Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is most commonly associated with Hollywood epics, but is now being used as part of marketing strategies by a wide range of businesses – from health and beauty brands, to interior designers and packaging manufacturers. If you’ve yet to seriously consider CGI, here are four reasons to start incorporating the technology into your product marketing content plans:

1) Increases Customer Engagement

For online retailers, CGI increases the contexts in which products can be placed, with the potential to boost the emotional response to certain products, and increase customer engagement. With CGI, entire lifestyle scenes can be created around product ranges – recreating bathrooms, family scenes, kitchens, and day-to-day scenarios that resonate with customers. This lets brands concentrate less on the physical product, and more on the lifestyle experience of making a purchase, and also lets companies create digital content with a personalised ‘buying atmosphere’ for different customer segments.

2) Improves Image Quality

CGI software can be used to enhance and clarify product images, shortening the post-production process and creating optimised, high quality product images that can be used in various online settings. The changes that can be made to images – while maintaining a natural quality – are almost endless, from improving the visibility of product labels, to removing obstructions, and changing the light setting of product backgrounds. All this can be done at a fraction of the cost of setting up a physical photo shoot.

3) Versatile Image Creation For Product Ranges

CGI allows the effortless creation of a wide range of variants within product ranges – for instance, sofas or soft furnishings in various colours and materials. When coupled with interactive content, customers can experiment with different versions of products and see which suits them best, making it more likely to secure a sale.

4) Better Supply Chain Relationships

CGI has uses within retail supply chains as well as in B2C websites. Using CGI makes it quicker and easier to communicate product concepts and requirements to suppliers and retail partners, without the need to exchange physical products. This has the potential to streamline supply and marketing workflows before the launch of products, shortening time to market and lowering development costs.

Next Steps

CGI is an emerging technology in online retail marketing, meaning that it is often overlooked as too complicated, too expensive, or simply not relevant to general marketing campaigns. However, a growing number of leading retail brands are now using CGI to create an immersive virtual experience for their customers – one that is especially vital since Covid 19 forced the closure of many physical retail outlets.

And the results are plain to see. IKEA, for instance, started using CGI in their product imagery in 2006, and it now accounts for over 75% of their product catalogue images. Using CGI enables prospective customers to interpose IKEA furniture on their own living spaces, shortening the sales decision process before the customer has even visited a store.

Similar results can be achieved by cosmetics businesses, other furniture brands, and even beyond the world of online retail, by interior design consultancies and architecture firms.

To discuss the practicalities of CGI and how you can incorporate it into your marketing content plans, please give one of our creative specialists a call today.