Dive Brief:
- Curalate released Curalate Tilt, a vertical video technology, that will bring “stories” to branded channels such as e-commerce sites and branded apps.
- Urban Outfitters is a major brand making use of Curalate Tilt for UOTV, its latest mobile web destination. The UOTV stories are shoppable short videos featuring new products.
- “With UOTV, powered by Curalate Tilt, the short and fun vertical videos we create will now have a longer lifetime,” Rachel Albright, Director of Creative Marketing & Content for Urban Outfitters told Curalate in a company blog post. “UOTV viewers will actually be able to see exactly which products are featured in the videos and will easily be able to buy them. We’re really excited to use this as another way for people to discover Urban Outfitters and have a great online experience with our brand.”
Dive Insight:
The vertical video format was originally popularized by Snapchat and readily adopted by the platform’s younger-skewing user base of millennials and Gen Z, as it is well-suited for mobile video viewing. According to the Curalate blog post, Snapchat reports vertical video gets 9x the engagement of horizontal video on the app.
Curalate Tilt allows brands to bring vertical video to their own channels, sites and apps, and given its younger target audience, Urban Outfitters is a natural fit as a brand using the tech for its new mobile destination. The Curalate post points out that Curalate Tilt isn’t just mobile-friendly, it is mobile only.
Brick-and-mortar retailers such as Urban Outfitters that target a younger demographic are finding it harder to draw traffic into their stores as online shopping grows. Vertical video is the latest digital strategy adopted by Urban Outfitters as it tries to reach digital-savvy consumers.