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Author: Lauren Brady

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2019

The 26th edition of the ever-growing Goodwood Festival of Speed closed on Sunday after another four days of West Sussex’s answer to ‘What happens when you cross a global motor show with a quintessentially British garden party?’

Apologies to those who were only present on the Sunday, my visit completely avoided the rain and I’m pleased to be boasting the bronzed extremities to prove it!

This year saw centre stage occupied by Aston Martin, to mark 70 years at the festival. A simple but beautiful central sculpture was supported each day with a short musical and automotive showcase, taking in fireworks, Land of Hope and Glory and, of course a certain James Bond.

For me though, the manufacturers’ stands are the main draw and first mention has to go to the fine men and women of Potash Lane, Hethel. Lotus Cars of course and they were signalling their serious ambition with a thumping, green-and-yellow-tastic stand, showing the full range of current production cars and the obligatory historic F1 car. Not just any F1 car this time around though; this year’s display included the very special Lotus Type 25 – the fabled 25/R6 – the actual car in which Jim Clark set the best ever time of 1:20.4 for a lap of the Goodwood circuit, all the way back in in 1965. Still unbeaten! A very pleasant surprise for a very lucky few was a behind-closed-doors preview of the Type 130 EV Hypercar, the Evija. Give me a call and I’ll take you through the correct pronunciation…

From there is was off to Jaguar Land Rover, a stand resonating to the screech of expensive rubber as visitors are given the opportunity to observe the local flora and fauna at close quarters through the side windows of a fleet of oversteering F-Types. For me though, the highlight of the stand was just set apart from it, as it happens, with Land Rover teasing a camouflaged brand new 110” wheelbase Defender, just in advance of its planned launch in the autumn. An equally-disguised 90 also ran up the hill. Still a British icon, even if manufacture is planned for Slovakia? The debate rages on!

Over to the other side of the bridge to catch up with the latest news from everyone’s favourite orange-coloured supercar brand, McLaren. I think they really get it right, bringing the best of their offering to the fans at the show as well as the VIP owners. This was epitomised by the placing of the genuinely beautiful Speedtail front and centre in the public area of the stand, making for perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime personal viewing for so many. Why is it that so many other new cars are just not particularly beautiful these days?

Famous Italian brand De Tomaso took the opportunity to debut its brand new P72, an homage to the 1965 P70 prototype racer brought bang up to date. Absolutely one of the stars of the show and that was before we were all able to experience it firing up and going up the hill!

There was just enough time to catch the Lamborghini stand, very cleverly positioned right in the very middle of all the action. The company is currently riding on the crest of a wave with the new Huracan EVO, the evergreen Aventador and now the Urus, which has effectively doubled the company’s sales, all on display. Any self-respecting Lambo owner has to these days also give garage space over to the official Lamborghini massage chair, ‘road’ tested by yours truly and available in colours to match your latest four-wheeled Italian thoroughbread!

See you all next year!

 

Paul

[email protected]

 

 

Say hello to Joe!

We love to give you an insight into who we are at REALTIME and we are our people, so say hello to our new Lighting Artist Joe!

 

Tell me a little bit about yourself?

My name is Joe Worthington, I’m 31 and from Manchester. I studied Computer Visualisation and Animation at Bournemouth University which landed me an exciting post-graduate job at my local Tesco! I then moved to London and got my foot in the door of the VFX industry as render support. Through this I was fortunate enough to be moved into lighting where I worked on several exciting (and some less exciting) blockbusters. After seven and a bit years working in the south I felt the pull of home and moved back up north, eventually leading me to RealtimeUK!

 

What’s your role at REALTIME?

My primary role here will be CG lighting and look-dev but I’ll also be handling compositing duties.

 

What first sparked your interest in 3D Art?

I’d love to say I had a revelatory experience during a classic film at a young age and this has been my dream ever since, but it was nothing that poetic. I come from a fine art background but I also enjoyed coding, this in conjunction with a love of film led me down the path to 3D art. While it may have been a decision decided with logic I couldn’t be happier with the choice I made. I love working in this industry and am passionate about the work I create.

 

So, what does an average day consist of for you?

A lighters first job in the morning is to check the farm and see how their overnight renders fared, investigate errored frames, resubmit where needed and generally assess render times. I’ll then quickly comp up anything which is ready so it can be reviewed in dailies. Tasks throughout the day will generally be a balancing act of shot lighting, asset lookdev and compositing. Late afternoon is the time to make sure renders are prepared to run overnight, ensuring I’m pulling together all the latest and greatest assets passed on by other artists.

Oh and lots of cups of tea, especially in the morning, I need a strong brew to wake me up.

 

What’s the best thing about working here?

So far the best thing at RealtimeUK has been the people, they’re an exceptionally talented bunch. I’m always looking to improve and learn so I’m excited to work as part of a team which will push me to be a better artist.

 

Are there any upcoming things in the industry that you think people need to keep an eye out for?

