Our top 5 insights from 2021

We wanted to share our top 5 insights from our experience winning new fans for brands across APAC.

You can learn more about our diversity type project here, read our brand purpose guide here and video personalisation here.

Get in touch to learn more.

Giving Back This Christmas

This holiday season, we wanted to give back to the causes that we, and you, care about.

As a business we have so much to celebrate this year - a new San Francisco office, an overflowing awards cabinet, client wins, new work, and new team members… but now, more than ever, we’re aware that together we can make a lasting impact on our local communities.

When you select from the list of charities below, we’ll make a donation on your behalf.

Wishing you a wonderful season of giving.

2020 Showreel: Bringing stories to life for Google, Lil-Lets, the DEC and more

We’re lucky to work with some amazing clients with whom we’ve made some work we’re incredibly proud of.

Here's our new reel featuring a selection of our work created across EMEA and APAC by our talented team of producers, directors, designers, editors and animators.

Want to learn more about our work and team? Get in touch.

Returning to our Roots

Last week, our Master Distiller, Steve Wheen and Head of Musings, Margaret Sherer, had the opportunity to go back to their graduate schools and share their passions with the current students.

Steve, who has a Masters of Design / Applied Imagination (yes, that’s a real MA) at Central Saint Martins, visited the current students to talk to them about his experience on the course, and to help brainstorm some current briefs the students are working on.

The course is based around iterative research, and so sends the students on an investigative journey to challenge their ideas through a series of real world interventions by obtaining feedback from end-users and key practitioners.  During his time at the course Steve began researching happiness. One of his first “artefacts” was a series of pothole gardens.

Steve wrote his thesis on social television. Much of his research methodology from the course is still very relevant to his work at The Distillery 5 years later.

Going back to visit the course was a fantastic experience to reconnect with the current students and the whole Distillery London team is looking forward to visiting the end of year exhibition at Central Saint Martins. Thanks to Richard Reynolds for extending the invitation!

Margaret, who has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, returned for the StartUp Weekend.  This 48 hour activity encouraged current MBAs, MScs, and PhDs to ‘hack’ through their entrepreneurial ideas to pitch to a group of dragons at the end of the weekend.  Over the course of the 48 hours they would practice and perfect their pitch, hear about best practices when pitching and be inspired about other entrepreneurs and their stories.

The session was entitled:  Defining your audience: how to create an end to end marketing session.  Over two hours, Margaret coached the entrepreneurs on aspects to think about when defining their audience; who are they? where are they? what do they read? where will you find them?  Once the students had gathered this information, they walked through an ideal customer journey and then discussed the digital ecosystem they might create to foster that journey.

Photo Courtesy of Dr. Stephanie Hussels

It was a fantastic time and a special thank you to Dr. Stephanie Hussels for the invitation.  

If you would like to learn more about your customer journey or creating moment of delight and happiness for your audience, do contact us at info@thedistillery.tv

One Moment please

On Tuesday 15th December Twitter unveiled a new feature - Moments. A brand new tab on your homepage which delivers up-to-the-minute curated content direct to your timeline. Read more about them on Twitter’s blog.

Naturally we were ecstatic when we had the chance to join in the fun with none other than Eric Lanlard, here are five things we learnt while we had a Twitter Moment.

1. Be Seasonal

As it is the festive season, we wanted to share a special recipe with a twist… Tweet-sized Mince Pies! It’s always best to take into consideration the time of year, the cultural climate and any other current issues when creating content. You never want to be thinking in a vacuum, content lives on the internet which is always buzzing with news and opinion that link to each other so make sure your content has a place in the internet ecosystem.

Today I will be making mince pies perfect for this time of year! Follow along to see the recipe ; ) #XmasWithEric pic.twitter.com/UdDruCm6D8

— eric lanlard (@eric_lanlard) December 21, 2015

2. Be Diverse

Each tweet we published was a another step in the recipe, but we didn’t limit ourselves to one type of media. Moments look better when there is a range of different types: pictures, videos, gifs and text - they do say variety is the spice of life! Moments was designed to be viewed on mobile so we kept this at the forefront of our mind when creating the content - everything was orientated in portrait (even the video!).

