WHAT KIND OF CONTENT CUTS THROUGH THE NOISE?
Who doesn’t love an agency buzzword? And the one we’ll be discussing today… “Cut-through”.
But before we can discuss how a creative content agency can produce video content or animations that cut through, we need to understand the word in its entirety. For a campaign or piece of branded content to be considered to have “cut through”, it is said to be seen or heard despite all the “noise” of other marketing campaigns out there.
Let’s use a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate this point:
Imagine that you’re looking at a notice board, full of flyers. For the most part, the design of the flyers are varied, but as you stand there, you think about how to make one of your own that stands out.
To do this, you observe the wall of flyers, and notice that the majority of them are covered in text, all printed on white base paper (some with vibrant images, but always printed on white). As such, you opt for a fluro pink piece of paper and opt for a simplistic QR code with a heading in the centre of it, where people can be led elsewhere to see the content of the flyer digitally.
As such, your flyer keeps the majority of its surface fluro pink, and contrasting to the wall of white/colour printing, giving it a point of difference. Or… cut-through.
But how can we apply this hypothetical scenario to the world of creative marketing content and film and video production? One where the fluro pink flyer is now a large-scale campaign, and the wall of flyers is the endless stream of other campaigns competing for the attention of the same audience?
3 hot tips for creating cut-through in your own content strategies:
1. Don’t follow content trends. Set content trends.
Take a step back from the wall of noise and make note of what all of the competing marketing campaigns (for your audience) all have in common. THEN DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT! A brand that only follow the content trends of others becomes part of the wall of noise.
2. Don’t take the long route. Get to the point.
To have ‘cut-through’ can often mean being quick and punchy with content messaging. To use another analogy, rarely does anyone map out their end destination then take the long route, so try being sharp and direct. Get to the point. This increases the chances of your content being successful, being heard and understood in the wall of noise. And last but not least,
3. Become friends with the idea of taking risks with your content
No one ever beat the noise by playing it safe. Set the expectation with stakeholders that aiming for cut-through will involve taking risks, perhaps even testing low-fi or cinematic video content and that this comes with varied results. But taking a risk, and learning from any shortcomings, is better than no one seeing your campaign at all.
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW TO CREATE THE PERFECT BRIEF?
Don’t delay… watch this now or read our more in depth article on how to create the perfect video production brief!