videos much shorter. Even though the original video ads were already fairly compact, for social media marketing, we needed something even tighter. Facebook and SmartCuts worked together to make intelligent cuts so that the best and most important parts of the full video ads were retained.

components animated to show how they work and, above all, to create an impression of quality and efficiency. Producing this kind of video ad is one of SmartCuts’ specialties, as we produce many complex animated films. Video advertising is, of course, indispensable. At a time when Internet users’ attention must be captivated in less than 5 seconds, it is imperative for brands to stand out. We all know it: a picture is worth a thousand words. Video advertising is nowadays an essential part of creative content marketing to engage viewers.

We have produced a number of video ads for Nespresso. Some for external use; some for internal communications, notably interviews and live panels with top management, as well as video ads to promote events and internal competitions.

For one edition of the so-called Gold Capsule Competition, we decided to make something of a parody of the famous George Clooney video ads. For another, we got Nespresso staff to shoot quick selfie videos explaining what they got out of participating in the previous year’s edition of the competition.

In addition to the video ads, we have helped Nespresso with website design and content, notably for the firm’s new careers website, for which we did all the photography as well.

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This was the case for a video ad series we produced for CNN in canton Jura. The region’s tourism office wanted to showcase attractions and economic heavy-weights, and those very same famous watchmakers all wanted the publicity on a channel that reaches hundreds of millions of viewers. To produce this series we worked closely with all stakeholders to draft detailed storyboards so that each sortie to the Jura would be as efficient and effective as possible, thereby providing an optimal return on investment.

Unfortunately, the autumn was not an ideal season for exterior shoots, and it was impossible to align CEO availability with moments of sunshine, so a lot of the outside shots are a bit grey. The drone videographer was particularly frustrated, as these were great opportunities to bring back quality footage.

Nevertheless, the video ad series was a big success and well received by Zenith, Longines, Swatch and Omega, as well as CNN and Jura’s tourism office.

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Our mission was to cast the tool as a new, magical gadget while showing off its smart and superior design. Our first thought was the tooth-fairy, but this soon gave way to a genie because of the “wish” connotation. Indeed, many dentists no doubt wish they had a more convenient tool, so the message to convey became, “Don’t you wish you had something like this when you do a root canal?”

The challenge that the dentist and patient had to be real. We decided to embed them in a virtual, clean and simple comic strip like version of a dental cabinet, which meant, of course, shooting on green screen. But we could not do this in our studio, given the complexity of moving a dental office chair and all the equipment there, so we opted for a portable green-screen introduced into a dental office and moved around as need be for the shoot.

It was not easy dealing with the reflections and bleed in post-production, but a bit of rotoscoping got us through the sticky parts. A nice sound mix, a few effects, some savvy 3D animation and bingo! We had our ad. Produits Dentaires were thrilled with the results and are using this video in trade fairs around the world, as well as online naturally.

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