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Vapiano CGI Video created by rendersnek for World Pasta Day

If your ads are no longer getting the retention that you need, you might wish to switch up the way you’re doing things.

That’s what Vapiano CGI Video advert did.

The result?

400,000 views within the first few hours.

And that is what made World Pasta Day a moment to remember!

Old-fashioned advertising doesn't work well anymore because technology keeps changing. Brands that want to sell things should work with creative agencies that can keep up with new trends.

In today's fast-paced (advertising) world, capturing and holding a viewer's attention has become an art. It's a skill that demands focus, storytelling, and captivating visuals to keep eyes glued to screens.

So, if you’re wanting 2+ mio. unique views on your next advert, maybe the following insights of our project with Vapiano in collaboration with Traktor Wien agency will help.

How we ended up doing the Vapiano CGI Video

In one sentence: Consistently showing up on social media.

Especially as a very young company with little connections in the marketing world, it is not easy to find clients. It’s so competitive that you need something unique. Something that shows you care about the work you do - in our case mostly "Fake Out Of Home Videos".

Our social media tactic: posting once a week, interacting with agencies and brands, try new stuff and not just have a portfolio page.

So, showing up on social media eventually lead, Traktor Wien Agency, whos motto is to do advertising for people who actually don’t like advertising, to our Instagram page and that’s how we ended up getting a good old email in our inbox.

After one or two weeks of DMs sharing ideas, a vision for celebrating World Pasta Day took shape. Vapiano's dream of creating an eye-catching advertisement became a reality.

Deepdive into the challenges of creating the Vapiano CGI Video

Challenge 1: Attention

Grabbing attention in the first 1.5 seconds is a known fact to everyone who does social media.

Otherwise, attention is gone, and every click or action associated with it is also gone and of course so is the revenue it brings.

So, to grab the attention in the first place, things needed to happen, a lot of things. At first the viewer can spot the car with a gigantic vapiano take away box on the roof. Then you notice two people walking in from the left side, pointing at the facade, which was filled with hyperdimensional spaghetti.

And last but not least, it’s not enough to grab the attention, you also want to hold it. So as soon as the viewer is done with checking out the façade, the two vapianisti are already opening the double door to reveal an avalanche of penne and fusilli.

Challenge 2: Environment

Since the video was shot in a busier street (almos Mariahilferstraße), we already needed to pick a timeframe where there’s little people, but also where we would have a nice lighting. We checkout the place in different times of the day and decided for the morning between 8:00 am and 9:00 am. Everything seemed perfecet on the day of the shooting, but there is always something that you don’t have influence on. In our case that bulky jeep, that was parked in front of the building. Which was of course not exactly what we wanted when we first started filming.

Whilst it wasn’t ideal, we had to use our surroundings to our advantage and create storyboards based on everything around us – this is how we came up with the gigantic takeaway box infront of the building.

Challenge 3: Food

As already mentioned, the probably biggest challenge was to stage the food in a way, that the viewers first thought isn’t – “yuck, there’s food on the street”.

vapiano cgi videoframe from fussilli avalanche for world pasta day | rendersnek
Frame of the Vapiano CGI pasta avalanche
vapiano cgi videoframe from noodle facade for world pasta day | rendersnek
Frame of the Vapiano CGI facade

And so, we had to ensure that the fusilli-penne-avalanche simulation looked appetizing, which already was a challenge, because nobody ever saw a pasta avalanche of this size.

Challenge 4: Actors

The last challenge was the human challenge, because when you shoot the video, nothing is there yet. The actors need to understand what will happen in the after production and where everything will be placed. So it’s crucial to have a very detailed idea of what will happen, because you can change pretty much everything in the video, but the reaction of the humas to it is something that can’t be changed.

Thoughts on the success of the Vapiano CGI Video

The 3 Pillars of success of the Vapiano CGI Video:

Why it went viral

Our guess is a combination of the many impressions the viewer already has in the first 2 seconds, plus the fact that nobody had ever seen a scene like that before. A fun, entertaining video that invited people to come to the restaurant. It didn’t even feel like an ad.

