The Ad Club Media Innovation Day: Highlights & Takeaways
As one of the leading animation studios and illustration studios in Boston, our team was invited by The Ad Club to attend Media Innovation Day 2024. This event brings digital media’s “brightest minds and industry leaders” together to “explore the latest trends, technologies, and creative strategies” that are shaping how we interact with media (The Ad Club).
Read below to learn more about Bob Ferrari (President) & Jackie Karnoff’s (Creative Manager) experience.
Keynote Speech: A Culture of Innovation
The event started strong with Gogi Gupta’s presentation on company culture, which emphasized the importance of fostering a strong, values-driven environment that prioritizes innovation and agility. As the founder of Gupta Media, he shared insights into how creating a positive and collaborative culture not only strengthens internal teams but also leads to better outcomes for clients. Gupta also highlighted the significance of transparency and trust within an organization. He shared examples of how his company’s focus on communication and employee empowerment has been key to maintaining high levels of productivity and creativity—especially in an industry that is constantly evolving.
Intersections of AI & Media
A major focus was on the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in media and marketing. AI is being used to enhance personalized advertising to streamlining creative production processes. Attendees discussed how AI tools, such as large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, are transforming search functionalities, media planning, and consumer engagement, especially in platforms like Google and TikTok.
Our company uses Machine Learning (ML), a subset of AI technology, when designing Augmented Reality (AR) effects for brands on TikTok & Snapchat. With our custom AR effects, brands can personalize digital marketing experiences for their target audiences. When combined with ML & AI, our AR effects become more personal; more realistic; more interactive.
3 C's - Creativity, Collaboration, and Community
Community-driven partnerships was another key trend we learned more about from Later’s Mikayla Caprio. Collaboration with content creators and influencers has shown to be a wildly successful way to create product awareness and engagement. Overall social media is where brands should be focusing their marketing efforts and spend.
In addition, there were a few case studies of recent marketing campaigns that featured cutting-edge omnichannel strategies that utilized new spaces to advertise in like Zillow, video games, and conventions with great success.
Interested in something unique for your brand?
Bid on our services at the Ad Club Media auction.
Bare Tree Media is a full-service creative studio and digital publisher creating super slick, mobile-facing content! We would love to help your brand reach its fans, build community, and increase digital sales revenue. Check out our IP Licensing & Digital Publishing pages to see our IPs, as well as branded experiences we’ve published for mobile platforms.
By auctioning off our creative services at The Ad Club’s Media Auction, we are able to support the local advertising community and Ad Club’s first-generation scholarship/internship program. Bidding ends October 4th—click below to bid before it’s too late!
The Best of Snap Summit 2020
Like most recent events, this year’s Snapchat Summit was adapted virtually; it might seem like a no-brainer for a company whose expertise is in AR and the digital realm—but if anything, this year’s summit has proven Snapchat’s ambition of bridging the gap between between augmented reality, and reality.
If the theme of Snapchat up until now has been “show, don’t tell,” the mantra they’ve adopted moving forward seems to be “experience, don’t show”. What this means for brands is that Snapchat has uniquely positioned itself to allow artists & studios to create unique, branded AR experiences that transcend the digital sphere.
Below we highlighted the features that our AR team is most excited about, as well as how they can be utilized to elevate users’ AR experiences.
Local Lenses
These dynamic lenses use real-life locations (whole areas or specific buildings) to create a unified AR experience that different Snapchatters can share, as long as they’re in the same physical space.
In the example, multiple people are creating a mural of different colors on one shared space using multiple phones. This added experiential element creates a unified experience that exists wholly online but that facilitates physical community.
Photo Courtesy of Snapchat
Photo Courtesy of Snapchat
Snap Scan & Marker Lenses
Scan Partners allows the camera to recognize an item and then attaches it to a specific lens. The examples Snapchat used were a plant-identifer that, when clicked, would provide information on how to care for that plant (including links to buy those items).
When Louis Vuitton’s logo is scanned in real life in Snapchat, a virtual door to their latest showroom opens highlighting classic and current collections in a virtual showroom. Too-Faced marked their ‘Born This Way’ product packaging—so when scanned, users can try it on virtually.
