LG: To kick off the interview, could you give an overview of Realise Your Vision? And why the name?
When the pandemic forced the world into some form of remote working, filmmakers – and the media and entertainment industry at large – were deprived of the familiarity of the in-person interactions that are so important to their craft.
Our client Sohonet had a technical solution – ClearView – that could recreate that experience for them remotely, so it was our job to build awareness within the industry, and generate sales leads.
But we didn’t want to produce just another product led B2B campaign. We wanted to connect disparate storytellers and empower them to keep doing what they do best – put gripping content on our screens. That’s what Realise Your Vision was about: Helping creatives and storytellers bring their ideas and visions to life in the way they want to.
In filmmaking, the director’s original vision can often get lost in the complexity of the production process. And the changes to ways of working brought about by the pandemic made it even harder for filmmakers to collaborate, putting their creative vision in severe jeopardy.
We wanted to show them how Sohonet could help them overcome the challenges of remote working and realise their vision.
So, Realise Your Vision was our homage to their own craft – a campaign that put creative integrity on an equal footing with business objectives.
LG: In terms of your target audience, in your case study you mention that you went about conducting detailed analysis through industry expert interviews and personality profiling using the ‘Big Five Spectrum’. What did this look like? And what exactly is the ‘Big Five Spectrum Score’?
So, the ‘Big Five Spectrum’ actually comes from behavioural psychology. It goes by a few slightly different names depending on who you ask. But in essence it’s a test that’s commonly used to determine where someone falls on the spectrum for five major personality traits.
The subject states on a scale of 1-5 how strongly they agree or disagree with a series of statements, with their responses determining where they are placed on the spectrum for each of the traits.
Depending how high or low someone scores on each trait, they’re likely to exhibit different sets of characteristics related to that trait. So, by looking at how they score for each of the five major traits and observing the related characteristics, you can build a detailed picture of that person or audience.
Using this framework helped us to target the right audiences, and develop the right type of messaging and right content formats (like eBooks and films etc) that we knew they were most likely to engage with.
When it came to Realise Your Vision, we spoke to people from across the whole production process: Directors, colourists, VFX artists, post-production supervisors, network connectivity specialists – you name it. And they all had some pretty amazing stories to tell.
Aside from the invaluable insights and experiences they shared with us, what came across so strongly – and helped to shape our core theme for the campaign – was just how passionate they are about their craft.
So now that we had a clearer picture of the audience personality types from the Big Five Spectrum Score, and first-hand insight into how people in a variety of roles were overcoming the specific challenges that remote collaboration can present at different stages of production, we were ready to start creating content that would hit the mark and offer value.
LG: ClearView Flex certainly isn’t a niche product within the industry. Covid obviously increased demand for remote services. Was the aim of the campaign to remind this target audience of the product they know and love? Or was it to reach new buyers?
It was a bit of both really. Obviously those who’d so far been reluctant to dabble with remote collaboration had their hands forced by the impact of the pandemic. So, there was an immediate opportunity to engage a huge audience of net-new prospects who – like it or not – were desperately trying to get their heads around technologies and solutions in the same category as ClearView.
We knew that among Sohonet’s established customer base, especially the larger studios and networks, there was a significant opportunity to expand the adoption within those accounts and build a stronger brand affinity and trust, with long-term impact.
So, we knew we’d have to give them something of additional value as well as tell them about something they were already familiar with.
LG: One of your marketing objectives was to make Sohonet distinctive in the market. To me, Covid seems like both a blessing and a curse in this regard – the industry needed remote solutions, but also arguably increased competition as competitors suddenly become big fish in a small pond. How did you achieve this marketing objective and stand out from competitors?
You’re absolutely right. Covid was a double-edged sword in that sense. While it did highlight the problem for which ClearView is one of several solutions available, it also fired the starting gun for the rest of the market.
The first thing to say about this industry is that our target audience are all out there making amazing content themselves. So, if we wanted to get their attention and stand out, we knew we’d have to move away from the dry, ‘better, faster, cheaper’ type of language and content, and give them something that showed we understood the creative stakes of their world.
Through our research and interviews we’d identified two key insights that we made sure we stuck to religiously throughout the campaign:
- The passion and dedication that filmmakers have for their craft.
- The value of peer endorsement when choosing new technologies.
Combining these two learnings allowed us to create Realise Your Vision – a B2B content marketing campaign that wrapped the stories and experiences of the leading talent from the industry in a beautifully crafted, cinematic aesthetic.
LG: To expand a bit more on this, Covid meant marketers were fighting for attention – it goes without saying that cutting through that noise with creativity has never been more important. Do you think we’re seeing a wider shift (if not requirement) towards these more creative, almost B2C-esque campaigns within B2B?
Just looking at the creative chops on display across all the categories B2B Marketing Awards shows that B2B is definitely on its way to embracing this way of thinking. And the fact that the Cannes Lions now has a whole range of B2B categories is further evidence that we’re not just here to make up the numbers when it comes to creative campaigns.
So, with this award we’re proud to have chalked up another ‘win for creativity’ within the B2B space, that’s for sure – and hopefully it’s one that other creative teams elsewhere can look at and say to their stakeholders ‘this is the sort of work we need to be doing.’
People too often think of these things as a toss-up between doing something really creative or doing something clinically effective that hits the KPIs. But we don’t see it that way.