Roll out 250g puff pastry + brush with beaten egg. Cut 6 stars + sprinkle with light muscovado sugar #XmasWithEric pic.twitter.com/PQpwu8QszQ

— eric lanlard (@eric_lanlard) December 21, 2015

3. Be Interactive

One thing we were really keen to do was make Eric’s moment feel like a live event, where viewers can have a tangible effect on the outcome of the event. What better way to involve everyone in the action than using Twitter’s Poll feature? This allowed our viewers to choose what Eric would enjoy his mince pies with.. and we were able to collate results real-time and release the relevant media - an interactive experience. 

Top pies with stars + bake at 180°C for ~30 mins. What should I eat them with? #XmasWithEric

— eric lanlard (@eric_lanlard) December 21, 2015

4. Be Engaging

In all of the excitement of new features here and there, it’s to forget that on the other side of the twitter handle is a real person. So make an effort to converse with your followers - especially if they are asking questions ! During our Twitter moment we made sure to reply to everyone that was engaging with our content, smiles all round!

That was my secret choice too !!! Merci ... Eric @TwitterFood @TwitterMoments @TwitterUK @twitter https://t.co/tlzbwWCJNo

— eric lanlard (@eric_lanlard) December 21, 2015

5. Be Platform Agnostic

At Distillery London HQ, we’re all about the multi-platform approach. It just makes sense… You don’t use just one social network in isolation, so why should your brand? The people that follow Eric on Facebook aren’t necessarily the people that follow Eric on Instagram or Twitter, so why not invite them join in on another platform. We did this by posting a video directing viewers to the twitter moment right at the start.

Something exciting is happening on twitter today... I'll be sharing my festive mince pie recipe !! All the fun will start at 3PM GMT ! Here is the link: https://twitter.com/i/moments/678943074110808064

Posted by CAKE-BOY on Monday, 21 December 2015

So there we have it! We had loads of fun using Twitter moments and are already itching to use the feature in new and exciting ways… You can check out the full moment from Eric below:

Glamorous mince pies bake along

It's a Dog's Life

Recently, we had the pleasure of creating a film for Google for Work to highlight how the RSPCA uses the Google Apps for Work suite of products to streamline their workflow, communicate more effectively and to make rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming processes more efficient.

The Distillery London visited several RSPCA sites in order to tell a truly authentic story. The story revolves around Goldie, the dog, who had been through the entire rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming process (all helped by Google Apps for work) and tells her story in an engaging way.

Let us know what you think of the film below:

Google, DEC & The Distillery London

November already? Where has the year gone? Before we head into the holiday season, The Distillery London took a moment to look back at, celebrate and share some of the work we're proud to have produced for our amazing clients.

eMarketer October UK Social report states that, "Over two-thirds of UK internet users will be social network users this year, eMarketer estimates, and they will devote more of their digital time to social networking than any other activity."

With this in mind, during the DEC's Nepal Earthquake Appeal, The Distillery London launched social video content across all of their digital platforms seeing a minimum 2x engagement with all video posts on Facebook. When the appeal came to an end we heroed Julius, an inspiring fundraiser.

The Distillery London also brought to life an inspiring customer story for Google, highlighting how the RSPCA uses the Google Apps for Work suite of products to streamline their workflow, communicate more effectively and to make rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming processes more efficient.

We were proud to showcase the amazing achievements of some of JustGiving's top fundraisers (featured on The Guardian), help Ocado use social video to boost recruitment, and help share stories from Pivigo's successful Science to Data Science program.

If you are interested to learn more about social video best practice check out our blog - special thank you to Jerry Daykin (Global Digital Director at Carat) for letting us share his thoughts about #DigitalSense and how to build an effective Online Video Strategy.

Thanks to the Brand2Global summit for having us speak about Watch-time and Audience Retention data - the cornerstone of social video performance! You can see our presentation here.

Intrigued?

Why not sign up to the blog to get social video best practice, news, and more delivered straight to your inbox...?

