Best Practice: delivering the goods with retail creative

If you are trying to promote your product(s) using Inskin, we have found the best success comes from creating a narrative; and the most effective narrative is one in which we are solving a problem.

An example of this is a world in which you are craving a sweet treat (a scenario that people can imagine themselves in) and then framing your product as the perfect go-to in this scenario.

Historically video has been the default medium for this kind of story, then baked in with print media referencing it; High Impact Digital (Inskin) creates a seamless blend between these mediums and can use both sets of assets to their fullest potential. So with that in mind, here are my top 3 recommendations on how to create the perfect retail ad, using Inskin:

1) Set the scene - A great ad will do 3 things: know its audience, identify the problem and solve it.

With Gillette, they wanted to advertise their entire range of King.C.Gillette products, but so as to not overwhelm the audience, they categorised the customers by facial hair lengths into 3 groups Beards, Subtle and Clean Shaven. They then provided solutions for each group as they scrolled down the page.

Audience: All men with facial hair.

Problem: We want to advertise our full range, but understand that no one user would buy everything.

Solution: Sub categorise your audience and show custom solutions to each group.

2) Avoid clutter - If you have too much on display on the page at once, the user will become screen blind, so make room for your message.

Gillette showed their entire range in the header but decided to leave the sides empty until the user scrolled down the page. All Inskin products have a built-in secondary animation trigger built-in, and Gillette took full advantage of this, teasing the entire range at the top, and then displaying one product at a time as you scrolled down the page.

3) Animate to enhance not annoy - Animation is a great way to get the users attention, but too much can have the opposite effect and make the user actively look away as it can become irritating. We have found that active animation should last no longer than 20 seconds (large elements arriving on the page) However passive animation (subtle continuous animation) can gently bring the user's eye back onto the content.

Gillette launched this campaign around Christmas, therefore used a subtle continuous snow animation in the background to give the creative a festive feeling and make the creative more visually appealing.