by Jen Bergen | Feb 2, 2015 | Company News
Like winning an Oscar
Though Hollywood’s biggest night is still a few weeks away, those in the recruitment advertising industry had their Oscars last week. The 25th annual RAD Awards (Recruitment Advertising and Design), which celebrate the very best in recruitment communications and are considered by recruitment marketing professionals to be on par with winning an Oscar, took place January 29 in London.
The judges behind the RAD Awards, who come from prestigious agencies such as TMP Worldwide and Bernard Hodes, look at the world’s best direct recruiters, agencies, and HR professionals and dub the high honor of a RAD Award to those that “produced outstanding recruitment campaigns through innovation, skill and effectiveness.”
Innovation, skill, and effectiveness are the key words here, and they definitely apply to the winners of the “Candidate Interaction (Including Gamification, Competitions)” category: Havas People and Anheuser-Busch InBev.
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 27, 2015 | Project Examples
Marketing automation is quickly becoming a must-have in not only the marketing world but also in the world of online video. In fact, one of our 2015 online video predictions is that more and more video creators will use marketing automation to make their videos smarter. We’ve seen remarkable results from combining interactive video with marketing automation – and inContact’s recent interactive video project integrated with Eloqua is a perfect example.
In the first six weeks of the video being live on inContact’s site, the company saw a 100 percent increase in conversions and $500K in new pipeline opportunities. So how did inContact do it?
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 20, 2015 | How-Tos and Tips, In the Media
[Editor’s Note 4/13/15: You missed the window to download the Forrester report. If you want to learn more about what Forrester Research is saying about interactive video, watch the on-demand webinar here.]
Last year, Forrester Research released “Move Beyond Awareness With Interactive Video,” a comprehensive report on the benefits of interactive video. The stats and figures that came out of the research are thought provoking and impressive, and we’ve been using them as proof points for how interactive video can help companies see higher completion rates, engagement, and ROI with their online video content.
But instead of just telling you about all these points, we wanted to share the report* in its entirety with you can see why Forrester recommends interactive video, and so that you can get the full-picture-view of what interactive video is and how it’s changing the way we produce and present content.
Though it’s normally $499 to download the report from Forrester itself, we’ve licensed it for a short period of time, so make sure to download the report today*.
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by Erika Trautman | Dec 23, 2014 | In the Media, Mobile and HTML5
This article was originally published on Forbes.com on 12/8/14.
The online video industry moves quickly. As the year comes to an end, we’re already contemplating what’s in store for online video in 2015. For marketers and publishers alike, the new year creates a tremendous opportunity to shake off the shackles of everyday execution, start thinking big for 2015, and determine how to deliver a new level of sophistication, user engagement, and results.
From mobile video to marketing automation to digital-first programming, here’s how we see today’s emerging trends growing into marketing must-haves in 2015.
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by Jen Bergen | Dec 18, 2014 | Project Examples
Have you decided what type of cookie you will bring to your company party or family gathering this holiday season? If the answer is no, you’re in luck. You can find your cookie inspiration with our Interactive Baking Experience.
This time last year, we launched our first episode of “Baking with Jonathan,” an interactive baking experience hosted by our VP of Engineering, Jonathan Woodard. We had so much fun creating it, that we decided to come back for Year 2. Though Jonathan loved making his mom’s bourbon pecan pie last year, he’s a sucker for cookies (no, not the browser session data kind of cookies), so we decided to bake three different types of holiday cookies – Linzer, Thumbprint, and Classic Cutout – and let you decide which cookie Jonathan makes.
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by Jen Bergen | Dec 11, 2014 | Company News, Project Examples
Ever have one of those nights that you can’t quite recall pieces of the next morning? The main character in the Philips interactive video campaign, “Designed to Play,” has – and he needs your help to piece together the previous night’s events.
Renewing its agreement with Rapt Media for a second year, interactive agency Ogilvy & Mather Duesseldorf is using Rapt Media’s interactive video technology for an updated version of Philips’ “Designed to Play” campaign.
