Korean Agency Innored On The Personalisation Of Video

Korean Digital Agency Innored On The Personalisation Of Video

Innored, one of Korea's premier digital agencies, had a strong 2012 with the release of a pair of innovative interactive campaigns for LG and Innisfree. 'Life's Good', the LG film, was shot in Warner Bros studio and contains a highly choreographed dance routine that personally connects with the viewer. 'Shoot Ad with Yoona', the Innisfree offering, allowed smartphone owners to virtually interact with Korean star Im Yoona.

Both campaigns utilise video content in a way that engages with audience by casting them in the work and allowing them to share the results. We chatted to Park Hyun Woo (CEO of Innored) about the importance of personalization in digital campaigns, and how video can mark work out for attention.

Two of your most recent digital campaigns (LG and Innisfree) use video content as a driving force for engagement. Do you think that consumers are drawn towards video more than other forms?

Consumers are already familiar with video content through television. Recently, the 'Gangnam Style' music video was viewed more than a billion times. This fact may be strong evidence for the change of delivery method for video content. For a long time, television was the only medium for the video content. However, since many digital platforms such as YouTube have become major social networks, videos are no longer the exclusive property of television.

Any media can be very creative, but we believe video has more power to deliver the message as well as the story. Therefore, we always seek new ways for interactive technology to communicate with consumers based on the emotional stories.

The LG site uses photos and automated voices to personalise the content. Do you think that elements like this appeal to the vanity of users?

The answer for this question may be very simple. For example, what is the first thing you do when you receive the graduation photo album? Yes, look for your own photo. What's the most audible word in the middle of a noisy party? That will be someone is calling your name.

These facts tell that consumers like to see and hear things related to them.

"A Chinese proverb says, tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand." - Marketing 3.0: From Products to Customers to the Human Spirit by PHILIP KOTLER

We call the above statement 'Me Theory' and started involving consumers to personalise the contents.
 

The Innisfree campaign is particularly clever, asking users to create and share their own advert using the tool you've created. Is sharability an important element in designing for digital? What's key in ensuring users will want to pass the content on to friends?

In a technical way, the Innisfree campaign is the very first mobile campaign which combines pre-recorded video and the user's. But the importance is not only limited to the technology; the objective of the campaign is more important.

The objective of this campaign was to increase consumer's confidence by proving anyone can star in an advertisement with a celebrity. In other words, they don't need to be smart, handsome, rich or famous since every single one of them is very special already. We induced users to create various creative adverts by interacting with the celebrity in several different situations.

Since people like to boast and keep autographs of celebrities, there is no doubt that users will want to share their own creation featuring the celebrity.

The key in ensuring that users will want to pass the content onto friends is inducing the user's enthusiastic participation by personalizing the contents for users to share it spontaneously.

How does shooting for interactive/digital differ from a normal video production shoot? Do you employ interactive specialists on the production side?

Basically, the process of shooting interactive, digital and normal video productions are very similar. However, Interactive shooting requires further detailed plans on the angles, lights and props. Therefore we always double check validity of the technology with technical director from the beginning.
 

Has the advent of social media aided the personalisation of content? Essentially they are self-maintained people databases, so jam-packed with potential items to incorporate.

We believe that the advent of social media is a natural process of the evolution of the communication method. The word 'communication' is from the Latin 'communis', meaning to share. So far, communication methods have evolved from talking, drawing, writing, and phone-calls to the mobile. Since social media is being used as platforms to share information online, we believe that the advent of social media is the next step of communication. There is no doubt that social media is jam-packed with potential items to incorporate since it contains individual information as well as their surroundings. And the range of the information will expand more and more. The graph search which was recently released on Facebook describes the expandability of collected data. Perhaps, we might face another evolution of communication within a very short period of time.

Where do you look to for digital/interactive inspiration?

We regularly receive and study various creations through RSS in many different areas, but the most important things for inspiration are experiences and detailed observation on objects and phenomena.

Do you tend to research the technology first and then apply it to a brand's brief, or use the brief as a starting point and source the technology to fulfill it?

We use the brief as a starting point and source the technology to fulfill the advertisement. We spend a lot of time on focusing the brief. We believe our strength lies on the creative imagination and are open to the technology. We believe there are no major difficulties on applying the technology to an idea.

Is there anything you guys want to do that the technology hasn't caught up with yet?

We believe nothing is impossible in a technical sense, but the environment of the user is a different story. It will be pointless if we don't consider the environment of the user even if we apply the latest, most innovative technology. Currently, most of the users' environment is limited to the visual and auditory senses only. But if users' environment supports the olfactory sense (smell) and the tactual sense, we might create much more interesting and effective involvement.

Are there any brands/products that you feel wouldn't work with interactive digital?

We doubt if there are any brands/products that wouldn't work with interactive digital. Eventually, it all needs to communicate with consumers rather than delivering the message only. We believe our role is to support more interesting communication between brands/products and consumers.

What's on the slate for the rest of 2013?

We think that the future of Innored lies in continuously keeping up with R&D. Normally many agencies hesitate to combine creativity and the technology due to difficulty. But we believe the technology is one of the keys of success to inspire creativity. Therefore every single employee in Innored spends a lot of time studying the new technologies in order to be familiar with it for unlimited innovative creativity.

Posted on 26th March 2013