Scrappy Content

Scrappy content is thriving. As marketers, we need to do more with less: get scrappy and creative. As lockdowns gripped the world, gathering even a small crew to shoot professional footage became impossible for brands.

The trend that rose from the ashes of high-production-value video content was its contrarian twin – unpolished, ‘raw’ content. The internet has been in its grip ever since, and brands are continuing to push the limits. This is particularly apparent on social media as you’ll see in the early movers section below.

But some brands have taken things a step further, using very simple, presumably low-cost production methods in places you’d never expect. For example, the top-mentioned ad for the Super Bowl in 2022 belonged to Coinbase. The ad was simply a QR code bouncing around on the screen, yet it generated more than 79,000 mentions online during the game.

Unpolished content isn’t going away – in fact, it feels like we’re still yet to reach its peak in popularity. And, with dwindling marketing budgets in the face of economic hardship, this could be a blessing for the cash-strapped content team. It’s something that playful B2C brands can revel in, but the trend really raises questions for organizations who value their polished aesthetic or that worry about losing their serious reputation.

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