CGI Now Rising Star in Ad Agency Campaigns

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CGI Now Rising Star in Ad Agency Campaigns
Designs on Digital: Philippe Martinez at the Pasadena office of 3DXcite.

The image in the magazine ad is familiar: a new car is shown speeding along a curved road against the backdrop of a lush, green mountain range. Except it isn’t.

Such images are increasingly fabricated on computers as computer-generated imagery. And CGI has gained ground as the cost of the technology needed to create the illusions has declined.

As a result, more ad agencies are embracing CGI as a way to create campaigns more quickly and less expensively. The evolution has opened the technology to marketers with lower ad budgets.

Philippe Martinez, senior creative consultant of marketing solutions in the Pasadena office of 3DXcite, a digital design firm headquartered in Munich, Germany, said that while automotive clients have long embraced such digital manipulation for their ads, he’s seeing a shift into other industries, including fashion and aviation.

“The auto industry was an early adopter … to model different parts of the car to see it on the computer,” he said. “Now, we’re getting into industries that are not technologically friendly, at least historically, like the fashion industry, which is based on the touching and feeling of materials.”

Martinez said his firm now works with retailers such as Vans, Coach and Skechers as well as aviation manufacturers like Beechcraft.

Martinez said the main reason CGI production has become cheaper is because computers are faster and can store more data.

“When I first started six years ago, a workstation could cost $30,000 or more,” he said. “Now, it might be $5,000 or $6,000 to do the same quality of work.”

At the same time, there is ongoing pressure from clients to keep costs as low as possible.

“If you look at production overall,” said Peter Bassett, director of production at TBWAChiatDay LA in Playa Vista, “we’re being asked by our clients to produce stuff for less and less money. So, production budgets are dropping so the marketplace is shifting.”

He said it’s difficult to put a price on how much an advertiser will save by using CGI compared with traditional photography. But one absolute is that the return on investment can be much greater depending on the client’s campaign goals.

“If you were spending $100,000 on a photo shoot to get a one-day shoot, you might get five different angles of the car then you have to retouch,” said Bassett. “For that same $100,000 in a CG environment, you could get more deliverables. So, in the end you would get more out of your money.”

Extending control

Jeremiah Dapkey, creative retoucher and 3-D artist at Deutsch LA in Playa Vista, said CGI is a convenient tool that helps bring consistency to a client’s campaign.

“It gives you the flexibility to keep (a product) consistent throughout the project,” he said. “In the agency, we’re executing a project that would be digital, motion graphics, television, print. CGI can bring all those together.”

Wassom added that in a traditional photo shoot it’s difficult to change the product or image without having to reshoot, but CGI allows for a quick change without affecting quality.

But while CGI might offer convenience, ad agencies can run the risk of spending more time fiddling with images than they might with straight photography, said John Seput, an executive producer at Rubin Postaer and Associates in Santa Monica.

“If we can get a product or vehicle and shoot it in one day and it’s just going to be a one-off project, it makes sense to do it in photography not CG,” said Seput. “So, it depends on the use.”

Seput said RPA does most of its CGI work in-house, but for bigger projects such as television commercials it will contract out to an agency that specializes in that work. While infrastructure costs might have gone down, hiring qualified talent is expensive and paying for access to additional features in CGI software can also be costly.

Nevertheless, he expects the greater use of CGI technology to result in more agencies bringing those functions in-house.

“You’ll always need producers, project managers and retouchers,” he said. “CG is mainly CG artists and animators and that type of work flow gets carried across broadcast to interactive. If anything, it helps the agency and expands it.”

While the shift to CGI might mean more work for those proficient in those skills, Martinez of 3DXcite said he has noticed some anxiety on the part of commercial photographers who feel they may be rendered obsolete by CGI technicians. There is some cause for concern, he conceded, and for big projects where the product is available to shoot – at least for the time being – he said the agency will still use photographers.

“On a big photo shoot we need to make sure what we’re doing virtually is not so far apart from what the customer is used to,” he said.

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