Augmenting the mARket with Lenslist | FFFACE.ME
Let’s dive into the world of digital marketing with our new guest on “Augmenting the mARket”! 🥳Find out more about the potential of AR filters in the conversation with Dima Kornilov, founder of the FFFACE.ME agency. By starting the company, Dima proved that changing the professional path can only contribute to the overall success. His journey led from chemistry, through marketing to IT, until eventually he fell in love with the AR world. All of these experiences turned out to be the perfect foundation for starting a strong business! 💪 What makes a good AR agency? Check below! ⬇️
Augmenting the mARket with Lenslist
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Everyone wants to know how you started not only your journey as the FFFACE.ME agency, but also I’m wondering what was the starting point for you personally?
I started in a completely different industry – I graduated from Organic Chemistry. But at some point I understood that that’s not what I want to do. I switched to marketing, which was kind of in trend ten years ago. I worked with different advertising agencies and at some point I understood that apart from promoting, I’m also interested in developing some new things. And that’s when I switched to IT or Tech and I developed different apps, web services, etc. And at some point I started to develop an Augmented Reality arts app for one of my clients. I learned more about AR and fell in love with it. And yeah, later, at some point, I met Yegor and we started FFFACE.ME
According to the project that you do at FFFACE.ME, you are very bold about the stuff you create, so you are not afraid to start something new, to inspire others, etc. And it seems like a very good one because you’re also the first one. But isn’t it terrifying to be the first one actually?
It’s not terrifying. It’s a little risky because we’ve done a lot of new, cool things that worked, but we also did a couple of things that we invested in that didn’t work. One of my mentors from the educational program that I participated in said: “For entrepreneurs, failure is the only option”. So we fail every day, and it’s not terrifying. But if you are on this path, the path of innovator, you have to be ready to fail every day and to be okay with it, to just analyze what happened, receive some learnings and move on.
Is this the approach you take on the agency? So is this the one that makes you a very special one? That you are not afraid and you’re always for the win let’s say?
This approach is not as romantic as it could seem. The thing is, when you’re doing something new, there is a chance that in terms of business, you will be a monopolist. That’s the best approach in terms of work in a competitive market. For us, when we are doing something that everyone else does, we understand that we are in the competition and we have to win by doing something extra or making our prices lower or working faster. These things are not about creative approach. It’s more about finding rational advantages in the game. But when you’re doing something innovative, something that no one else did, it’s not like being first for the sake of being first. It’s about receiving a unique advantage in the market by offering a unique product. So that’s also rational and also, as a bonus, it’s also fun because you can play with technology and you can create the rules and not do something that fits some requirements or standards of the market.
For example, in terms of AR nails or AR manicure we published it and prior to announcing it, we’ve analyzed how it works in terms of audience engagement, we see that it works. We also added super crazy extra long mode and we see that people love it. So it was kind of a moment when we decided to have fun. It was cool because I sent the link to the filter to our head of production, Nika, and she told me: “Yeah, that’s cool, but what if we will do it just super extra long?” And she just painted on a photo, like, how long would it be and we did them exactly as long as she showed and turned out that it works. So there’s definitely a fun part in all of it and a lot of laughs.
If we speak about your agency, what is the main value of it and the product you offer and what is the main thing you bring to the table while doing the business work?
I guess it’s a really good question because even though we all work on AR projects, we actually offer really different products. So since I have this marketing background, I understand that brands or businesses, they don’t care about the technology, they don’t care about patches, shaders, they don’t care about the super sophisticated code or how everything works. They care about the return of marketing investments, they care about the metrics, they care about the KPIs. So we understand that we shouldn’t just deliver them files, we should deliver everything, creative ideas, file with the filter. And also we should offer the strategy on how they should announce this filter online and offline in all channels, because in the end, they need to receive massive engagement from their audiences. So for us, the main value that we bring to the table for the clients is driving the value and sales of their brand. That is what we do. But also we feel a responsibility to provide the best experience for the audience. We want to create valuable experiences and we know that Effects or filters, they actually help people to feel happier, and our mission is to create valuable experiences for the audiences that help brands to drive their value and sales.
Do you have any specific advice on how to create an AR portfolio? What should be inside, for example, how to showcase your project?
First of all, you need to define your target audience. You cannot just work with everyone. It would be hard to work with “super” everyone. For example, you’re creating some creative psychedelic Effects, it would probably be kind of hard to work with a beauty brand who promotes classic beauty, and on the contrary, if you create super classic beauty brands, it would be hard to receive an order for digital closing. So you need to define your audience. You need to define what you want to do, because we usually do things better when we love what we’re doing.
Why, in your opinion, still not every brand has an AR Effect? Why are not all of them aware of the possibilities of Augmented Reality and how useful it is?
The answer is in the question. Not all brands use an Effect simply because they don’t understand the value. And if they don’t understand the value, they cannot understand the value because of at least two reasons. First, this technology is still new. It’s been on the market for three years. It’s been only three years since Instagram introduced the Spark AR system. It’s not enough time to educate the whole market. The market was first, everyone was learning how to use outdoor advertising, then influencer marketing. It took some time, then social media appeared and changed everything. It took ten years for people that work in marketing, and for people, that is important, from different generations, because when people are younger, it’s easier for them to learn and understand something new. But the thing is, the majority of decision makers in marketing are more mature people. And for them this is something completely new, something that they don’t use, they ask simple questions like ‘why will it work’? Then comes the second aspect – in reality, AR filters or AR activities – they don’t always work. It’s not like this instrument where you receive the guaranteed result like, for example, I can launch the CPC advertising campaign in Google and I know exactly how it works. And even before I start the campaign, it shows me how much money I will spend for each click, so I receive predictable results.
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Huge thanks go to Dima for sharing his experience with us! 👏 We hope that it will inspire you to reach for the unknown… After all, hearing about other people’s success is one of the best ways to stay motivated. His story is the perfect example that with enough dedication, it’s never too late to start your journey in the world of Augmented Reality. 🚀