2023 E-commerce Trends Webinar - A lookback
In October 2022, Kevin joined Pixelz Webinar as a Guest Speaker, discussing e-commerce visuals, challenges and content trends for the year ahead.
Today, we invite you to join us in revisiting this conversation. We'll summarise the key points below and assess how it remains relevant in the context of the year ahead.
We've also provided a link below to the full video on Pixelz YouTube channel for your reference.
The Webinar was hosted by Aleksandra Panyukhina, Experience Marketing Lead, Pixelz.
Three main themes were discussed in the webinar,
Trend 1: The Rise of Video Content
Jump to the Video topic here 7.33
we discuss how at the end of 2022 Video was not a consistent experience. Brands faced many challenges to bring consistency, not just in tone and style but in technical ways such as Lighting the Product.
Trend 2: Branding and Authenticity
We discuss some of the complexities of authenticity vs maintaining production output. The challenge of multiple or singular brand voice across social and PDP imagery.
Jump to the Branding topic here 13.17
Trend 3: Studios and Brand Story (Retails Experiential Trend)
We discuss how your customer should feel part of the brand and content creation. Kevin outlined how there is potential for the studio to become a space that is aligned to the brand store experience.
Jump to Social Media conversation here 18.37
Impact in 2023 : Video Growth and Technical Solutions.
Has 2023 brought changes in this area?
LED lighting has certainly improved and is continuing to grow as a real alternative for Strobe. More LED product has come to market in 2023.
How does this help? The huge benefit of LED in ecommerce and content creation studios is ability to switch between Stills and Video with ease and great colour accuracy. LED is cheap to run, low heat and low noise output, ideal for Video but with care can also work well for Stills.
You can read more on that subject here.
To hear more opinions on LED we also discuss this subject with Industry Expert Daniel Jester in this podcast. Led vs Strobe at 33mins
Impact in 2023 :The Year of Authenticity
One of the key elements we discussed at the time was the awareness of a growing demand of authenticity for 2023 and beyond.
from 14.23 Aleksandra : “ …everybody.. wants to purchase and align themselves with the brands who share the same values and not just share them in a passive way”
Kevin : I think one of the things you see particularly with Gen Z now is that they want to help inform the brand values. They don't want brand values to talk to them; they want to be involved in that process.
Did this impact in 2023?
As the year closes we have seen a huge focus on customers expecting brand values to be visible and consistent. It could be seen as a pivotal year in the ongoing dialogue between customers and brands. Conflict has mobilised a large customer base focused on Boycott and Campaigning.
Key themes have centered on values, ethics, and sustainability. This conversation extends to Content Creators, Studios, and Social platforms, underscoring that in today's landscape, Everything is Social.
Brand Story and Studio Design :
At 20.19 in the video Kevin touches on how Studios/Content Creation is often treated as a hidden part of the Brand Story.
At the close of 2022 this was worrying as it was clear all the boundaries were dissolving as to how GenZ view and Consume content.
From our side, we saw a lift in 2023 of clients wanting to create more of an experiential feel in-house studios. We collaborated with Brand Creative to enhance the In-store and Flagship feel of In-house studio working environment.
We predict this to grow more in 2024.
In Summary
It was really intriguing to revisit this discussion from a year ago, to see the themes we discussed and their relevance. Whilst authenticity was a big topic, many brands are still struggling with the challenge of how to convert this into actual content. Its easy to land well on Social with authentic content but less easy to navigate for PDP.
How closely did the discussion align with the issues you faced or were being discussed in-house for 2023?
Quick Takeaways : What can you put in place for 2024?
Communication Tools
Studios will always benefit from fast communication with the brand, and in particular with Social Media teams. Workflow systems will help, but equally vital is strong relationship building within the brand and the studio teams.
Social Teams
Social Media should be heavily integrated into the studio, for providing feedback and guidance, but also being involved in Creative.
Brand Values and Authenticity
Possibly the biggest discussion point of 2023, especially on TikTok. It became Merriam-Webster’s word of the year and brands need to build on this in 2024. How can you ensure brand values are coming into Content Creation?
Acknowledge The continuing dominance of Video
TikTok has become the most downloaded App, almost 1 Billion downloads in 2023 alone. Kevin talks more about the surge of TikTok here. It is a continued challenge to bring this into studio content creation in a meaningful way.
We will address all of these topics in upcoming posts, as 2024 looks to be a challenging but pivotal year for ecommerce.