Creative Content On A Global Scale

In 2017 we won the global content pitch for Philips Signify Lighting. The pitch was based on the strategy that smart lighting had saturated the early adopter segments and we had to now move through the innovation adoption lifecycle. Communications and content in the near future would be need to be targeted at the early mainstream segments. Having conducted a content audit we also saw a gap in content type, with a lot of content already produced at the awareness stage but very little at the consideration and push to purchase stage. This was resulted in high awareness but low sales.

Since we have started working with Philips we have produced 1000s of pieces of content, both stills and film across global markets. We have designed a bespoke production model that produced maximum assets that fitted the clients budget . And the creative was based on how a change of light can have the immediate effect of your mood. The ‘light effect’ was an ownable proposition as Philips Hue Lighting had a choice of 16 million choices once set up.

Subverting The Traditional Christmas Advert

It is a sad commentary on todays world that youth homelessness is still an issue. In 2018 18,000 16-24 year olds were facing a Christmas homeless.

We wanted to start an education piece with the UK. We wanted to show that homelessness is not all about being on the street in the rain, wrapped in an old blanket begging for money. These are images that are inaccurate and also images that no longer grab a persons attention as the media have over used them in a lazy way across the years. We need to grab peoples attention again.

So we started a conversation about what being at risk of being homeless really looked like and how it could be hiding in plain sight. We created a spot that showed that parallel worlds which were co-existing and how we cant be complacent about the good moods of our friends and loved ones, they might be facing very challenging times, you can smile and have a depression, you can be in a room full or people and feel lonely.

The film we made took the tradition Christmas adverted and subverted it to great success. Although there was no fundraising CTA this film became a large money driver with a substantial ROI on media spend.

Power tools and garden tools have traditionally been a very male and masculine category. We wanted to start to change that and put women and girls at the heart of the a tool ad.

For Ryobi we wanted to put a mother and daughter at the heart of the story. We also wanted to find a way to show with all the garden tool Ryobi have, the garden can be a made into a place of dreams, adventures and exploration. So we wrote a loverly story or a young explorer finding adventures and learning while following her mum around the garden.

Telling The Stories That Need To Be Heard

It is a sad and shameful fact that 22,000 young people will spend Christmas Day alone. In a country that has enough for all out youngest and most vulnerable have nothing. This is a problem that can be fixed but our Parliament are distracted and playing political games between themselves, while ignoring the real problems. The one in need are having their voices and stories ignored.

So this Christmas we want to produce a campaign that brings awareness to this problem, firstly to young people themselves, so they can be the voice for the 22,000 like them. And secondly we also want the rest of the country to realise what is happening, so they see the parallel world that some live in and also join the movement.

So as this Christmas coincides with an election we have produced a campaign that drives people to a petition on the Centrepoint website asking people to agree and demand that who ever the next Government is that they will put youth homelessness on their agenda.

The campaign started with street art around London and Manchester telling the story of homeless young people, in places where the hard to reach audience naturally live their lives. A social and digital campaign was then activated to amplify the message.

For Christmas 2019 Hasbo asked us to look to see how we could promote the Black Range of Star Wars Collectibles. A hight price point then other collectables but similar in that there are many Vader models on the market. We had to justify the price point of the models as well as excite fans by bring the values of the franchise into films.

We were inspired by the use of holograms in the film to achieve this from the famous projections from R2D2, holograms taking their seats at the Jedi Council and specifically from the Force Awakens where the Starkiller Base was projected in the command centre for detailed examination.

With many assets to be made across a number of products this was also a very strategic decision to make budget go further and relieve pressure from short production schedule by having four 30 sec pieces of film being post production routes.

A Years Worth Of Content In One Shoot

Each year Ryobi come to us to produce all the content they need for a year, in just one shoot, in January. The assets are used across all global markets and across all campaigns and channels for the year.

A strategic development process starts in the autumn where a matrix is drawn up consisting of all the multiple pieces of content needed to shoot, their message, objective and production guidelines. This drives the production model. We look at how creative can share shots, which edits work across channels what are stand alone shoots and if we have the right mix of content across the purchase path for the year.

A well planned 4 month strategy and creative process has created hundreds of film and still assets across the years for global campaigns for Ryobi.

Giving A Much Loved Brand A Voice

Monopoly’s recent business model of producing innovative and topical games means they launch several games a year. This has opportunities and challenges for the brand. Every game produced must give the audience a new reason to want to buy it in the shadow of other must buy Monopoly variations from that year.

We had to bring alive the new innovation of the talking hat and the excitement of the new game play into the spot. We had to give a reason for the hat to betalking, a reason for the children to want to talk to it and show how this way of playing Monopoly was a very different world.