AI learning is a growing area for the industry, while its only had specific applications thus far like facial capture, I hear it’s also being looked into as a means of denoising ray-traced renders. It will be very interesting to see where else in the pipeline it can be incorporated. In terms of lighting and rendering, game engines are producing images of increasingly impressive fidelity and with NVIDIA making a push for ray traced graphics on the GPU I’m curious to see how, if at all, this will affect the industry.

 

Tell me a fun fact about yourself?

I once survived having a pub fall on me. Made the news.

What is brand loyalty when it comes to cars?

Brand loyalty is another corporate buzzword that gets thrown around many a boardroom. But what is brand loyalty? Is it some caveman-like basic urge to be part of a group? For something as amorphous as the concept of brand loyalty, it’s quite rigid in practice.

As a term, it’s the affinity customers feel towards your brand and how likely they are to choose you over competitors. But what is it in a psychological sense? According to Kotler et al, brands can exhibit five traits: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. Consumers are drawn to brands that exhibit at least one of these traits and line up with their own internal beliefs. But how can companies use that information, especially in the automotive industry?

 

Familiarity

Brand loyalty could simply come down to prior experience. File this under ‘competence’ and ‘ruggedness’. It could be as simple as cereal – it tastes good, ergo I will buy it again.

In relation to vehicles, you might be loyal to a brand that has worked well in the past. Cars are such a huge investment, you want something that will last you a long time. You’ll want one that performs just as well.

But sometimes it’s familiarity. Humans are creatures of habit and stepping outside of what we know is daunting. Even if you’ve never driven a car before, you’ll have perceptions about particular brands. “My Mum’s Fiat looks nice” or “my friend loves their Kia”. Plenty of Americans would tell you that Dodge is one of the best car brands in the world. But if that’s true, why do they not sell as well elsewhere in the world? 

There’s a famous study that tested people’s ‘Coke vs Pepsi’ bias. It found that people preferred it when they thought they were drinking Coke, despite what was even in the glass. The two drinks are near-identical, but if you dare say such a thing you might start a fight. Maybe brand loyalty is just as simple as ‘better the devil you know’?

 

Aspirations

Or not. That’s too narrow a definition and doesn’t account for people’s appreciation of a brand they don’t even know. You may have never driven a Bentley Bentayga but you know what the name Bentley represents.

It plays into the idea of ‘excitement’ or ‘sophistication’. Brand loyalty can also be aspirational – you want something because of the prestige of it. Apple products have that effect on people, despite their market-leading prices. Over three-quarters of people would replace their iPhone with another one, and even more of them couldn’t even imagine having something else.

We see our products as an extension of us. We never stop being kids in that sense, chasing brands that get us the most attention. But it’s a chicken-or-the-egg scenario: did wealthy people buying brand X make it so prestigious, or did they buy into it because it already was?

 

Creating brand loyalty

Some companies engender loyalty by actively making them feel like part of an exclusive club. Both in the sense that by owning a brand you are part of a minority and in the literal sense – a reward scheme. Why eat anywhere else when another three meals will get you a free starter at Nandos?

It’s harder with cars since you can’t quite say “buy five Fords and your next one’s free!” You could offer an app like ‘FordPass’ though that gives people a reason to stay in your ecosystem. There are plenty of examples of it – each one making you feel like your part of an exclusive group that’s being cared for, provided it has the ‘sincerity’. Kia even refers to it as the ‘Kia family’.

If you want to foster more loyalty you have to work to change already established behaviour. Van Praet described seven steps to this process. You need to interrupt the pattern, create comfort, lead the imagination, shift how they feel, satisfy any critical questions they might have, change their associations, and take action.

So while brand loyalty might differ from person to person, there’s a core to it that you can tap into. Every brand can find loyalty and an audience it’s just a question of can you do it?

At RealtimeUK, we understand the importance of brands. We know what your brand means to you and have a strong history of representing companies in the best possible light. If you’re interested in working together on a future project, get in touch with me at [email protected].

 

Why you need a high-quality trailer for your games

So what’s the point in having a high-quality trailer for games?

With E3 having just passed. And even though certain companies skipped the party this time, there’s still a buzz in the air about what happened at the event. E3 has become Christmas for gamers, and developers and publishers know it. That’s why it’s become the place to announce your newest slate of games. But in a sea of competitors, how will your game stand out?

When it comes to capturing your audience’s attention and increasing user acquisition, an effective and high-quality game trailer is critical. It forms the foundation of a prolonged marketing campaign in a game’s life cycle. 

In our modern digital world, first impressions are everything. Despite building and delivering an excellent game, your efforts will fall short if your trailer fails to do your game justice. It’s paramount you give your trailer the attention it deserves and make sure it ticks all the boxes. 

 

Capturing attention

In a highly competitive marketplace, user attention is in high demand. Your competitors are doing everything to draw maximum attention with their trailers and marketing efforts. Falling short in quality and due diligence here can be costly. 

Creating a trailer that engages and immediately captures your audience’s attention is critical. Failure to do so will see any user engagement drop fast. How you capture their attention is up to you. Sometimes the intrigue of what the mysterious project is is enough. Other times, the scenario itself might be enough to capture their curiosity. Whatever you do, just don’t start it with a parade of logos splashed onto a black background. Or if you need to do that, at least make them fit with the style of the game. 

