DRINKS BRAND ADVERTISING
COTSWOLDS DISTILLERY BACKGROUND ON THE VIDEO BRIEF
We pride ourselves on being able to create work for any sector. But drinks brand advertising isn’t something we’ve made a huge amount of. Our client, Cotswolds Distillery was initially set up to make whisky. However, to make whisky you need time and money. So they started making gin too. When the Coronavirus outbreak began to take hold of restaurants, bars and hotels the distillery decided that now was the time to sharpen its skills in online advertising direct to the consumer. This was one of a number of briefs for creative film shoots during the pandemic, overcoming pandemic video production problems.
Our brief was to shoot some online video adverts for their drinks brand.
During a period when it was pretty hard to film adverts.
THE APPROACH TO CREATIVE
We spoke to the owner Dan at length about the history of the brand. But we also discussed the sensibility of the brand too. Gin has seen a huge renaissance in recent years, a ‘ginaissance’ if you will (sorry). There are plenty of new and interesting flavours on the market and Britain is a nation of gin drinkers. But gin advertising has really tended towards the quaint and safe. Fortunately, the people of the Cotswolds, and the distillery have a wry sense of humour and they were open to our slightly anarchic approach.
The three films were variations of the same creative. They were different enough to be interesting. But also similar enough to be clearly from the same drinks advertising campaign. As online brand video was a new area for the distillery this was a test for them. So we were asked to see what results could be achieved from a relatively modest budget.
CREATING ADVERTISING IN LOCKDOWN
These three films were shot in our video studio in Birmingham. We had a crew of two. Lee Kemp was Creative Director, Copywriter, Producer, Director, First AD, Set Dresser and Catering. James Barnett was the Director of Photography, camera department, focus puller, grip and dolly grip.
If you read our post on Coronavirus prep you’ll see that we were ahead of the curve so we had good PPE for the duration of the shoot.
We’d be genuinely proud of these films if we’d made them under normal circumstances. But having come up with something that the client loves and has been so well received under the current conditions is a source of great pride for us.
We got the call from Dan to go ahead at about lunchtime on Wednesday 8th April. We shot on Thursday 9th April. Post-production on Friday 10th. The first Cotswolds brand film was live on Saturday 11th April.
THE BORING ALTERNATIVE
Over this period we saw quite a few brands reacting very quickly to push something out. The results were predictable and repetitive. So much so that someone found the time to produce a mock video of all of them. In light of that, we’re even more proud to have done creative video production, under difficult circumstances that the client loves.
“Vermillion had us at hello. They completely understood what we were looking for, and in record time they managed to conceive, create and deliver a series of topical and relevant adverts which struck the exact tone we were hoping for (actually far better than we could have hoped for). Years from now we’ll look back and say ‘we met the film producer of our dreams during lockdown’ – we are counting on a long and mutually beneficial relationship with them in the months and years ahead.”
Daniel Szor, Founder, Cotswolds Distillery
THE RESULTS
The campaign is ongoing but there were over 10,000 organic views in the first week. We’ll update when we have more. But we also got some attention on Ads of the World, which is always lovely. And when we uploaded the project to CreativePool they liked it so much they highlighted the work on their homepage.
