Wilderness Company Update #2
Allow me to get the obvious out of the way first - I can’t believe it’s already March either! February has flown by in a flurry of birthday celebrations, new campaigns and fresh faces in our weekly team meetings. We’ve almost made it through a whole year of working from home and I’d like to send my best to everyone who’s hanging in there and offer these words of support: It’s fine that you were on mute, we've all done it a thousand times each at this point, no need to mention it.
Here are 5 things from Wilderness that made our February fantastic:
1. WE ARE SIX!
February is Wilderness’ official birthday month and we’ve been busy celebrating our sixth year. In case you missed it I wrote a new introduction to a piece Tom, Ali and I wrote last year to commemorate our 5th birthday. Looking back on our goals for 2020 - considering the year we’ve all just had - I was blown away by how much we actually got done. It’s so easy to lose sight of all of the good that you’re doing and how far forward you’re moving when you’re all stuck in the same place unable to see one another.
2. WARM WELCOME
One of the most remarkable things about rereading the piece was seeing Tom setting his focus on international expansion considering that in February we welcomed the 7th, 8th and 9th members of our Amsterdam team! Angela, Miles and Myra joined us to work in the ever expanding division in the Netherlands and each of them have already made an amazing mark on the team. One of the best things about Wilderness - and one of the reasons that we’re continuing to thrive and grow - is the people. Even in two very different locations and working remotely we’ve managed to maintain and nurture the atmosphere of openness, excitement and support that makes the agency such a great place to work. Needless to say when we’re all out of lockdown we’ll be doing some celebrating and to finally get to meet everyone face to face is going to be absolutely brilliant.
3. FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION - MAGIC LIGHT PICTURES
This month we ran a short campaign of ads for our long-time client/partner Magic Light Pictures. The focus of the campaign was to raise awareness for their 2019 animation ‘The Snail and the Whale’ amongst academy voters with the aim of getting the film shortlisted for Best Animated Short. We ran three video ads - each aimed at different batches of academy voters and industry professionals and are absolutely thrilled that the film has indeed made the long list in the category. The team at Magic Light are no strangers to awards ceremonies - their office is filled with BAFTAs and Emmys and they’ve been Oscar nominated in the past for shorts The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, Revolting Rhymes and their gorgeous 2010 feature-length animation Chico & Rita. We’re hoping that we get the news on March 10th that they’ve made the shortlist and then on April 25th will be glued to the TV with champagne ready to pop.
4. BRIXTON FINISHING SCHOOL LAUNCHES AD-CADEMY
We’re over the moon that Ally and the team at Brixton Finishing School [BFS] have launched the Ad-cademy initiative. It’s a free remote-learning platform that gives young talent access to the creative, marketing and tech industries no matter where they are in the UK. It’s something that Ally was speaking about last April when she was working round the clock to make sure the Class of 2020 would still go ahead in lockdown. At the time the fact that everyone had to join meetings from home was both the workaround that BFS was using to keep the sessions on track but also an opportunity to open their courses to a far wider cohort of students. Now the courses are live and will be delivering on their mission to develop the employability of under-represented young talent nationwide. We’re proud to have played a part in the launch by donating our time running ads for the scheme and helping them to reach over 1000 registrations in a couple of weeks. I've written a piece about the importance of supporting future talent and schemes like BFS that are keeping the creative industry relevant HERE.
5. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY FROM WARNER BROS.
We’ve been working with the team at Warner Bros. for over four years now and throughout that time we’ve done A LOT from developing creative and playful Instagram stories for beloved classics to establishing an elf-run Twitter account that solved all of your Secret Santa worries. In recent months we’ve started running small campaigns for the team around their seasonal priorities. In February we tackled Valentine’s Day and created ‘virtual movie night invites’ that followers used on their stories to ask loved ones to watch classic WB love stories with them. We also promoted helpful ‘film finder’ assets with the aim of reaching anyone from hopeless romantics to valentines deniers and giving them a way to cut right through their watchlist-woes. The community across the WBUK channels is male skewed so we made sure that our targeting found the most valuable users and the creative found the right mix of relevant seasonal appeal and film-fan insight. The results far surpassed the industry average and we soared past our estimates for clicks to buy by 27% and reduced average cost per click by 24%.