 

Entertain

It might be an obvious point, but you want to make an entertaining trailer that encourages engagement. Note we said entertaining – not exciting. A trailer has to have to its own mini-narrative to carry the audience through to the end. You need to fit acts one, two, and three in the space of 90 seconds.

If they come away bored or confused, you haven’t done your job. This is your game – what do you think is entertaining? If you know the answer to that, then surely you know what to put in your trailer.

 

Understanding

A high-quality trailer leaves its audience with an understanding of what your game is about and what they’ll get out of it. The focus here isn’t necessarily on gameplay mechanics. You can choose a point of focus to show off what your game has to offer. It could be game goals, character journey, atmosphere, or storyline.

The key to a high-quality trailer is to avoid cramming too much information into it. In 90 seconds, stuffing your trailer with information on price, device information, story, gameplay, atmosphere, and all your other features is a sure way to turn off your audience. Focus on hooking them around your core concepts. They’ll actively search for more information after successful engagement. 

But it’s the professionals who have years of experience crafting trailers that evoke powerful emotions within the target audience. They have the knowledge to plan out dramatic structure and content from beginning to end, always staying respectful of your end product. With the ongoing battle for attention in such a competitive space, seeking industry expertise could give your game the attention it deserves, along with an edge over the competition. 

 

REALTIME is one such company, creating trailers for the likes of Subnautica, War Robots, and Zombie Gunship. Our staff are visionaries who can create a stand-out trailer worthy of hitting the E3 stage. If you would like to discuss your upcoming project, please contact me at [email protected]. 

Is technology the future for car dealerships?

If you listen to the doom and gloom, you would think the traditional high street was dying. Look at big names like BHS and Toys R Us going under in recent years and the subsequent rise of online shopping. You can’t walk down your average high street without seeing boarded-up stores or newly emptied lots. Yet we’re still far from the collapse of the high street; online shopping only accounts for 17% of total sales, meaning the retail sector is still going strong.

So it’s hard not to look at the doom and gloom around car dealerships with the same scepticism. Articles titled ‘Why Car Dealerships Will be Extinct by 2025’ paint an ominous picture. But if the high street can survive, why can’t dealerships?

The new way of shopping

Of course, the two experiences are different. While retail has its fair share of pushy salespeople, it isn’t nearly as much of a pain point as it is for the automotive sector. According to Deloitte, less than 1% of people like the car buying experience. But they can learn a lesson from the retail sector; those that are thriving today know that they need to adapt. So it’s less ‘car dealerships will be extinct by 2025’, more ‘those who fail to change with the times will die out’.

All the information a consumer needs is at the touch of a button. Customers spend 10 hours on average researching their new car purchase, with 52% visiting the dealer’s website during the process. They are savvier and less likely to fall for sales patter. When they visit the dealership, it’s not necessarily advice they’re looking for.

So what are they looking for? Consumers crave convenience – they will want an easy time. Dealerships might not be the start of the car buying process, but they can still be a part of it. Allowing customers to choose their car at home – maybe even configuring it – before confirming their decision in-store is a good place to start. Adoption of technology like this will make customers feel less pressured, able to take it at their own pace.

They can learn a lot from the Apple store model. There, all of their expensive gadgets and toys are laid out to experiment with at your leisure. Salespeople approach you but don’t push you. SEAT has taken the idea and ran with it – they have two stores in the country that wear their convenience on their sleeve. Their website boasts their lack of ‘pushy salespeople’ and their ‘no haggle pricing’. They know what consumers want. They’ve adapted.

Take a SEAT

These SEAT stores aren’t dealerships but that doesn’t mean what they do can’t be integrated into them. They have less emphasis on the salespeople and more on their information kiosks. These are a fountain of information and adverts in the store make for a more natural pathway for consumers to experiment with the car configurators. It gives them something to ‘play’ with, opening up the door to conversions that weren’t there before.

The stores are also less about the cars, with only three on display. Counter-intuitive? Not quite; Green Room CCO Mike Roberts says it’s about ‘putting control in the hands of the customer’. If they want, they can even book a test drive nearby.

But there is pressure building from companies like Tesla, who let you buy directly, or ride-sharing apps like Uber. The next big trend might be car subscription services like Wagonex, who knows? We could see a trend of fewer, yet more robust, dealerships.

As we keep saying, the key is adoption. Make the journey from online to in-store a seamless one. Offer easily accessible options at your dealership. Understand that people want to feel in control. Give them the option to customise their car there and then, maybe even offer test drives in a VR environment.

Extinction isn’t likely to happen by 2025 but that doesn’t mean you’re invulnerable to any adverse effects. While the future looks bright for retail, companies like Debenhams still face problems. The same can be said for dealerships. The question is, what are you doing about it?

At RealtimeUK, we have extensive experience working with some of the biggest names in the automotive sector. If you need CGI solutions for your car configurator or app, get in touch with me at [email protected].