UM’s Rasha Rteil looks at what iPhone’s ‘Live Photos’ feature means to digital content
Maybe unlike me, you were not glued to your Apple TV for the countdown to Apple’s live streaming of the release of the company’s new products. But you must have heard about the new updates from Apple. From the iPad Pro to the Apple Pencil to the new Apple TV, we are thrilled as always. However, there is one explicit, fresh feature on the iPhone 6s which I’m chiefly excited about: Live Photos.
With Live Photos, we as marketers can still see that mobile – be it as a device or its applications – is the ultimate driver of users creating the best content. What is more, we will begin to witness the most agile marketers jump on the best ‘branded Live Photo’.
In non-Apple geek jargon, a Live Photo is a picture with motion, but not quite a video. Taking a Live Photo allows you to capture a transitory moment in time, similar to Gifs and the cinemagraph, the term of which was coined by photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck. Apple’s website agreeably says: “At the heart of a Live Photo is a beautiful 12 megapixel photo. But together with that photo are the moments just before and after it was taken, captured with movement and sound.”
We snack-able, digital content junkies love getting our information quickly and efficiently. The shorter the content, the better. Live Photos are short enough to keep the audience engaged – even those with a short attention span – while being long enough to temper their curiosity.
First came photographs, then came video, then came the Gif, and now we have iPhone and Live Photos. So what does this mean for digital and social media marketers? Could it be another opportunity to produce more stimulating and disarming content?
Scrolling through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, it is easy to glimpse at a picture and then move on. Yet with Live Photos people can now see short-lived, fairy-like moments in their social feed, encouraging them to look more into the content that has been published in the past.
When most of us will be carrying an iPhone with Live Photos as a feature, we will unquestionably be hungry to see new content created by our friends and brands using this feature. Social networks like Facebook are already working on an update to support Live Photos.
The swifter you are to publish striking Live Photos that are pertinent to your brand, the more engagement and interaction you will acquire. This is how you show that as a brand, a business and a content creator you are on top of new technology and are able to strategically integrate it into your digital and social media content now.
If you are a fizzy drink, capture that ‘two-second moment’ of someone joyfully opening your bottle to quench their thirst. Baby brand? Ask mothers to capture their baby’s sudden sweet smile, collect and campaign it. Amusement park? No problem. Two seconds of sliding down that terrifying roller-coaster signifies ‘epic awesome moments’ at your park. Voila. Branded content by brands, and brand relevant user-generated content to ride on.
Technology is seemingly steering creativity into a cluttered pool of branded social content. We are witnessing the evolution of other video and photography gadgets such as GoPro and drones in many experiential forms, such as Lily and Nixie, a wearable camera which can fly. With that I simply ask: can technology be separated from creating distinctive forms of content?
Rasha Rteil is head of Innovation & UM Labs at UM MENA