In March of 2018, DJI came out with a new commercial for their Mavic Air, a drone released in January 2018. It's priced at $799, which is $300 cheaper than it's professional counterpart (the Mavic Pro) and twice as expensive as it's beginner counterpart (the Mavic Spark). However, it is smaller than both and advertised to be both functional easily portable.
Whereas most drones have a large dedicated bag that needs to be packed or carried around, the Mavic Air is smaller than the popular DJI Phantom 3 Pro and able to just be carried around in a suitcase. As photographylife.com founder Nasim Mansurov points out, that's the difference of taking a drone or leaving it at home, especially when going out on long hikes where every gram counts. Not only that, but Mansurov's blog breaks down comparisons between DJI's popular drones and the Mavic Air and implies that the Air is a quality drone that might even be better than the Phantom 3 Pro.
So what's DJI's target audience for this product? Prosumers and professionals that need high quality drones without the hassle of lugging it around. Enter Sam Kolder and Chelsea Kauai, two travel photographer and videographers well-known on social media for their adventurous lifestyles. Not only do they embody what a lot of new photographers and videographers strive for, but they have a massive social media presence to show off DJI's new drone.
The video follows Sam and Chelsea as they try to "one-up" each other in different drone footage. Chelsea gets on a jetski and makes donuts in the water, Sam cliff dives straight into the ocean. The two go back and forth both while showing off the drone's capabilities at the same time.
These two content creators are just a few of the growing number of travel videographers earning money from campaigns like DJI's. This past summer, Sam did a collaboration with Hyundai where he took a road trip across France and used drones to showcase the car. Not only did he get to travel for a few weeks with his friends, but he got paid for his artistry at the same time.
Similarly, Sam traveled to New York for this GymShark campaign. The video is clearly high-quality and what sets it apart is Sam's unique style that became popular in his travel videos. With more and more people mimicking his style (simply type in "inspired by Sam Kolder" and thousands of videos pop up), the potential for more cinematic videos for products is possible. Hopefully, the advertising world will soon be filled with videos like these that encourage people to travel and live their dreams.
I think the trend for brands to collaborate with popular creative influencers is extremely interesting, because it definitely lends its way to more creative, organic-feeling content like this, with perspectives that differ from that of people within the industry. That, coupled with everyone's liking for and desire to also be like social media stars is kind of like balance theory, making people like the drones, because they see this type of content created with the products being advertised. It's like a two-for-one strategy and it's also probably cheaper than hiring a large agency to produce content for them, so I think it makes sense that we will see more ads like this continuing to pop up, like you mentioned.
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