Media Key Milano: An Interview with Chester Mirco Planta, VP Business Development Babelee
As part of our sponsorship of the 2022 Key Awards, we asked Mirco Chester Planta, International Business Development at Babelee to explain the benefits of using personalized video for brands and publishers!
One of the few companies in Italy to offer this service, Babelee is a technology platform for creating data-driven video, which helps achieves all marketing and communication objectives in a personalized, measurable, and sustainable way.
By Alessia Zampano
Part of the Doxee Spa company, Babelee is a technology vendor that provides a platform for the automated production of ‘data-driven’ video. In our country, one in five minutes spent online is spent on entertainment-related content (20.4% of total time spent), which ranks behind only Social Networks (22.9% – Source: ComScore). And video is among the most popular forms of digital entertainment. It’s no wonder, then, that the format is becoming an increasingly used tool for digital communication, precisely because of its ability to engage users.
As part of our sponsorship of the 2022 Key Awards, we asked Mirco Chester Planta, International Business Development at Babelee, and Francesco Compiani, interactive experience product line manager at Doxee, to explain the benefits of using personalized video for brands, agencies, and publishers.
Tv Key: How does Babelee work and how do you make a ‘data-driven’ video?
Mirco Chester Planta: Babelee is a self-service platform for making personalized, interactive, real-time videos. Making personalized videos is about integrating – in a fully automated way – data from any source and format in a ‘one to one’ storytelling. I’m referring to data from CRM systems, data related to purchases and interest, personal data, or propensity data. Just think about the information that is useful in terms of renewing a service or for presenting a product. Basically, all of the data that can be traced back to a specific customer or group of customers. Every video that is generated by the Babelee platform is “tailored” to the specific needs of the individual user. This is a powerful lever for increasing engagement and getting more conversions, which increase fourfold, on average.
Francesco Compiani: Babelee is part of the broader product line offered by Doxee Spa, a multinational company listed on EuroNext GrowthMilan, which offers products in the Digital Customer Experience area enabled by a proprietary cloud platform. We chose to invest in technologies related to video personalization because video is increasingly a relevant format in communication, especially when it becomes a tool that is able to respond to the demands of consumers who want to be reached by content that reflects their needs. Hence, the need for a dedicated structure that, from Italy, looks to the global market.
Tv Key: What are the main features of ‘data-driven’ videos?
Francesco Compiani: I would start with the dynamic storyboard, a feature that we recently included in Babelee that allows a scene to be automatically modified according to a specific user, client, or data. The platform allows you to create a video whose images are different depending on the interest profile of the individual client or a specific cluster of users. Another element with which to further engage the customer is interactivity, which makes communication truly two-way, through the inclusion of ‘calls to action’.
Again, personalization ensures that each individual user can be directed to a specific landing page, a page where to place an order or make a payment, a specific page on a site or to an app, a form for collecting data—to ask for consent for example—or to take a survey and thus be accompanied in the conversion process.
Another important aspect is multichannel. The ‘data-driven’ video, in fact, can be activated through a QRcode inserted within a communication, an email, or a text or Whatsapp message, within a mobile application, or in the customer area of a website. Its measurability further adds to the value of personalized video. Unlike an MP4 video where you can only track openings, the html5 format of Babelee’s videos allows for very deep analytics that tell us how each of the users behaves and interacts with the content.
Tv Key: What goals (in what areas can personalized video be used as a preferred tool ) can be achieved with this communication tool?
Mirco Chester Planta: The only limit is the imagination of the marketer or creative team. The video created with Babelee can be used throughout the communications funnel, for different purposes and objectives.
The use cases are virtually endless: from customer base retention to video content creation, e-commerce and engagement, to awareness, lead generation and nurturing phases, or on-boarding a new customer and retention, as well as reducing the churn rate or upselling. I would like to emphasize that in addition to external communication uses, there are also numerous instances of applications aimed at internal communication within companies to their employees, such as on-boarding of new hires, reporting of company results, sales updates, and communications about new business rules and processes.
Tv Key: Can you give us some examples of uses?
Mirco Chester Planta: Babelee can be used across the board by any industry: utilities, retail, banking, insurance, FMCG, automotive, nonprofit, entertainment, etc. But also by publishers. For example, we have an agreement with ADNKronos, which, thanks to our platform, makes about 18-20 videos a day in real time using the site’s feed. The platform is able to extract any element from the rss feed—title, a short description, and related images—and create the video. Whenever you change the feed, the video automatically updates. Thus, each time the video URL is called up, it updates with the latest updates.
For the publisher, there are many advantages, from reducing the time it takes to make the video, to the possibility of offering an extra service to readers, to the creation of new spaces that can be easily monetized with display and video adv formats. Adnkronos is the first publisher in Italy to do such a thing. Real-time functionality can also be useful to brands and agencies, for example in integrations with chatbots.
When a user interacts with a chatbot that collects data and requirements information, based on the responses and requests, a business offer can be composed in real time that is translated into a video tailored to him/her.
Another interesting area of application is the third sector, which historically invests heavily in direct marketing with significant costs. I’m thinking of paper, printing, creative. All of this activity can easily be replaced with a video, greatly increasing customer responses and the amount of interactions and conversions, while greatly reducing costs. It is a scalable technology that can be used to create anywhere from just a few videos to thousands or even 10 million personalized videos.
As a company, among other things, we are moving in the direction of dematerialization and digitization. The Doxee Group has chosen to pursue the path of sustainability, becoming a benefit corporation with a sustainability report for two years now, and a commitment to help clients reduce their carbon footprint by supporting them in the delicate phase of digital transition.
Tv Key: What are the benefits for communications agencies?
Francesco Compiani: The Babelee platform enables agencies to offer their clients innovative ways of communication, generating new and recurring revenues. Through our platform, agencies can transfer the great value of their creative along the various touch points of the customer journey, significantly improving the level of consumer engagement and, consequently, conversions as well. The same content—the TV spot, for example—can be revised from a personalization perspective into upselling campaigns to the customer base. It’s able, for example, to call each customer by name, show personalized scenes based on the offer, or integrate ‘calls to action’ to activate an offer. Ultimately, we help agencies improve all of their clients’ KPIs.
Tv Key: Why the choice to sponsor the Key Awards?
Mirco Chester Planta: It was an excellent opportunity for us to meet brands and and respective agencies. Unlike other markets – such as the UK, USA, or Australia, where awareness of the potential of ‘data driven’ video has reached a fair degree of maturity, in our country some evangelization efforts are still needed for such an innovative tool with enormous potential.
Copywriters, video creators, digital marketers and developers: this is who we are! Young, passionate, geeky and very keen on media and technology. Fancy to meet the team? Contact us or submit your cv, we love talented people.