SINGAPORE – For their latest campaign, VISA explores the confines of the mobile screen as they support small business owners to go digital and expand their opportunities through the company’s wide range of online tools and services.
While marketers have adopted vertical storytelling for their own brands in recent years, VISA made clever use of the vertical format to create an interesting visual parallel— launching a series of ads that used the narrow mobile frame to illustrate the small, confined space of a physical store. All small enterprises dream of going big, and these ads demonstrate how going online can help it grow with the help of VISA.
These days, most of everything we see are on vertical screens: from scrolling through our social media feeds to online shopping, the rise of the smartphone has changed the way we frame content quite literally. Now, we optimize videos, photos, and text to fit within the aspect ratio of a mobile screen.
This isn’t just the case for influencers, marketing agencies, and media companies, though. With Southeast Asia (SEA) as one of the fastest-growing mobile economies, mobile-first vertical content is becoming the norm for online users of all backgrounds. When Southeast Asian countries went into lockdown last year and people were forced to stay home, homegrown businesses such as mom-and-pop shops and street vendors migrated to online spaces, adopting social media and e-commerce platforms to make a living and grow their business.
Each video features a shop owner in a cramped shop and jam-packed products, framed within the viewer’s mobile screen, before pushing a wall to “expand” its business into the online sphere. It’s a smart and creative use of vertical storytelling that merges self-awareness of its visual format, while getting its message across with clarity.
