In an ever-changing media landscape brands face the difficult challenge of balancing speed and quality
Life comes at you fast. And it feels like it's getting faster.
The speed of society is accelerating exponentially in the smartphone era. Our fingers scroll across screens at speed. News moves fast. Timelines move fast. New trends and fads emerge and fade with ever-shortening half-lives.
Brands are feeling the pressure to keep pace. Across industries, brands are creating - and publishing - content faster than ever before. The results are current, but chaotic. And this has become the norm.
You can understand why. Some studies suggest that people spend only 47 seconds, on average, focusing on any given screen before their attention wanders elsewhere. Platforms like TikTok, Twitter and Instagram all tap into this desire for fast-paced, bite-sized content. Creators and consumers swim in endless waves of fads and phases - and brands are sometimes able to effectively follow the current.
And sometimes they get it wrong. Just like creators, brands can be too quick to jump onto the latest trend - before assessing if it really fits the needs and preferences of its audience.
It is challenging to find the right balance between moving fast, and creating content which feels polished and on-brand.
Oisín James Deady, Co-founder & Managing Partner of TwelveA.M.
There is a certain need for speed on social. You have to grab attention - and fast. Stats suggest that TikTok has the best engagement rate with an average of 4.25% (and this drops to just 0.60% for second-placed Instagram). But it’s getting even harder to catch attention too - with engagement rates falling by 28% each year.
This shortening attention span means brands will feel even more pressure to move fast and often. But quantity doesn’t have to mean a compromise on quality or creativity.
The TikTok era has brands mimicking consumers by creating quick and rough content. But this isn’t the only way audiences are consuming content. We are in a golden-age of content production. Netflix, Disney and Amazon have hundreds of millions of subscribers because people want high-quality content with world-class production.
This doesn’t change when we pick up our phones.
It is challenging to find the right balance between moving fast, and creating content which feels polished and on-brand. It takes a great strategist and creative team to be able to deliver a consistent brand tone-of-voice. Often it gets muddied with various different people or agencies manning different accounts.
Different brands will have different needs. Some will be able to naturally stretch into adjacent spaces and piggyback popular trends. Others will feel out of place outside of their lane. To understand where your brand should be, you need to know where your audience are and what they expect.
According to a recent survey, the main reason people use social media is to keep in touch with their friends and family. In these moments they are likely not going to engage with branded content. But the second reason people use social is to tackle boredom. These are the moments in which brands can stand out and engage audiences - and the best way to grab attention is through high-quality content which appears to the right people at the right time.
Earlier this year we built an emotionally-driven, socially-led campaign for Tiffany&Co. to mark the launch of their Lock Collection across multiple territories. The very highest quality content is paramount when dealing with a luxury brand but so too is the approach to storytelling which is why the campaign featured over 100 assets including video, still imagery and audio notes to develop a holistic form of storytelling that felt intimate and evolved beyond traditional creator content.
We cast localised talent, featuring stars of cult TV series The White Lotus Beatrice Grannò and Simona Tabasco as well as Ncuti Gatwa and Yasmin Finney. The content adopted nostalgic and intimate artefacts of connection and friendship from each talent, with handwritten notes, photobooth strips, boarding passes, drawings and poems, demonstrating a level of depth within the narrative.
The results exceeded all expectations, proving the power of this approach. Tiffany & Co saw a 117% increase in in-store appointments, 3.2 times ROI and an incredible 60% of people opting to watch the digital ad in full.
“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Brands don’t need to rush to create content. They need to create content which makes people stop and watch, even if they are in a rush.
Quality beats quantity every time. Success on social is about more than just throwing out content and seeing what sticks, as every failed attempt only serves to undermine the clarity of a brand in the eyes of your audience.
The world feels like it is getting faster and faster. But sometimes the best way for brands to keep pace is to slow down, and make something which encourages audiences to do the same.
OJ Deady is Co-Founder & Managing Partner of premium creative content agency TwelveA.M. Based in London and having recently moved from his role as Creative Director OJ has and continues to oversee creative direction for brands including billion-dollar celebrity cult-beauty brand Augustinus Badder, global retailer Reserved, and Tiffany&Co. The agency is focussed on telling real people's stories and fully committed to understanding their subjects and telling their stories in an unguarded and authentic way, with great respect for what goes into narrative-driven and honest imagery. OJ's current focus is on growing the team and expanding their portfolio in the luxury space.
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