Digital marketing trends for the coming year are always big news and 2021 is just around the corner. This year has forced people and businesses to innovate and adapt quicker than ever before. New techniques in 3D marketing and advertising are pushing possibilities and the need to keep ahead of the competition is greater than ever before.
We share seven 3D Digital Marketing trends, we expect brands to implement into their innovative marketing strategies in 2021. These insights will guide you to market your products in the year ahead, knowing you are pushing the boundaries of innovation.
3D Design is all about creating a world of your own from your imaginations using technology and software. The rise of technologies like AR and VR provided 3D Designers to innovate everyday experiences more and more.
What are the Digital Marketing Trends for 2021?
1: Realism 3D Art
This past year we have seen a dramatic shift in the use of 3D advertising. What was once a ‘Pixar’ style heavy industry has quickly transformed into a world of 3D realism. Realistic visuals are blurring the boundaries of digital and physical world. As a result, brands are taking advantage of this for their digital marketing strategies.
The unexpected pandemic has made it difficult to arrange product photoshoots for marketing. Product photoshoots are also expensive and time consuming while also restricting any changes. 3D visuals counter both the cost and speed, and further make alterations much easier.
The lighting can be changed from night to day, or alter a wooden flooring into a glamorous marble. With a few clicks those changes can be made without the cost redesigning a photoshoot set would incur.
LG Electronics have fully embraced the use of 3D realism for their marketing solutions. Through immersive 3D visuals, subsidiaries; LG Signature and LG Objet showcased their products in customers’ homes and engaged with their audience.
Furthermore in the jewelry industry many well known brands have adopted 3D visuals of their products in their 3D marketing solutions. Brands like Cartier, Chanel and Bvlgari all use 3D product renders for advertising on their digital handles.
2: 3D Animation
3D Animations have had incredible success this year. With mobiles, computers and tablets having developments in higher resolutions, animations look more brighter and stunning than ever before. Also with further advancements in processing power of design software and technology, animations can be produced faster. These animations are set to become a norm in everyday content – not just CGI in tv or movies.
Nespresso coffee collaborated with FutureDeluxe to create “Casa Nespresso”, a brand furnished building. They producing daily 3D animations as one of their marketing solutions, formatted as a content advent calendar, showcasing their products in the lead up to Christmas.
In 2021, more brands will roll out month long digital campaigns on their online platforms as a new digital marketing trend.
With more people online, websites and applications need striking visuals to stand out and grab attention. We expect more 2021 UI’s to include 3D animations to make the site more interactive as well as visually appealing.
A well known use of 3D animations on a website is Apple. Every product page on their site includes 3D animations to fully immerse customers while also displaying their product’s features. This improves Apple’s customer experience and further makes the buying process more fluid for their customers.
As noted before the processing power of design software and computers has given rise to 3D real time rendering animations. Although a small market, it is growing in both the Architecture and Media & Entertainment industries.
3D real time rendering allows changes to occur instantly with no input lag or waiting time for rendering. As technology and software become cheaper to manage in 2021, more brands will utilize them in their digital marketing campaigns.
3: Digital Fashion
Interest in virtual fashion has exploded during the recent pandemic. Fashion shows moved online and people started exploring new ways of dressing themselves and their online avatars.
Major fashion brands, Louis Vuitton, Balmain and Ralph & Russo, have created virtual fashion shows to exhibit their new clothing collections. Additionally, some brands are taking the virtual space further by creating dedicated brand avatars. This indicates their ambition to continue to showcase their clothing with digital fashion in the future as a marketing solution.
As well as fashion brands adopting digital fashion, social media influencers are also a growing market for digital fashion. Digital fashion houses, Fabricant and Carlings will continue to enjoy their massive digital garment sales in 2021.
Digital fashion is a great alternative for fashion brands as part of their garment production lines. Virtual fashion provides incredible flexibility when prototyping fabrics, measurements and style of garments. It also is a cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative to “one-use” fashion. Expect this digital marketing trend to grow more and more in 2021 and beyond.
4: Virtual Product Launches
Product launch events and trade shows have had to go virtual this year. Some brands have revealed their products with announcement videos and images. However, brands like Maserati and Balenciaga have innovated how to include and immerse their customers with new marketing solutions.
