New year, same trend! Visual media will continue to play a monumental role in driving online conversions. To keep up with visual-experience trends and best practices, Cloudinary holds an annual conference called ImageCon, a one-of-a-kind event that helps attendees create the most engaging visual experiences possible.
Since the restaurant industry hinges on human connection, the quick-service restaurants (QSRs) and fast casual eateries that came out ahead during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns were the ones that built integrated and immersive interactions with video and other technologies for delivery in store, at the drive-through, and online. At the virtual event on Marketing Innovation hosted by Brand Innovators on September 28, Scott Schnaars, vice president of sales, Americas, at Cloudinary moderated a “fireside chat” with Casey Terrell, senior director of marketing at Focus Brands and acting CMO at Schlotzsky's, a franchise chain with over 330 locations.
Social commerce combines the persuasive power of social media and e-commerce to deliver immersive shopping experiences. Recent research predicts that, by 2028, the global market size for social commerce will have grown by 28.4% to US$3,370 billion, with China being the current forerunner.
Underscoring the growing relevance of online visual experiences, our fifth annual ImageCon conference on October 19-20 is going digital for the second year. We’re also proud to welcome Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and Contentful as our event sponsors. As much as we’d love to connect ‘In Real Life’ it’s still too early to do so safely. Fortunately our 2020 experience proved that a virtual event can certainly inform, educate, connect and entertain. Best of all, we’re able to engage with more of our customers and partners around the world as a virtual event is more accessible
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers had high expectations for digital experiences. They now expect nothing less than seamless, intuitive, and engaging experiences regardless of the channel or platform they are on. The Cloudinary product team is well aware that meeting those expectations has created new challenges for retailers and brands, especially those that relied on in-store sales before the pandemic. To understand the challenges so we can better solve them, we recently worked with Meet the Boss, a business-collaboration partner, to host three virtual roundtables with brand leaders.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation for businesses and customers alike. Across verticals, brands were forced to evaluate their digital strategies and the ways in which they connect with audiences and customers. To explore brands’ visual media challenges, changes, and opportunities, Cloudinary recently cohosted a virtual roundtable with six leading brands from the Brand Innovators community on the topic, Brand Visualization in a Post-Pandemic Environment.
