The Thinking

Google’s technology is revolutionising the business world. A huge dose of creativity is needed to explain the company’s fast and complex transformations. That’s why for nearly a decade, Google has partnered with distillery to help it tell stories through the power of the moving image.

The Making

distillery creates captivating and relatable visual content showing how large and small companies across all sectors and parts of the world use Google’s innovative solutions to grow and succeed.

The key to making great stories about technology is to link it with something we all have in common. We look for the relatable element behind each technology use case, connecting on a deeper level with Google’s customers to craft people-led stories that hero their success, highlight what they’ve achieved with Google’s solutions and inspire other businesses.

Working closely with Google and its customers, our stories stay true to each stakeholder’s brand and relevant to their industries, catering to the needs and interests of varied audiences. We also help Google connect with a wider audience by developing narratives based on creativity, open-mindedness and problem-solving. Often, this means finding the bigger picture in a local, family-run business story, to make it appealing to large international companies and vice-versa.

The Blowing Up

Turning technology use cases into people-led stories
When Google’s Retail division asked us to illustrate how it helps businesses, we contacted one of its South African customers, knitwear brand MaXhosa, to help amplify its story. Founder Laduma Ngxokolo helped us produce a first-person narrative on how he turned his homegrown passion into a global business with the help of Google’s technology. We celebrated the role Google for Retail played in helping MaXhosa succeed, told by one of its biggest fans: a successful customer.

Making the most of new technology
Using innovative technology, we showcase the atmosphere of every company, so that its authenticity shines through. To capture the dynamism of global clothing brand GANT, for example, and show how Google Workspace helps fast-track its operations by bringing its teams together online, we created an immersive experience with a 360 camera. For a personal touch, GANT’s creative director provided the narration, sharing what happens behind the scenes of a brand en route to opening its London flagship store – and the significance of collaboration enabled by Google.

Immersing ourselves in the world of each story
By focusing on each company’s space and getting to know its customers, we translate to film what’s unique and compelling about their partnership with Google. Specialist UK barbershop Barberology, for example, used to rely on passing trade to be discovered. With Google’s help, it is now growing its business online. Inspired by the company’s unique community feel, branding and visual identity, we used textures, lighting, camera angles, music and editing to represent it on film. By harnessing the emotive power of Barberology’s colours, lights, sounds and even its ‘rhythms’, we injected the customer’s unique character into this case study and magnified its audience appeal.

Making complex stories more accessible
We work with Google’s customers to find the balance between respecting their visual identities and experimenting with new styles that make their story easier to understand, and more accessible to new audiences. When working with global bank BBVA, for example, we added animated graphics to visualise the Google tools it uses, making its corporate environment and the technology it employs easier to understand, even for those unfamiliar with its processes.

Making things easy to understand is an art and it’s our passion. Our social assets illustrate how we do this. We use visual tools that translate seamlessly to different audiences and platforms. We take ideas that are hard to explain in two sentences and show them in two seconds.

The Positive Impact

Critical thinking is our secret ingredient – and one of the key elements that has made distillery’s partnership with Google an immensely successful one. We study who our clients are and how they think, but we don’t stop there. We ask, ‘how can we help this client connect with people in the wider world?’ We enquire, evaluate and pursue what will make its story stronger. This has led to tight, long-term partnerships with many Google divisions, bringing their stories to life across a range of global campaigns.