The Future of HCM, Simplified.

About Paylocity:

Paylocity is a software company that specializes in HR & Payroll with many features within it’s app to make the employee lifecycle smooth from hire to retire.

Their Business Needs and Goals:

Paylocity launched a campaign called “The Future of HCM, Simplified”, which we internally called “Simplified”, during SHRM. For that campaign we hired professional child actors and had a license to use their footage for 1 year. That year was coming to a close and the campaign was still active so we needed to replace their footage.

The Solution to Their Needs:

The Marketing team decided we would make the call to have kids of Paylocity employees for this wave of videos. The Marketing Team wanted to feature our different products as focal points in each short form video. Talent was selected and project was starting to be built out. I was added to this project towards the end of it’s process to build animated product screens for this project.

Results for all 9 video combined:

(This data was pulled in the 2 months after the first video launch) This project was a brand awareness play. The campaign was short lived because the brand direction shifted 2 months after launching and these videos were sunsetted from our media plan.

Overall Views (for all 9 videos): +285,000

Compliance: +150 Views, 2.6% CTR, 0:18 Average View Duration
AI: +237K Views, 1.8% CTR, 0:28 Average View Duration
Payroll: +140 Views, 2.6% CTR, 0:20 Average View Duration
Benefits: +45K Views, 1.6% CTR, 0:29 Average View Duration
Scheduling: +160 Views, 2.2% CTR, 0:19 Average View Duration
Recruiting: +210 Views, 3.0% CTR, 0:16 Average View Duration
Headcount Planning: +200 Views, 2.2% CTR, 0:20 Average View Duration
Spend Management: +160 Views, 2.2% CTR, 0:18 Average View Duration
HCM & Finance: +220 Views, 3.2% CTR, 0:21 Average View Duration

Product Screens Brainstorm

This project was edited by another editor and storyboarded by another designer. In the original storyboard the product screen was a still image, however once the first draft of the video was edited we could tell very quickly that the screen being static for that section was too long and it lacked visual interest and storytelling. So a copywriter and me were asked to link up and create something to fill the section of the videos for each topic.

We met and strategized the best way to portray what the VO was saying about each product. We used a working document to breakdown each sentence and put next to it what we wanted to see visually to tell the story. Once that was done, the ball was in my court to build the product screen animations.

Product Screen Animations & Thumbnails

Here are the product screens I created for each video. Once I finished animating I exported them and gave them to the original editor to drop into his video file. After this addition to the video they were approved, finalized, and launched. I created the thumbnails for them as well.

Product Animations
Kayla Martinez (Me)

Video Thumbnails
Kayla Martinez (Me)

Full videos
Drew Varvel and Kayla Martinez (Me)

Video Data & Closing Thoughts

This data was pulled in the 2 months after the first video launch. This project was a brand awareness play. The campaign was short lived because the brand direction shifted 2 months after launching and these videos were sunsetted from our media plan.