This year Maserati and VanMoof collaborated with Resn Studio to launch their new products. The “House of Maserati’’ was an online digital event that launched five luxury vehicles over three months.
A website brought together fans from around the world. It included 3D animations and car explorations, live streaming, online discussions and posting comments, reactions and event experiences. Resn also created a similar experience for VanMoof’s e-bike launches. Having a fully immersive experience drove sales to more than normally seen at physical launch events.
Balenciaga used a fully immersive approach for their 2021 FW Collection. One such example is “Balenciaga’s Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow” video game. This game allows players to travel through a dreamland-style future world, passing 3D avatars dressed in the new collection.
Product launch events in these new approaches have been successful. Brands interaction with consumers in 2021 will continue to change, with 3D advertising on board.
5: 3D Rendered Interior Design
Communication is the key to marketing and one effective and exciting visual can do the work of a thousand words. A key message that brands may struggle to translate is, how will this product look in your home or office space? This especially is a common issue for large technology appliances.
Brands like LG, Samsung, Smeg and Dyson were able to translate their messages with 3D rendered interiors. By showcasing their products in realistic 3D rendered interiors, these brands highlighted the power of their designs through various digital platforms.
Furthermore, 3D Renders are much cheaper, time effective, flexible compared to building studio sets for photoshoots. Expect more furnishing and appliance companies to begin to showcase their products in 3D interiors in 2021.
Moreover, 3D rendered interiors are being used to simulate shopping experiences. As lockdown forced physical stores to shut down, brands have moved their store into virtual reality as a marketing solution. Luxury brands Dior and Gucci have opened virtual stores for customers to browse and order products from their phones or laptops. Prospective buyers can also book for an in store visit right from their couches with few clicks.
To counter social distancing norms in stores, more brands will include VR in their shopping experience in 2021.
6: 3D Avatars and Personas in Marketing
Bespoke 3D characters can provide companies with complete freedom in creation. These characters require less budget and can be used across various campaigns and media platforms. Also, they can lead to much more: entertainment properties, toys, merchandising, and more.
Additionally, celebrity or influencer scandals will not diminish your brand value or waste your investment.
This year we have seen some brands make large investments into 3D characters as ambassadors of their brands. Gaming company Riot Games further invested in their virtual girl group KDA. This 3D virtual girl group promotes League of Legends with regular content along with music videos and concerts, Instagram profiles. In 2020 they even topped the Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart.
With KDA, Riot Games has driven an increase in game sales along with in-game skins and cosmetics. KDA confirmed the promotion schedule for 2021. Expect more brands to jump onboard and collaborate with KDA and join in with 3D advertising.
Online platforms such as; Facebook, Instagram and Spotify have also used 3D Characters to their products and premium features advertising. These companies all created 3D Characters which are easy to identify, modern, gender-neutral with no specific age or race. Therefore, they work in worldwide markets without isolating any of the audience.
A growing digital marketing trend, going into 2021, is the use of 3D characters for AI Chatbot technology. Technology companies such as; Facebook, Google, IBM and NVIDIA have investing heavily in 3D avatar AI chatbot. This shows a clear market for their use.
Experts forecast 3D AI technology to be used in customer services, marketing solutions, virtual assistants and SMS platforms in the near future.
7: NFTs as a Digital Marketing Tool
Non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs will emerge as a new tool for digital marketing in 2021. NFT’s existed in cyberspace from 2016 but gained huge momentum during the last year. NFTs have become a new way of admiring digitalization. Some predict that 2021 will be the year of NFTs.
These NFT tokens can be digital art, an animated GIF, a video, or an image. These NFTs are difficult to copy and anyone can own this unique digital asset. All transactions involving these NFTs are saved in a blockchain and users can view all the transactions. Most visual sectors like virtual fashion industry, architecture are expected to reap the benefits of using NFTs in their marking solutions in 2021.
2021 Digital Marketing Trends
3D Design will further push what is possible for digital marketing techniques in 2021. Creative use of 3D design and animations in marketing and advertising will continue to rise. These will be extended and expanded to websites, apps, NFTs, virtual and augmented reality and much more.
