YouTube Shopping rolls out 16 films across six markets in APAC campaign

YouTube Shopping has featured Indonesian creators Kudet Tech, Rachel Goddard and Titan Tyra in its APAC campaign, "Reason to believe", which aims to show how creators can earn income by tagging products in their YouTube content.

Produced by Vantage Pictures and directed by Salihin Ramli, the campaign brings together creators from Indonesia, India and South Korea across 16 films. The executions were adapted for six markets and seven languages, generating more than 380 assets, including short-form video cuts of 15 and six seconds that run primarily on YouTube.

The paid media campaign is scheduled to run for 12 months from launch, while the films will remain live on YouTube for two years, Vantage Pictures told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

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The campaign centres on the idea of turning creators’ existing product recommendations into another potential source of income, while retaining the personalities and familiar settings that audiences recognise.

To bring this to life, the production team built four physical sets, each designed to accommodate two distinct environments: an everyday setting and an imagined world that extends beyond it. Visual effects and AI-generated backgrounds were used to transform the practical sets into more fantastical environments.

Creators from Indonesia, India and South Korea travelled to Vietnam for five days of studio filming, with the production adapting props, lighting and atmosphere to suit each creator and market.

“The turnarounds were relentless, customising the lighting, props, and mood to match each market on every film,” said Ramli. “Everyone had to be locked in, and we only pulled it off because the team came in thoroughly researched and moved fast on set.”

AI also played a role in developing the campaign before and during production. Google’s Veo 3 was used in pre-production to create moving animatics with sound and pacing, allowing the team to preview sequences and refine ideas before filming.

The tool was also used to generate background plates for the campaign’s imagined environments. These were subsequently composited and colour-graded during post-production, extending the physical sets without relying entirely on studio construction.

The production framework was shared across the campaign, but the creative execution was tailored to individual creators through changes to the sets, storylines, copy and editing.

“What we ended up with wasn’t 16 versions of one film. It was 16 independent films,” said executive producers James Duong and Clover Ho. “The set elements changed for each creator, the story changed, the copy was written fresh for each one. That level of adaptation is a huge amount of work, and it’s only doable with a team that’s genuinely working together, not handling pieces in isolation.”

Following the shoot, Vantage Pictures’ post-production team in Vietnam worked with Thailand-based Basugaa Studio on visual effects and Malaysia-based Pitch Audio+Magic on sound design and mixing.

The post-production process spanned two months, running alongside a separate animation workstream. Voice recording alone took 39 hours across the campaign, as the team adapted the films for different audiences and languages.

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