Numbers & publicity

Wrap Up

Rendersnek's collaboration with Traktor Wien Agency for Vapiano's World Pasta Day campaign is a prime example of how CGI can be effectively integrated the advertising industry.

As the world of advertising evolves, standing out becomes crucial. It is understanding what captures attention and keeps viewers engaged that helps to make purchase decisions.

The combination of CGI, reality and attention to detail can turn an everyday scene into a spectacle.

As the lines blur between reality and CGI, this project exemplifies the boundless creativity of the advertising world, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

2023 was quite a year in terms of "Fake Out Of Home advertising" and in my opinion will for sure be known as the starting year of it. Following the fake out of home ads of some brands, especially fashion and lifestyle brands, the wording for it is still not 100% clear. Mixed Reality Videos, Augmented Reality Videos, Virtual Reality Videos, Fake Ads, CG Ads, CG Marketing, ...are some of many names people in the marketing space started calling these kind of videos.

As of now it looks like people are going for "FAKE OOH", which in my personal opinion has a little bit of a negative touch to it, since the wording "FAKE" tends to be used in a negative context. Now if you don't know yet what Fake Out Of Home is, I'll give you a short Introduction to it.

What ist Fake Out Of Home Advertisement?

Fake OOH advertisement or as we like to call them "Mixed Reality Videos" are basically compositions of a real videos with computer generated imagery (CGI).

In short: putting/ tracking 3D objects in a conventional video.

In general the usage of CGI is nothing new, Hollywood is doing that for quite some time already. Asking google I found the following: "The first feature film to use CGI as well as the composition of live-action film with CGI was Vertigo (1958), which used CGI in the opening credits of the film. The first feature film to make use of CGI with live action in the storyline of the film was the 1973 film Westworld." If you want to read more about the history of CGI in Hollywood, there's a lot of articles and examples to be found on google.

As you can see this stuff exists for a long time already and most of us don't even notice it. Nowadays there is bearly any movie which does not use CGI. Now you might ask why should I care?

Why Fake Out Of Home?

There are several arguments for and against CGI in advertising. Some people debate that it takes away the authenticity of advertisement and that people will not be able to distinguish between real and virtual elements anymore. Other see the incredible amount of opportunities we get through Mixed Reality Videos.

I personally would argue that the authenticity does not depend on whether something is computer generate or not. In the end it all comes down to the execution, if it fits my brand and how my clients interact with the created ads. Especially in a world of TikTok, Instagram and more it's hard to stand out - but statistics show that at least at the moment these are the kind of ads that go viral organically! And I find this quite interesting in a time where the narrative is, that reach is dependent on the money you feed this platforms.

To sum it up you can think whatever you want of Mixed Reality Videos, Fake Out Of Home or however you want to call them, but numbers don't lie, whether we talk about reach or the cost of such videos, that's why I have some examples that might be of interest for you.

Examples:

@maybelline on instagram - normal having between 100k and 1mio views:

example of maybellines fake out of home advertisement proofing that unhinged content is a game changer

@zara on instagram - also proving unhinged content is a thing

example of Zaras fake out of home advertisement proofing that unhinged content can get you actual numbers on social media

@alexanderwangny on instagram - doing a huge CG installation

example of Alexander Wangs fake out of home advertisement proofing that mixed reality videos offer an incredible amount of opportunities

@jacquemus on instagram - making it a whole (very successful) fake out of home campaign:

example of a series of fake out of home campaigns of jacquemus establishing themselves as a leader in the usage of mixed reality videos

Conclusion

Mixed Reality Videos are a great chance to advertise in places where you never could before. They're environmental friendly, since you don't really have to do an actual installation and they're a great way to go viral organically. I'm of course a little biased in this matter, but the numbers don't lie.

My suggestion: give the fake out of home advertisement a try!

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