As part of a concerted effort to reach a young, tech-savvy audience on mobile devices, the Philips interactive video campaign allows men to explore the shaving style possibilities afforded by the Philips Click & Style electric razor by immersing them in an entertaining, playful, mobile interactive video experience. And “possibilities” is the key word here. The campaign, which originally launched with “one guy, 5 styles, 625 possibilities,” has added a sixth style to the second year, increasing the number of possible outcomes to 1,296 possibilities. Trust us, you’ll want to click on all of them to see what kind of shenanigans our main character was up to the night before.
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by Jen Bergen | Nov 26, 2014 | Company News
It’s been an action-packed year here at Rapt Media. Some of our Rapt Media 2014 highlights include:
- Client Projects: We had great client projects from the likes of Philips, Martini Racing, Deloitte, inContact, and Cinemax, to name a few.
- Awards: Our work was nominated for both a Mashies and a Webby award. Rapt Media was also dubbed a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner, and a “Trendsetting Product” by EContent Mag.
- Internal Awesomeness: We raised $3.1 million in funding (booyah!), and also launched our own interactive cooking experience featuring our VP of engineering.
- Product Features and Integrations: We launched our Interactive Storyboarder, we enabled integrations with marketing automation systems like Eloqua and Marketo, and we released our Site Pairing technology, which creates a link between your video and the website around it.
It seems like just yesterday that we were writing our year-in-review blog post and listing all the things for which we were thankful. Tis the season once again. Some of the Rapt Media “Raptors” took a few minutes to reflect on the past year. Below, we share some of our highlights from 2014.
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by Jen Bergen | Nov 20, 2014 | Company News, How-Tos and Tips
Having a hard time thinking about, planning, and executing an interactive video project? Hey, we hear you – making the leap from traditional linear video to interactive video requires a new way of thinking. In addition, creating an interactive video experience also tends to require sign-off from key stakeholders. The easiest way to get that initial approval hearkens back to the age-old writing technique of “show, don’t tell.”
Imagine trying to pitch an interactive video by showing a linear experience. Telling your stakeholders that it’ll do X, Y, and Z when it’s interactive just doesn’t pack the same punch as showing a working, interactive prototype. So how can you pitch and test your interactive video concept?
To make the initial process of building and getting approval of your interactive video easier, we created the Rapt Media Interactive Storyboarder. With it, you can take a concept and turn it into a working prototype within minutes, increasing your chances of selling your idea while also streamlining the entire production process.
Check out the interactive video below to learn more about Rapt Media’s Interactive Storyboarder.
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by Jen Bergen | Nov 3, 2014 | How-Tos and Tips, Mobile and HTML5
News flash. Americans love online video. In fact, the U.S. watched (or started to watch) 38.2 billion videos in Q2 2014 alone – an increase of 43 percent over last year (Adobe’s “U.S. Digital Video Benchmark Report”). And while the number of online video views is on the rise, so is the number of drop-offs. According to Adobe, only about 50 percent of videos watched on desktops are viewed 75 percent of the way through, and that number plummets to 17 percent for mobile devices.
“Started to watch” versus “watched to completion” are two very different things – and a huge part of why most video marketers are still suffering from the same age-old problems: poor engagement and low conversion.
However, a subset of savvy brands and agencies are taking action and using interactive video to create content that solves those pain points. Unlike its linear cousin with deflated completion rates, interactive video sees completion rates of 90 percent and above. And that’s just one of its advantages.
Online video is the single most powerful tool companies have to communicate with customers, so don’t let your online videos fall victim to steep drop-off rates and poor ROI.
Here are 4 reasons why you should start producing interactive video and incorporate it into your online video strategy now.
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by Jen Bergen | Oct 31, 2014 | Company News
It’s October 31st, which means only one thing: it’s Halloween! We work hard at Rapt Media, but we also like to take the time out of our busy work days to have some fun. Today, at our Boulder office, we held our first annual Rapt Media Costume Contest. We had a fabulous turnout. Costumes ranged from deranged nurse to police officer to flapper to larper to Katniss Everdeen.
We loved all of the costumes, but the winner of the contest, by unanimous vote, went to…
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