Case study
“Delicious!”
That’s how Michelin-starred chef, Raymond Blanc describes Savencia’s brand, Saint Agur blue cheese, in his bite-sized recipe videos that promote the brand.
Raymond Blanc is a brand ambassador for Saint Agur and, along with videos for other Savencia brands, we shot a whole year’s worth of tempting, inspirational and easy-to-follow content in just 2 shoot days. This made the most of their video budget, and was carefully planned to allow their celebrity and executive talent to give their best in the shortest time.
We helped the Savencia team to plan the videos covering the two critical seasonal events of Easter and Christmas. Then we worked out how we could organise the shoot so that we could achieve up to 4 videos a day, making the best use of celebrity presenter time. We advised on the scripts to ensure they suited the presenter – in the right tone of voice and authentically enthusiastic about the brand.
Logistics were important – recipe videos require a lot of preparation, supplies, props, equipment and outfits to help with the relevant story. And once we had organised this, we could work out the lighting, sound, cameras and other equipment we needed to capture the right footage from every angle.
Our job is of course to get the best possible video footage from shoot days. It’s also our job to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible. This means a lot of organisation, making sure that presenters, whether TV celebrities or top executives, are prepared, focused and ready to go. We ensure forgotten scripts, last-minute changes or questions on the brief, or any other worries are smoothed out and that really good communication is maintained across the whole team.
We work hand-in-hand with the client, celebrity presenters, brand executives, PR teams and more to make sure we get exactly what’s needed. We make sure the day is efficient, but relaxed; well-planned but flexible. And that’s why big brands like Savencia come back to us every time they need new visual content.
We love shoot days –
it’s a team event.
“Our 2020 Xmas campaign had fantastic results and we’ve experienced our best Xmas ever for Saint Agur (sales wise). In fact, the results were so good, we recently revisited the footage with FTH to create ads for a TV campaign to run ahead of Xmas 2023.”
We always put together a bespoke team for each shoot. This helps us to make sure we have people with the right expertise for the job, and to make sure everything goes smoothly. Here, we had a tech lead to ensure we had all the right equipment and tools in place and a separate customer service lead to support the presenters and the client team.
It’s a critical part of our work to manage expectations on the day, as well as be available for all planning meetings so that everyone involved in the shoot can meet each other and build relationships before filming begins. Allocating expert, friendly and collaborative people and establishing key focal points for each area of work is part of the way we work on every project.
Like all projects, we need to plan filming so that it meets brand guidelines and also allows an injection of creativity. We also paid a lot of attention to managing the approval processes, which were complex in this case because several different teams were involved. So our communication and approachability were just as important in post-production as in the briefing and filming stages. The results spoke for themselves: engagement with the video content and the smooth project process has resulted in the client returning to us for this campaign for four years in a row.
Achieved output and planning objectives:
Achieved incredible engagement stats for marketing team:
