Case Studies:
Invest in Derbyshire
The Brief
Marketing Derby, the organisation behind the Invest in Derbyshire initiative, tasked us with creating three videos to get people to invest in Derbyshire by coming to work, live and play in the county Briight calls home. Each video had a different angle: Quality of Life, Innovation, and Connectivity.
The aim was to capture content of businesses, locations and points of interest, county-wide. Then use this glorious footage to create three distinct narratives that can be used separately for specific campaigns and that will sit together perfectly on Invest in Derbyshire's website.
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The new films perfectly capture why Derbyshire is the perfect place to live, work, play and invest.
Adam Rodgers, Marketing Derby
One video to rule them all? No, you 'nana!
You've got a bunch of messages and a budget for some tasty video content. Do you A) combine these messages into one video and maybe save some cash or B) split the messages up into individual focused videos and potentially need to max your budget?
If you said B, that's great - you're right! If you said A), that's cool, it's wrong but you're about to learn one heck of a lesson.
If you cram a bunch of messages into one video or piece of content, you'll likely dilute each message and draw no real attention to any one specific thing. Worst of all, while you might think you're making a smarter investment than getting into Bitcoin in 2009, you actually might as well be investing in Blockbuster stock in 2023.
Instead, break your content into individual messages. This way you'll be able to use each specialised piece of content in specific pitches or for specific campaigns. Which is exactly what the clever cookies at Invest in Derbyshire have done, creating campaigns driven by content that has singular core messages.
Shapes & Themes
Each video we created had a core message: Connectivity, Quality of Life and Innovation. But each video also had a mix of footage from a range of locations and a blend of businesses. So we needed a way to bring each video together.
To unify them all together, we made sure to use similar motion graphics throughout and an editing style that should look familar once you've watched each video. Zooming transitions, an increase in motion blur to add to the energy of each transition and motion graphics that borrow from Invest in Derbyshire's branding.
We also used shapes to bring each video together but also unify the varied content within each video. In Connectivity, we use lines in multiple scenes. These often travel left to right, which is the Western way of reading and is seen (at least here in the West) as a sign of progress. Lines are also a common shape with connectivity, from cables connecting us to the digital world to roads and directions connecting us to the world of logistics, importing, exporting and travel.
In Innovation, we opted for circles to enable us to create transitions that see us pass through objects and rotate around them. Using circles for the Innovation video seemed like the right choice as circles are often seen as a sign of eternity, timelessness and constant movement - all of which can be represented by Derbyshire's strong history and current status as a leader in innovation.
Finally, for Quality of Life, we didn't opt for a traditional shape. Instead, we used a person and their constant outline to help us move between locations and scenes. The Quality of Life video is all about the benefits to people, to the audience, to you and by using a person as the 'shape' we're hammering home that personal connection we're aiming to create.
