Last Updated on November 28, 2023
Article Contents
The future of shopping
Listen up, folks! If you don’t know what contextual commerce means, then you need to get out of that rock you’ve been living under. Citrus Pay – you know, THE Citrus Pay, an online payment gateway provider – came out with a new product that might just change the game in contextual commerce. Yes, yes, contextual commerce sounds really technical. But it just means that shopping is taken out of the traditional ‘shop’ and becomes part of our everyday lives (don’t worry, we didn’t know that either 😛 ). It is literally the future of shopping!
Time for Sellfie !
Sellfie is an app that makes the lives of independent small-scale businesses a lot easier! C’mon, an app that allows users to click pictures, set prices and shipping options and push it to their social media pages? That’s incredible! And much needed for today’s entrepreneurs. It goes without saying that payments are damn simple on Sellfie. Like, duh.
We weren’t about to look at Sellfie as any other app. A terrific app like this deserved a terrific launch video. We were thrilled to be the harbingers of the future of shopping. We were given the task of telling the story of Sellfie and we had to do it in under a minute. So, strap on; let’s roll!
Definitely Un-boring!
Now this was huge! At Mypromovideos, we have done many branding and app explainer videos. We have done business casual tones. We have done funny tones. Heck, we have also done jingles! But this was one-of-a-kind. So, we needed a fresh new tone for this video. It had to be funny, quirky and energetic, all rolled into one. How could we make it different?After much deliberation, we got it. This video would use sarcasm! The youthfulness, the quirkiness and the fun element we wanted could all come through. Now, we were set.
Mograph or Nograph?
Sellfie is obviously an individual-centric app. The logical and rational conclusion would be to draw up a character-based video. Bahhh! But who needs normal, when you can have quirky? And so the heat was on! Scripting began and to our surprise, the script went through some pretty major changes. In other words, the script changed its form a couple of times. First it was a script for pure mographs. Then a character was introduced and it was little Jane’s story. Then once more, it was back to a modified version of the mograph script. Pant, pant…
Bringing out the Drawing Board
Then, finally the mograph script emerged. The script held many story elements and at the same time it was smart and sarcastic. Perfect! Now, it was time for the next stage, Illustrations.
In the beginning, it was quite a challenge to think of the visuals for ‘Social Commerce’. Think about it for a moment… can you imagine one universal way to represent Social commerce? Not really. Aha!! This can be our chance to invent a brand new ‘thing’. Yes, that’s how this image of ‘Deskshop’ came about. The Deskshop illustration set the style tone of the entire video.
Because this was a unique approach, we felt that the items on sale should also be unique. So that’s how this combination of sportswear, pastries, a cricket bat and a bonsai tree came about in the first frame. A little unconventionality was exactly what we wanted!
Syncing with the Sellfie Brand
Early drafts of the illustration carried the words ‘Social Commerce’ and the awning was in the colors of Facebook and Twitter. But later it was changed to suit the brand colors of Citrus Pay and Sellfie. And ‘Social Commerce’ itself was removed to be replaced with really fine details of the four major social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Whatsapp. We were very particular about keeping the illustrations in line with the brand colors. The custom texture and the objects used were also thought out carefully to be consistent with the Citrus Pay brand.
We changed the colors of the assets from blue to red to adhere to the brand colors of Sellfie and later it was swapped with the background.
A story without characters
I gotta say, it’s kinda cool to tell a story without characters. You see, Sellfie wasn’t a regular mograph. No, no. It was a video that was alive. The assets were alive. And they were telling us a story.
We didn’t dilly-dally in getting to the point of the video, which was – selling stuff online. Right from Frame 1, you can see how the sales happen within the different social media sites. By using the social media colors and their logos even in intricate places, we were able to get the point across to the viewer.
In the logo animation, see how the camera shutter button winks? How about the aperture rolling its eye? Yes, they were really meant to reflect the playful and teasing voice that accompanied it.
The Voice and the Visuals come together
Speaking of, the Voice over artist nailed it when she lent her voice to Sellfie. She used a sarcastic tone in the beginning of the video, and then switched to a more business casual tone in the later half. The switch over was effortless and smooth. While this was happening with the voice over, the style tone of the Illustrations was being set, so meticulously and so very carefully. We used flat designs and strokes for all the illustrations. The background colors were also vibrant (one could say that the voice over was just as vibrant as the visuals!). And thus, the voice and visuals came together in a wonderful way.
Sellfie was special
In Sellfie that our team told a story without characters. I think we managed to bring out all the use cases of the app using just the animation of the assets. To tell the truth, it was the secondary animation that stole the show!
All these elements put together made Sellfie awfully special and instantly likeable. And so, as we wrapped up this project, we felt really happy with the outcome.
References:
https://yourstory.com/2016/07/citrus-payments-launches-sellfie
