What is a trend? In the social media world, it’s a topic on which we see multiple innovative posts for a short period of time. The key phrase here being ‘short period’. That’s what makes trends great. They come, they go, and you have fun while they last. This avoids saturation and keeps the audience intrigued.
What if a trend never left? What if it came, it conquered but now wants to stick around longer? Relevance is oh, so important these days. Well, that would work in case of lifestyle trends, like an easier cooking technique or a simple yet beneficial exercise.
However, the trend being referred to here isn’t a lifestyle one. It does makes lives easier – of marketers, not the audience. Case in point: CGI advertisements. To put it in a way that’s relatable – CGI ads are those relatives who visit your home but have no intention of leaving despite the many signals.
Computer-generated imagery or CGI is a quick and simple way for marketers to capture a moment and quickly have an often exaggerated social media post or campaign ready to upload. Today, CGI ads are OOH but not quite. They appear to be out in popular locations or hoardings but are really just on your digital screens.
Brands today are using the CGI format to market products, services, movies, TV shows, social campaigns and much more. The format is quite popular because they help create life-like visuals that help with relatability. Initially, CGI ads made quite a buzz. They rode the hype cycle and became quite popular.
WhatsApp’s privacy campaign at The Gateway of India in Mumbai is a great example. The campaign released in August 2023 and was an amazing concept, executed effectively. The campaign did well to grab eyeballs. Similarly, Barbie’s CGI campaign for their doll collection at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was one of the early examples of what a grand spectacle CGI can help create. The Chelsea FC kit reveal with Nike in September 2023, where the jersey was hung over the London Bridge too was a good representation of the capabilities of CGI in advertising.
Well, we’re now in 2024, a year later and the trend is still going. There’s one important aspect that helps maintain relevance in today’s age, and that is innovation. Unfortunately, the CGI ads category has seen little to no innovation ever since it ‘trended’.
We see the same concept everywhere. A large product of a brand at a popular location, a product popping out of a billboard, a plane flying with the product suspended. There’s only so much you can do. When does saturation hit? For the audience, really quick. For the marketer, well, clearly not yet.
A CGI ad would require lesser effort than an elaborate campaign. You get a prominent location at probably no cost, you get as much creative liberty as you want, and not to forget, you save on the massive production costs. It’s relatively a much easier method. Maybe, that’s why the ad fraternity loves it so much as is unwilling to let go.
CGI ads often walk on a thin line between marketing and possible misinformation. A brand recently released an ad of an Indian cricketer’s statue being erected at New York’s Time’s Square. While in it’s YouTube video, the brand did mention that the statue was a CGI creation, social media users believed it to be the truth. After all, the statue did look real.
CGI ads do still create buzz, but they have now become monotonous and quite frankly, boring. They’re the shiny new toy that became dull. But is still in use. Saturation is a funny thing and too much of anything is too bad. Repetitiveness creates not only boredom but frustration as well. Which is why trends remain short term. Which is why it is important to know when the time period of a trend has expired.
A common word in most effective advertising and marketing today is ‘insight’. It’s time brands start collecting insights more effectively on social media trends as well. CGI ads have overstayed their welcome. It is time for the relatives to finally go home.