Earlier this year, our client phs group came to us with an unusual creative challenge.
Could we create a corporate video they could play at their annual sales conference?
The film was to be played to over 200 salespeople as the conclusion of the conference.
How could we energise them, and ensure they didn’t leave feeling flat or bored?
As the creative agency for phs, we saw it as our responsibility to offer a genuinely creative solution to the brief.
Creativity is a word everyone bands about these days. But what is it?
We think creativity is simple: it’s the ability to look at the world differently; to think of different ways of doing everyday things.
In recent years, corporate videos have become ever more boring. Case-study films featuring talking heads and endless slow-motion b-roll have been so overused, they’ve become banal and an inefficient way for companies to communicate.
But there is another, more creative way.
As our client, we knew that phs group is a company committed to putting people at the heart of their products and services.
Through impactful initiatives like their male incontinence and period quality programmes, the impact of phs group’s work is so much more than meets the eye.
Unfortunately, most people only know phs group for one thing … toilets.
Our creative solution was to write a comedy script that played on this idea.
We created a fictional phs employee – Steve – and shot a mockumentary in which he debunked the notion that phs simply offered services for, err, toilets.
It was a risky pitch.
But having already gained phs group’s trust with numerous creative solutions this year, we felt confident in advising this approach.
We knew that making yet another corporate video wasn’t what a room full of salespeople would want to watch at a conference.
We knew we had to create something that would evoke an emotional response.
And so, together, we rolled the dice and tried to make the audience laugh.
The finished film went down well.
In fact, it went down so well, phs group is now using it as an external film to inform existing customers and potential customers on everything they do.
And just 24hrs after it was officially posted, the film has already become phs’ most shared online video this year.
When it comes to talking about a company’s values, it’s often scary to talk in a new way.
But when it comes to communications, emotion trumps all concerns.
Make the audience feel something and they’ll listen to what you’re trying to say.