Marker lenses eliminate the need to advertise via Snapcode.
SnapML
SnapML (Machine Learning) lets developers bring their own machine-learning models to power Snap lenses. This allows for the creation of extremely accurate tracking of faces, gestures, feet, and even landmarks such as buildings.
You can see the practical application that Wannaby has used: they created a try-it-on filter that lets users see their newest shoe in a variety of colors (yes, that shoe is AR, not real).
In short, SnapML has destroyed many creative boundaries that previously existed—the new “brand experience” is limited (mostly) by what you can imagine .vs. by technology.
Photo Courtesy of Snapchat
Photo Courtesy of Snapchat
Places
Snapchat is making it easier than ever to integrate call-to-actions within their app and lenses. One example of this is “Places”, which lead to an outside-Snap call to action such as ordering a physical product online, whether it’s that new lipstick or food from their favorite delivery spot! This would be especially crucial for smaller businesses that need to receive local support.
In the example, users can search their favorite restaurants on Snapchat’s in-app map feature. From this search, Snapchatters will have access to price point, reviews, hours, contact information, directions, and nearby community snaps.
Integration SnapKits
If your brand has an existing app, Snapchat will now let you integrate their technology with it in order to create a new layer of interaction with your fans. This is more abstract in thought but can be applicable to any number of brands across any discipline.
Rally Road is an app that is meant for classic car investments but has integrated Snapchat’s CreativeKit to let users purchase shares in rare items and share them with their friends in a unique AR environment.
There are numerous types of kits available, each with their own unique perks:
- AdKit – makes monetizing apps easy with SnapAds
- CreativeKit – allows apps to bring real-time data into Snapchat
- CameraKit – brings the power os Snapchat camera to your apps
Photo Courtesy of Snapchat
Where do I start?
If you’re interested leveraging Snapchat for any of the above uses, a qualified creative studio is your best bet, since we know the ins-and-outs of not only best creative practices to create an attractive filter but can also help determine which strategy is the way to go.
We here at Bare Tree Media would love to collaborate with any artist, strategist, or brand who’s just as pumped about these new Snapchat features as we are! You can take a look to see the lenses we’ve already created or contact us below for more information.
Give 'em the Ol' Razzle Dazzle: Digital Painting Applications in Messaging Stickers
Obi here!
As a digital illustrator at BTM my job requires me to cover everything from illustrating and creating images from scratch, to working on and building off of already existing assets.
Because of this, I have to be able to work in a variety of different styles, especially when it comes to working with already existing assets. An instance of this is BTM’s messaging stickers for Zagtoon’s Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir.
To start this project BTM was supplied with a variety of assets, which included a mix of expertly rendered illustrations of Ladybug and Chat Noir, the two main characters from the show, and images of the 3D models used in the show. While the 3D models were fine, they were also distinctly different from the finished illustrations. When building a sticker pack keeping a consistent art style across the board is key. As the digital illustrator on the project it is my job to give em’ the ol’ razzle dazzle.
The first step in this process is addressing why some of the art looks different than others. The main difference is the hair, eyes, lighting and the places where the limbs got cut out of frame.
Next comes roughing out the general form over the 3d model, this includes adding parts that got cutout of frame and taking away the hard edges of the hair, so that it can be painted back to look less like a hard plastic model and more like actual hair.
After the general form has been established the forms and textures get refined and detailed. This stage includes painting her hair, eyes, touching up various parts of her face and further refining the areas of her figure were extended.
With some of the details, such as the mesh texturing on Ladybug’s body suit, it was faster to extract the pattern from other areas of her suit, build the flat texture in another document, and map it to the areas that required it.
With the form and details rendered, it’s time for lighting. With various blend modes and opacity layers I simulated more dynamic, colored lighting, which further pushed the contrast and helped to match the style of illustration used in the finished assets BTM received.
To finish the edits, a final rendering of any small details and a layer of low level noise to unify the piece are applied.
Voila! C’est Ladybug!