“I’ll go as far as to say that video is the next marketing frontier,” said Adam Cummings, a young Jamaican entrepreneur enthusiastic about the evolution of digital marketing in Jamaica. Cummings eagerly chatted with Digital Life recently about the new frontier of marketing and why businesses need to get on board now.

Cummings is no newbie to media or digital production. The son of the late Bryan Cummings, one of Jamaica’s best photojournalists, he was exposed to media at a young age. He then developed an interest and crafted his skills in videography. Fast forward years later and Cummings is now the CEO of Apeiron Digital Pro which works with corporate companies to execute their projects for the digital space. “You could have a small handmade soap company or be as big as GraceKennedy; I think they all need digital media. The video and the content and everything related are going to represent your brand,” Cummings explained.

Clear proof that he has come into his own is evident in his passionate conversations about the value of building visual media for marketing. “It is important for larger companies to make a bigger investment; there’s a lot more for them to lose. However, companies just starting up need to do it but must have some wiggle room,” Cummings said.

He stressed how videos have become more effective than digital marketing images in recent times. “The brain processes a still image in about 13 milliseconds. However, video processes at 60,000 times faster, catering to more of your senses.” Cummings shared.

He was also quick to point out that about 80 per cent of the content people view online is video, thus confirming his working thesis that digital video marketing is a crucial advertising tactic. “Videos tell more of a story than a still image, which entices the senses,” Cummings added.

While e-commerce and virtual communication have been around for years, last year’s disruption by the pandemic saw many companies making their way to the digital realm to conduct business. Cummings agreed that pre-pandemic, a lot of companies did not see the Internet as a viable option for their company. “One of the problems,” Cummings said, is “getting people to understand the value of the digital space, a problem [we have seen] for the previous five years. In the last year, the importance of digital and video has become abundantly clear to most people.”

Cummings points to the daily evolution of digital marketing and how content creation is crucial to engage online consumers. As he sees it, a company’s success now depends on marketing strategies and how much effort is put into it. “Digital space is more difficult than traditional space because you just need one or two things and you send them out to the masses. The digital space requires a lot more expertise. If you have one person doing everything you’re probably not getting the best,” Cummings concluded.

Watch Adam Cummings conversation with Alaina Watts for Digital Life at www.jamaicaobserver.com