Editorial Articles

Graphic visualisation of 3D environments is old news in the world of gaming and consumer entertainment, but brands are seeing an opportunity for increased efficiency and reduced costs across many business sectors.

“Motion graphic visualisation has come into its own this year as a tool for channel marketing and sales techniques as a fashionable element of the digital toolbox.

Motion graphics enable designers to create realistic 3D environments into which brand clients can place a product range, POS proposals and merchandising guidelines, including cross category opportunities and suggestions. This year brands such as Carlsberg, Diversey and Bacardi Brown-Forman have taken advantage of the technologies with more looking to follow in the coming year.

The technology allows the recreation of activation plans - exact replicas of shop floors, bringing them to life in a 3D format displaying every fine detail taken from the original environment, preventing the construction of real life shop floors and demonstration units.

Some examples of stores are perfect down to every item of produce on the shelves and the viewer is effectively ‘placed’ into that store with a ‘customer’s eye’ view of the sales environment. By integrating the 3D animation with a Flash (Action Script) interface, the delivery of the information can also be filtered, for example to demonstrate specific category and sales drivers, or for highlighting product categories.

Initially 3D was used to showcase the placement of POS for brands to help face-to-face sales pitches to retailers, however, this moved swiftly on to analysing retailer behaviour and optimising placement through the eyes of the shopper as well as creating online training and merchandising visualisations.

Carlsberg identified the need to create a standout presentation to sell-in their proposals for the 2010 World Cup promotional period. This was a competitive pitch against other brewers but the tool provided a high impact – unambiguous presentation, transporting the category buyers into ‘the future’ to see how their own store could look during the tournament. Carlsberg’s Brands team has subsequently used motion graphic visualisation techniques to present their 2011 sales schedule both internally and externally.

Diversey used it to create a sales tool for its ‘Softcare Sensations’ range. This project involved creating a 3D model of a major hotel chain to help the team sell in the concept of how the product would look to the hotel’s purchasing teams. The visualisation sees the journey into a hotel room, panning through the room and into the bathroom where an innovative guest amenities product is shown in situ. The dispenser is then seen from all sides, showcasing the mechanism and detachable branded covers which are the unique selling points of the product.

In each case, both brands needed to generate cost savings and global tools for direct to consumer testing, for brands and vendors to generate and evaluate product concepts, as well as creating shopper marketing and research programmes for the retail space.

Training is also made more cost effective and reliable by generating a 3D demonstration of how a product should appear and monitoring each trainee through an online process. These techniques mean brand sales teams can demonstrate everything in virtual reality, improving the offering and effectiveness of the brands and enabling the stores to make immediate decisions while generating real cost savings. These and other business needs can be improved with the use of 3D and its usability.

I for one have already seen the opportunities in this sector grow and develop rapidly, delivering first hand results and cost savings to brand clients, and forging new opportunities for the digital discipline in business.”

Robin Horrex
Creative Director, Zone Design