When we think about these things honestly, we’re all consumers. Even the c-suite exec who’s deciding whether to spend a million dollars on enterprise cloud architecture leaves their ‘BDM’ hat in the office each day when they go home to their family. So, we need to engage them as humans and tap into those common emotions that we all share.
Realise Your Vision was special to us in the way that it featured people and their passions. Whether it’s hearing The Mandalorian’s post-production supervisor enthuse about ‘magic hour’ lighting, or Bohemian Rhapsody’s ADR sound supervisor singing the praises of her team’s Oscar-winning efforts, these are all stories where the emotion is right on the surface.
It’s something tangible. Something you can feel. You don’t need to leaf through pages and pages of technical jargon to find it – it’s right there.
LG: Continuing down this line, looking at the clip itself, one thing stands out to me: Covid. You see people wearing masks, working from home, etc and the focus is placed on those behind screens. Why was this so important to reinforce, or perhaps celebrate, from a marketing perspective?
We needed to be real with people. At the time we shot the film and launched it in market, there were many questions – and indeed some remain unanswered today – about what the ‘new normal’ would look like. So, we needed to embrace the situation rather than fight it.
The film showed our audience that even in the world of mask wearing and social distancing, they didn’t have to give up their passions and livelihoods.There was a way for them to co-exist. And at a time when everyone’s mental resilience was under immense pressure, we hoped this would offer some measure of comfort and reassurance.
LG: Let’s talk numbers. Film budget was £50,000 with a total campaign budget of £90,000. This certainly paid back dividends, generating pipeline of +£4 million, a 73% increase to the average order size and new clients including Netflix, Amazon and Disney to name a few. How did you manage to do so much with a relatively small budget? Does this campaign show that big budget doesn’t necessarily equal big results?
I’d actually flip the final part of the question and put it this way instead:Working with a limited budget shouldn’t limit your creative ambition.
But in all truth, we did have to be very, very precise in all our decision-making. We knew that we had very fine margins to operate within, so we had to scrutinise every single choice we made. Whether it was deciding who to interview, the creative direction we took, the production company we used for the film, or the targeting of our media promotion, every part of this campaign was carefully considered.
I suppose the most rigid situation we had to navigate was shooting the hero film under lockdown restrictions on a fixed budget, which left us little room for manoeuvre or error. After a lot of planning and number crunching, we ended up filming on two locations over a single day.
But because we’d been meticulous in our choice of director and producer – Jack Bowden, and Dirty Films’ Angelica Riccardi, respectively – we were able to take decisive action at every stage to make sure we didn’t roll into overtime.
It’s like the Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, says: “An astronaut who doesn’t sweat the small stuff is a dead astronaut.”
OK, so we weren’t dealing with quite that level of danger and complexity, but you get the point!
LG: Realise your vision was a multi-channel campaign – clips were reused for social purposes and there were YouTube interviews with those behind the scenes. How did these perform? And how can marketers ensure they’re really making the most out of their content?
So, the campaign as a whole delivered above targets. We counted over 38 million impressions across all media types (+210% against target), with just over a million video views (+46% against target).
In terms of the other wider content play, by approaching the campaign in the way that we did – interviewing the leading talent from the industry and just letting them tell their stories – we had a wealth of fantastic source material at our disposal.
Primarily, each of the hour-long-ish video interviews were tidied up and shared as an in-depth Q&A with that person, really getting into the detail on their craft and experiences. For a slightly lighter touch, these were also distilled into blog posts that pulled out the salient points.
But there was more juice to be squeezed!
Our copy and design teams got to work creating some beautifully arranged role-specific remote collaboration guides, which authentically combined the stories and tips from each industry interview with relevant product information about the ClearView range. And while it was technically a product-push, it was done so with context, relevance, and value for the reader.
Further down the distillation process, we found more and more ways to break down the source content into small, more digestible pieces.
For instance, we’d collate the responses all interviewees gave about a particular issue or topic, giving us a bank of snippets and anecdotes to use for social copy and other purposes.
So, in short, by starting with a big rock you can then chip away at it and use the various fragments for different purposes, without having to research and create brand new content each time.
LG: Lastly, what does winning a B2B Marketing Award mean to the team?
Of course, it’s always a fantastic feeling to have your work recognised by your peers and within your industry. It’s a huge achievement for both the agency and our client, and for the individuals involved it’s a personal success that each of them can look back on with immense pride.
But from a creativity perspective, winning Gold for ‘Best use of creative’ has the power to be a catalyst – and not just for The Croc.
When a campaign with such a heavy emphasis on craft and creativity is awarded with a Gold award in a B2B category, it validates what a lot of us have been saying for some time – that creativity shouldn’t just have ‘a place in B2B marketing. It should drive it.
When we raise the water level, we raise the boat. The more that we – and our peers – can collectively prove the value of creativity to clients in the B2B space, the better our chances of pushing the boundaries of creative thinking and concepts when we’re given campaign briefs.
So, while it might be our name on the trophy, we think it’s as much a win for the industry as it is for The Croc.
You can watch Realise Your Vision here.
Are you a giant of B2B? Challenging the ‘norms’ and leading the industry to a new path? Well, it could be you on stage at this year’s B2B Marketing Awards! Submissions will open in mid-May, so register your interest today to get updates on our awards submission timeline. But before you go, we’ve got something special to help your submission stand-out…
