Last night’s inaugural Vine Journalism Awards at Twitter’s
NYC HQ provided a fascinating insight into the use of short-form video as a
marketing and branding tool.
Guests were treated to a Q&A with Meagan Cignoli, who has rapidly
become a high-profile exponent of the Vine and Instagram genres since winning a
bronze award at the Cannes Cyber Lions this year for her Fix in Six campaign work with ad agency
BBDO on Lowe’s home improvement stores. Here’s an example of her work:
She has produced about 50 Vines for Lowe’s and her phone has
been ringing off the hook ever since with other brands and businesses wanting
to tap into short-form video. She now works with a couple of colleagues and has
set up an outfit called Visual Country to meet demand: she shoots five days a
week and works all seven days.
Photographer and filmmaker
Meagan stumbled into Vine about 18 months ago when messing around with stop
motion. She advises brands to keep it as simple as possible, though some shoots
do require 2-3 days to set up and produce. She finds it’s important to get the
treatment and storyboard signed off before setup and to settle on the caption
that’s going with the film – otherwise you effectively have to start again from
scratch.
Her frustrations are few, but one is that clients book her
on a day rate and expect an inexhaustible quantity of creativity in that time,
which isn’t always the best formula for effective work. She would also like the
facility to save drafts in Vine as at the moment her small team has to carry
around over a dozen phones and devices.
What she does is simple, yet stunningly effective, and
surprisingly creative given the discipline of working within six seconds.
