Just weeks after New York-based photographer and filmmaker
Meagan Cignoli joined Vine, brands came calling. The first company to
commission Cignoli for Vine work was advertising agency BBDO for client Lowe’s.
Together they created Lowe’s Vine Fix in Six Campaign, a series of six-second home improvement videos
that went viral and won an award at the 2013 Mashies.
Since that first campaign, Cignoli has been shooting Vines for clients
“nonstop,” she says. As a full-time Vine-r, she has worked with more than 40
companies since April including eBay Now, GE, Puma, and Macy’s, and agencies
such as Ogilvy, BBH, Leo Burnett, 360i, and Catalyst.
While many brands are still grappling with how to best use Vine – the Twitter
app that allows users to create and share six-second videos – Cignoli advises
marketers to approach the platform as a way to entertain consumers, rather than
a tool to sell products.
“Remember it’s not a commercial,” she says. “You’re not selling hard;
you’re trying to entertain people because they have to choose to subscribe to
you.”
Cignoli tackles each Vine with the same amount of planning and
professionalism as she would with a traditional film or photo shoot, paying
close attention to details such as lighting and color balance. Including set-up
and production, it can take her between two and five hours to create a Vine. Cignoli
says marketers should approach their Vines with the same amount of preparation
and care.
“Work with professional people, create storyboards, treat it like it’s a
real campaign,” she advises.
Because the app does not allow for editing, Cignoli must “really try not
to make any mistakes” during a shoot, she says. The other challenge to Vine is
that it does not allow users to save drafts, so when working on a campaign
Cignoli and her team sometimes store Vine videos on up to nine phones that are switched
to airplane mode.
Cignoli sees a Vine film as a series of still images, or
another form of stop motion photography. Her videos often have a dreamy
quality, with a lot of pastel colors and a clean aesthetic. In one, flower
petals burst from a tube of lipstick; in another, a teacup spins on a table.
Before she caught the attention of clients, Cignoli was drawn to Vine because
she found it fun, and that sense of whimsy still comes through in her videos.
“Every object has its own personality,” she says. “I
approach every Vine asking, ‘How can we make this fly? How can we make this
visually interesting?’”
Vine is in its early stages, but Cignoli believes it is a
platform marketers can no longer ignore.
“As long as there are people creating content, there are
going to be a lot of people watching it,” she says. “It feels like people are
watching it more than they’re watching TV sometimes.”