Kind Regards,

Steve & The Distillery Team

Master Distiller steve@thedistillery.tv

www.thedistillery.tv

Ph: 020 7183 4315

Take our interactive journey through the DEC’s Ebola Crisis Appeal

One year ago, the DEC launched its Ebola Crisis appeal. Working across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the DEC member charities worked to prevent the spread of the disease by providing hygiene services and clean water, referring people for treatment and supporting health centres to cope better with the influx of cases. The UK public donated a staggering £37 million to the response and DEC agencies reached more than 1.9 million people with food, water, health supplies and face to face awareness raising activities.

To illustrate the effectiveness of the DEC’s Member Charity/Agency work after one year, and how the funds raised have helped stopped the spread of Ebola, an interactive, multi-platform journey through the story of the appeal was born. The ‘hero’ piece lives on YouTube (below), where users can click to view a different part of the story, personalising their experience of the journey.

For mobile users, the experience was replicated on Instagram, with clickable tags taking users to four different videos (see below)!

Click on the tags on this picture to see a different part of our Ebola Crisis Appeal Journey. 1. @WeCameTogether 2. @WeStoppedtheSpread 3. @WewereStrongerthanEver 4. @WewillkeepworkingTogether #ebola #oneyearon #charity #instagood #interactive #stopthespread

A photo posted by DEC (@disastersemergencycommittee) on Nov 3, 2015 at 4:54am PST

Facebook wasn’t left out either! Four parts of the story were posted on the DEC Facebook page natively - driving users to the clickable YouTube film.

We came together.

The Ebola Crisis Appeal was the first of its kind. We had to act. Thanks to you, we came together. Watch the full interactive film on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2qJb_2_cnw

Posted by Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) on Friday, 30 October 2015

Interactivity can help to add another layer in brand storytelling, and is a great tool for social engagement. Let us know if you’d like to chat over coffee about how we can do the same for you!

#JGAwards

We had a blast at the JustGiving Awards 2015. It was an evening packed full of incredible people doing incredible things. We were privileged to be a part of the whole project - producing films that tell such powerful stories, shown at the awards and additional content featured on The Guardian. 

After a couple of months of work shooting around the UK, it was nice to to take a step back and really take in the scale of the fundraising achievements (sometimes heartbreaking!) stories. 

Something that stood out was the atmosphere of the night, celebratory and supportive in tone, with category winners saying how honoured they were to be even considered alongside their fellow finalists.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening and project, we loved working with JustGiving to make the award films. Watch the films here:

#Shaken Not Stirred

We had the honour to speak at Brands2Global on Wednesday about our work with the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) and the Nepal Earthquake Appeal. 

Specifically, we talked about how utilising social video boosted the DEC's appeal to help the Nepalese after a devastating earthquake. We discussed how we used data to feed into a real-time video campaign, how we can reach that elusive youth audience for your brand, and how we build a stronger relationship with your brand advocates. You can check out the slides below: 

If you'd like to unlock the potential of social video to engage, encourage and celebrate your audience, then give us a shout for a chat over a stonkingly* good cup of coffee.

*Oh it's good. We promise.

Crowdfunding Heroes

We had the pleasure of bringing inspiring crowdfunding stories to life over the past few weeks. The JustGiving Awards 2015 taking place (this Wed!) in London honours the most inspiring fundraisers around. Thanks to The Guardian for giving praise to and highlighting the incredible achievements that these special fundraisers deserve! Watch the videos below and let us know what you think...

Cathy Teesdale is a London photographer who used JustGiving Crowdfunding to help a young homeless women get off the streets.

Matt Nicol, an estate agent from Droitwich, used JustGiving Crowdfunding to rebuild a local playground destroyed in an arson attack.

Tracey Ford, a bereaved mother, used JustGiving Crowdfunding to buy Mother’s Day flowers for grieving mums in the community.

Wayne Botting, mayor of Telscombe, used JustGiving Crowdfunding to buy a wheelchair for a 12-year-old Leisha with cerebral palsy.

Not so long ago, The Distillery London ran our own JustGiving crowdfunding campaign to benefit the Hip Hop School in Rwanda. You can watch the story below:

Club Rafiki - The First Hip Hop Dance School In Rwanda from steve wheen on Vimeo.