Producing A Branded Entertainment Show

In 2016 we produced a nightly live entertainment show for Red Bull to support their annual Can You Make It competition. Armed with only a crate of Red Bull teams of three’s raced across Europe to Paris taking part in daily challenges.

Social media was at the heart of the week with teams being encouraged to post their stories. Challenges and tasks were produced to ensure situations arose that would lead to entertaining footage and stories.

Each day at 8pm a live show hosted by Roman Kemp and Vicky Hope was broadcasted on the Red Bull website. The formatted show included edited content from the teams, live interviews in the studio and on location and a series of games. Each show was put together in the space of 6 hours dependent on reaction and engagement from viewers and social media the day before. The studio was built from scratch in Paris and the Red Bull satellite was moved in space to enable broadcast.

NERF

Making Nerf A Brand Again

Nerf’s Category Leader Status Had Become Their Biggest Problem.

Nerf came to us as a brand celebrating 50 years of being innovative leaders in children’s toys. Since 19xx they have been category leaders of blasters. So much so that they became the category. To Google, to Uber, to Hoover, to Nerf. This became their biggest problem, their brand was being diluted and devalued by cheap imitations and the genuine innovations in Hasbro Nerf products were not being appreciated. They also had the challenge of a new type of entertainment for children, such as e-sports and online gaming being as much of a competitor for the target audiences time as other blaster products. Our challenge was to stop Nerf being a category and make it a brand again as well as make it looking exciting to children more use to entertainment platforms as they are physical toys.

Beating The Competitors With Live Content

E! had the rights to broadcast live from the red carpet from the Oscars, Golden Globes and the other major awards of the year.

Awards night means many different categories and brands fighting for attention and to be heard. There are the celebrity gossip sites, the fashion and beauty brands, those nominated for the awards, the TV show, channels, distributors wanting to amplify their success, they are busy nights.

We had to be creative, authentic, entertaining and most importantly fast to make content. There was no point in waiting till the next morning to write posts as by then the daily newspapers and online magazines would have hold of the coverage. So we made a live studio and shoot, edited and posted online within minutes of key moments happening.

We strategically brought together a group of influencers, not just those with online following but those who have more authentic reasons to commentating on the awards nights. As moment happened on the red carpet influencers were take to a pop up studio, content filmed and uploaded within minutes. Therefore being the brand online with awards footage. By the time the morning came our content had gained SEO value and was competing and beating big rivals.

We punched above our weight and won the night by being well organised, spotting talking points and being fast.

A Campaign For The Sofa Detectives

The NBC Universal channel 13th Street came to us asking us to help them drive awareness in two of their European markets. Research showed that viewers of this crime channel saw themselves as home detectives, a more educated viewer. They were less spectators of the shows and more willing participators in solving the crimes. So we went about selling the channel as the only crime channel in Europe which genuine crime enthusiasts needed.

We wanted to attract those viewers who enjoyed being detectives and set 13 clues across 13 days each giving a part of a puzzle to the final answer. This was an integrated campaign which a different channel used every day including, print, radio, experiential, TV, Facebook, digital buys, social media, google search and idents.

The campaign hit campaign targets in 2 days, was the best ever competition the channel had held and was an industry award winner.

Hasbro - Star Wars

Content From A Galaxy Far Away….And Ecom

Hasbro came to us with a brand new range of Star Wars toys and asked us produce content across TVC, social, stills and ecom. The products had many new innovative product features however it was the challenge of adding in narrative to the TVCs while respecting the film franchise.

We also wanted to ensure that content on every channel had the same level of story telling that was possible within the restrictions. We saw ecom channels as an entertainment channel as much as TVC to ensure that no Star Wars content lacked the imagination, creativity or production values the film demands.

The Most Searched For Christmas

In 2013 alongside the traditional trailer adverts BBC commissioned a series of short form content. This was based on substantial data analytics. Using google data and commissioned and third party surveys.

I tracked Christmas from the first time in appears in the peoples psyche and in google data through to post new year. Looking at the weird, wonderful and most search for Christmas related terms. There were clear trends and identifiable dates when tradition and activities occurred.

We matched up trends and things people wanted to know with celebrities and launched the content on the relevant key dates.

While working across BBC briefs I also conducted a lengthy consultancy piece for Children In Need looking at their data usage.

Creating A New Image For Beer

After the 1990s and the era of lad culture beer was left with an unfavourable image in the 2010’s. With beer associated strongly with anti social behaviour, sport fans and attacked by health messaging it need to fight back. The British Beer Association funded by the 5 biggest brewers initiated a campaign to reeducated health and image conscience public to understand that there is more to beer then vomiting it back up.

We produced always on social content, cinema ads, podcasts, short form content and events all based around the quality and diversity of beer and how beer is a great match for food.

