5 wild things Studio Something did and the unwild reasons why we did them.
A little look at some of the things the studio have done and WHY the hell we did them?
It’s quite often we are in a meeting and we mention a piece of work we did a little while back and someone will say ‘oh I didn’t know that was you lot?’
So, to try to counter these awkward conversations we thought we’d start sharing an arbitrary number of pieces of work we’ve done over the last few years, in absolutely no particular order.
1. We sent a Teacake to space.
Why?
Glasgow Science Centre approached us with the brief ‘make STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) exciting for Scottish kids, and in turn hopefully pique their interest in finding out more at GSC.
Our idea was to create a science show with a light-hearted sideways Glaswegian twist to it. This was Science but Scottish. This was space but not as you knew it.
At 11am on 15th of September with the help of the aptly named ‘Sent To Space’ we sent a Teacake strapped to a weather balloon up into the atmosphere, in the name of our children’s future. Oh and we streamed it live on Facebook.
Within an hour over 1000 people had shared it, and in a four hour stream 217,000 people watched our Teacake ‘Terry’ reach 37,007 metres and then land safely in a tree in the middle of nowhere.
Terry lives on to this date. Kids now all know science and even Professor Brian Cox used it to prove the ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS FACT THAT THE EARTH IS NOT FLAT
2. We got everyone we know to post their worst photo on Instagram
Why?
Instagram is a tough place to be if you are having a shite day, from the
outside looking in it can seem like everyone’s life is better than yours. It’s kinda’ the point of it, only show the best bits, edit out the crap ones and also filter the good ones.
On Instagram, everyone’s life is perfect.
We know that this isn’t true but if you are suffering from mental health problems, watching everyone else’s highlights reel can feel pretty shit.
To counter this we wanted to start a campaign, with SeeMe Scotland called #myunfilteredlife that encouraged users to share a photo that shows their real life, not the filtered, self-edited perfect version of their life.
To champion the down days as much as the up days.
With zero media spend we increased See Me’s follwing to 3000 followers in a month and, more importantly, gave 1200 people the confidence to share some of their most personal and honest stories of mental health.
The hashtag is still to this day used regularly as a way for people to be honest about how they feel on social media.
Have a look for yourself and post a hella’ bad photo from your camera roll that tells the real story of your life.
3. We made a ‘fucking’ film about ‘fucking’ mental health.
Why?
SeeMe Scotland approached us with the brief to -
‘Get people talking more openly about mental health, specifically in the workplace’
Up to now, we felt that mental health communication we had seen seemed to focus on explaining to ‘you’ how to act around someone with mental health. By it’s nature this approach was creating an ‘us and them’, between ‘people who had problems’ and ‘people who should be nice to people with problems’.
Our belief was that actually ‘everyone has mental health’ and just like physical health it can go up and down. From this thought we then made the assumption that if ‘everyone’ was more aware of everyone’s feelings around them then rather than have to tailor or alter your behaviour to ‘people with problems’ you would in fact be likely to help those who need it without having to identify them.
Put simply, ‘if you make the effort to ask everyone around you ‘are you okay?’ the chances are you might ask someone who really needs it. ‘Rising tides raise many boats’ etc.
The film went out online and in cinemas, it was picked up by a reddit user in Canada and posted as an example of ‘this is how we should all talk about mental health’.
“I love this because it reminds you that the people you see everyday, who you think nothing much of, could be going through some really full on stuff. Just literally sitting there on their phones. I don’t think that enough.” Redditor
We also noticed from Youtube stats that as soon as the first swear word appeared the drop-off rate dramatically decreased. As soon as people heard the foul mouth of Ian they stuck around.
Sometimes swearing is good.
4. We dumped a billion people.
Why?
Tennent’s Lager had a long history of making the people of Scotland laugh, they had a rich heritage of advertising, but after years of not doing ‘big TV adverts’ they were aware that a pivotal audience for them were not watching TV and had probably never seen some of their famous TV adverts.
The brief then was to create content with the simple premise ‘make people laugh’.
All this content would go out through Tennent’s social channels and the cumulative effect was that it was returning the brand to it’s ‘humorous roots’
In amongst this series we created the spoof app, Binder, which would be the opposite of Tinder, an app, not for hooking up with people but for dumping people. Callous. Heartless. But a bit viral.
It appeared on talk shows around the world, in a million articles and on some famous Brazilian lass’ snapchat. The PR agency estimated that a BILLION PEOPLE had seen it. Who knows how they calculated that?
You can read about it The New Yorker, here.
5. We turned Edinburgh into ‘thieves’ live on Facebook.
Why?
Innis & Gunn, or as we call them ‘our new good Tennent’s’ are our beer client. They are one of the fastest growing craft beers in the world.
An interesting thing about Innis & Gunn lager is that their distinctive pint glasses are ‘stolen’ a lot, every time they put new glasses into bars, customers get all klepto, pap them in their bags and head for the hills.
So, to make some noise for Innis & Gunn’s new lager campaign we decided to put this insight to the test. We parked a van full of them in one of the busiest pedestrian areas of Edinburgh, opened the backdoors, walked away and then streamed the ensuing ‘crime’ to Facebook Live.
Within 26 minutes, 1000 glasses were gone as over nearly 100'000 people watched.
And, that is Facebook Live for ye.
And that is an arbitrary number of things we did.
See ye next time.
Studio Something is a creative agency on a mission, a mission to create one of the best companies in the world, by making things people genuinely like. This is a year of learning for us, If you would like to tell us why we are wrong, how we can improve, what we are doing right or if you too want to go on this mission. email us. tweet us. Get on our mailing list. Whatever, just say hello.
