Wilderness Company Update #3

I feel like I might be missing a trick not making this update Easter themed or have every update include some sort of lie to celebrate April Fools. I worried though that any gimmick would detract from my blandly no-nonsense approach of listing all the things we did in March - and we did a lot. We teamed up with our charity partner for an ambitious fundraising effort while at the same time lining up a couple of other projects with teams that we really believe in and want to support. We delivered A LOT of new business pitches, we won some new business and we also worked with our existing clients and partners to upskill their teams. I also attempted to watch The Snyder Cut and frankly - I have regrets.

INTRODUCING PIP & POSY

This month we launched the social accounts for the new pre-school animated series - Pip & Posy. The characters will be familiar to parents whose children love Axel Scheffler’s stories about a mouse and a rabbit that explore friendship and play. The series is produced by Magic Light (the production team behind The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom and one of our longest-standing partners) and we’re so excited to be expanding our remit with them to grow a community around this fabulous and sweet show. Right now they’ve made 52 seven minute episodes which are airing in the UK on Channel 5’s Milkshake! and will be on demand on Sky Kids from May 2021. You can check out a trailer on the Facebook page HERE.

WILDERNESS SOCIAL ACADEMY

This year we’re ramping up the offering of our learning division and alongside the work we’re doing with The Industry Club, The Opportunity Group and Brixton Finishing School we’ve also been working with our clients in order to deliver sessions and upskill their teams. We’re passionate about sharing knowledge in the Wilderness team and for us the more informed our partners are the better we can deliver impactful work and innovative campaigns. To date we’ve delivered a range of bespoke social audits and workshops on skills like Community Management and Copy Writing for our client teams and charity partners and we’re going to be opening the offering to anyone keen to develop their knowledge of digital marketing. Any businesses or existing clients that are keen to hear more about what we can do please get in touch - if you want to learn more head HERE.

WELCOME MANNY

Another month - another new starter. At the beginning of March we welcomed Manny to the team as our new Finance Manager. In Manny's interview he talked about how happy he is to explain financial processes and concepts to team members who don't have a great grasp on numbers... something that REALLY appealed to me! He's expecting a little boy this year and we're so excited that the extended Wilderness family is growing!!!

INTERSPORT OUTDOOR PRODUCTION

March in Northern Spain has nice weather, right? That’d be a good choice for a shoot that needs to look like it’s happening in the Spring/Summer? You’d think that but THEN IT SNOWS! We continued our partnership with Intersport this month with one of our most ambitious campaign productions to date. The retailer tasked us with capturing the beauty and the fun of hiking and camping in order to showcase their impressive product range and expertise in the field. Our concept centres on the different types of outdoors you can experience - light and calming with gentle inclines and mindful moments OR rough and challenging with hard scrabble climbs to reach incredible vistas. Our shoot included 14 different outfits, 10 cast members, 3 storylines, and a family with kids. We wanted to explore different - but equally glorious - outdoor experiences. One experience is taking it easy - the other is taking it epic. The shoot involved rigourous location scouting, pitching tents and planning hikes, capturing sunsets and sunrises and doing everything we can to celebrate the great outdoors. Even the best laid plans can be derailed and unseasonal snow delayed our shoot by a week but we got there in the end and are just now putting the final touches on our biggest campaign yet.

THE MONTH OF MANY PITCHES

Since the end of last year our CEO Tom has been on a mission to bring in as many new business opps as possible. Our reconfigured team structure has helped us to develop a process whereby myself and the Heads of Business take in these opportunities and work together with our paid, insights and creative leads to develop proposals. Something that I had been concerned about this time last year as we went into lockdown was how businesses would respond to the world in chaos. For a little while - as people were assessing the impact - we all went into business-as-usual let’s support our partners as much as possible. It felt unimaginable that we’d be in a position to prospect for new business or even pitch remotely. Something that I’ve been so happy about this year is the way things have adapted and the skills we’ve all developed (pitchers and pitchees) bringing the process online and continuing to look for ways to develop new relationships and get the best work out of everyone. The last month is a case in point - we’ve been on a pitching spree and have had some incredible conversations with new and exciting prospective clients. With all of our incoming Intersport campaigns the Amsterdam division had one week in March where there was a pitch everyday for a week - a huge undertaking but one that the guys worked so hard on. I’m really proud of everything we’re delivering at the moment and looking forward to seeing what comes back to us from the energy that we’re putting out.

ROCKET

One detail that I can share about our month of pitches is our new partnership in Amsterdam with the food delivery app Rocket. They are a Ukrainian company looking to expand in Europe with the Netherlands as the first focus. This was one of the first new business pitches we’ve worked on with the team in Amsterdam and Myra, Angela and Chris (with the help of our insights wizard Zahra) came together to provide Rocket with a really compelling vision of the brand on social. We cannot wait to start working with them this month - we’ve already virtually met Head of Marketing Clementine’s dog so we’re off to a GREAT start.

WORLD WATER DAY

March 22nd was World Water Day and we worked with our charity partner Village Water on a campaign raising money and awareness for the conditions that people face in remote regions of Mozambique & Zambia. We developed a one-day challenge based around the stat that on average people in these areas walk 6km everyday to access fresh water. Using as a basis the NHS challenge that did the rounds last year we tasked people to walk/run 6km, donate ￡6 and nominate 6 people to join the challenge.

We set ourselves an ambitious fundraising goal of ￡6k which we didn’t reach on the day but we’re still spreading the word and even though it’s no longer World Water Day there’s no reason why you couldn’t follow the link, donate some money and pass on the message to people that you know. https://villagewater.org/walk-with-wilderness-world-water-day/