Teaching The Nation Not To Be Scared Of Different

Giff Gaff was a disruptor to the UK telecoms market offering sim only deals and community based customer service a long with other things. The problem is a phone is the one thing most people are most scared of being without and so Giff Gaffs different offerings while exciting was also something people were weary of.

And while Giff Gaff runs off the same network as other major brands saying that loses Giff Gaff disruptor message and so people were also weary of being on a less effective network.

So we creative a platform and advertising that celebrated the different and showed people how there was nothing to be scared of by being different.

Bringing Joy To Cadbury Brands

Fallon was lead creative agency for Cadbury for the famous Gorilla era of Glass and a Half Full Productions which i joined towards the end of. Cadbury then asked us to create a new brand platform that bought the customer closer to the product. The creative platform Joyville was created that would live across all brands and would show across communications the joy of eating chocolate is felt because of the joy in making chocolate. In my time at Fallon I worked on the master brand campaigns, Creme Egg, Wispa, Twirl and Dairy Milk.

Creating Formats For Social Channels

Working across several NBC Universal channels we produced 24/7 social content and key campaign content mile their big shows. As an agency with its roots in production we went about solving the brands challenges with formats not ideas.

To produce such a high quantity of content and for that content to have a reason for being we created formats, and so behaved more like an editorial team then a traditional creative agency.

We would analyse deeply the success of the popularity of different formats, the ‘While You Were Sleeping’ morning commuter content proved very popular and remained a long running feature. We would ensure the returning formats had regular slots so fans would know when to expect them and fitted them into a content calendar that was topical to the month as well as organise themes through out the year which helped content look less random and have a read purpose.

Driving Film Standard Production Values Into Content

Frozen the one of the biggest films of all time. It was also one of the biggest slow burner hits with a slow start in ticket sales before it was gained momentum until the whole world started singing along. This would not be a problem with Frozen2, this film is one of the most anticipated films of all time. This means the world and their dog will be trying to jump on the Frozen2 PR machine when it is comes out and Hasbro will be fighting for their campaign and toy range to be heard and seen.

For the first time one agency produced every bit of content for the Fashion Doll team from how to videos, tvs and ecom this totalled nearly 400 pieces of content.

We did two major things differently to achieve success. The first was to bring the film production values into the content. Young children are would not be old enough to make a decision between brands, so we wanted to make sure we stood out to them by having content that most similar and relatable to the film making it easy for us to be most easily recalled.

We also ensured there was a creative thread and mechanic that was in every piece of content to ensure where ever someone started their journey or if they saw content in two different channels there something quickly and recognisable Hasbro.

Production Values Led Creative

Play Doh have a variety of product launches a year, up to 8. Each product can have around 4 different features. With an opening animations, 4 product features and an island shot that doesnt leave much room for narrative or storytelling in a 15’ spot.

So over the course of our campaigns we have focused on the product features but we have ensured that every ad used the filming teaching, set design and lighting.

In the multiple campaigns we have worked with Play Doh on we have significantly shifted how their content looks.

Creating The Biggest Ever Egg Hunt

Before art installations across cities became a regular sight we worked on the first and what at the time was the biggest egg hunt. To help with installation we created the gamification element of the hunt and at the time the innovative use of VR codes.

All design elements for the campaign was also led and produced by us.

This was a model that was replicated many times over in London and cities around the world.

Starting A Conversation On Mental Health and The Royals First Gif

Through working with the Royal Foundation and the Full Effect projects we worked with The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex to launch their mental health awareness campaign and to bring awareness of a Nottingham charity project that helps young people feel empowered to engage with their peer community into matters that are important to them, while training them in key skills that will lead to job opportunities.

Work included strategy work, design and creative work and the Royal Families very first GIF…which shocked some of the daily papers in to writing about it (you can guess which papers).

For a small budget we were asked to show the performance level of the new Lynx Prowler driver.

A difficult task in a category which is highly competitive, with many clubs saying similar things. So instead of trying to convince customers on to believe the science of performance we tried to get to make them feel what it would be like hitting a ball with the The Lynx Prowler.

All sports people love the feel of the sweet sport, a ball of the centre of a cricket bat, the strike of the ball which feel like you put no effort into it, the serve that is an ace by the time you have finished the movement, the drive off a club. It’s the transition of power from you to the ball.

Hijacking Big Spending Rivals

We created 24/7 social media content for Betway across all their sporting divisions. We created their everyday content and also larger pieces of content for big sponsorships events such as the darts league.

To increase our reach and to steal fans from rival darts leagues we hijacked other tournaments and online communities of those leagues and targeted them through keywords and regular social conversations and also during the leagues peak moments in finals.

During this time we increased our social following and engagement and caught up with competitors who had far more history and media spend.