From Brief To Broadcast: Raw Made Convenient, Natures Menu Campaign

Come with us behind the scenes of a recent project. If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll have heard of our client Natures Menu, a leading raw pet food brand. Now that the project is complete and live, we’ve sat down with our creative director, Anil and account director, Hannah to spill the beans on this paw-some project.

Give US A Quick Overview Of The Brief

Anil: Natures Menu recently went through a rebrand and wanted to vocalise this to the audience and reinstate the brand proposition and offering to their current and target audience. The main outcome was to put the brand front of mind including large campaigns in London, on TV and across the internet.

Hannah: In addition to this, it was important to remember that we conveyed the client's unique selling point (USP) throughout all the campaigns. Their USP was making raw pet food easy and convenient for their customers.

What Were Your First Thoughts On The Brief?

Anil: We knew the brand was in need of some brand awareness campaigns for the UK audience, so we were pleased to see this brief land. It highlighted that the client understood this as well and that we are aligned. We were so excited to get going, it was one of the most exhilarating briefs we have ever had. The brief wasn’t light touch, we were doing the full load from the insights and interpreting research through to the final campaigns.

It was also the excitement of a new challenge for us as we would be working with the Spanish team and we knew a key part of this would be teaching them about the British audience and culture to get the right balance of ‘Britishness’ and education around the product.

Hannah: Initially it was excitement, it was a great win for the team and an amazing client to gain. I was also a little shocked as the timings and deadlines were super tight! The entire project had to be delivered in 4 months, so I instantly went into thinking about planning mode and getting everything together.

What Was The First Thing You Did After Receiving The Brief?

Hannah: Got the team together to get planning, we knew the client team were keen to see the TV ad first so we planned out the best way to do this and split the creative teams up to come up with any ideas that we could present to the client the following week.

Anil: As Hannah said the deadlines were really tight compared to other briefs and there were a lot of moving parts. The team leading the project were great; they were adaptable and thought on their feet. The first thing we did was all sit down for a big meeting to get the team assembled, briefed and break down the tasks to get going. Then the brainstorming and creativity started flowing.

What Was The Overall Plan To Get The Project Completed?

Anil: Firstly, we went to gather insights to formulate a strategy. We needed this main strategy to be able to produce the ‘big idea’. After we had our strategy we then began battling around with ideas. We wanted it to be short, to the point and show what the product is and what the brand stands for.

That’s when we came across the final idea ‘Raw Made Convenient’. It explained the product perfectly and in just three words. Once this ‘big idea’ was finalised we were able to get the ball rolling with every other medium of the campaign.

Hannah: Once we had this topline idea we had to produce a handful of creative ideas to present to the client. They then whittled it down to a final 2. We developed these ideas further, and built out the animatics, reflecting what the ads would actually look like, (animatics are moving storyboards that are edited like real TV ads so you can get a feel for the bigger picture). From there they were put into testing, we used the best performer from the testing to produce the TV ad and all the other mediums from online ads to painted murals in the centre of London.

What Was Your Favourite Part Of The Process?

Anil: Ideating and solving all the creative challenges across the process. One of the happiest moments for me was when we actually arrived at the big idea of ‘Raw Made Convenient’. It was almost like a lightbulb moment after hours of brainstorming.

I had a lot of other highlights for this project as it was my favourite to have worked on in at least the last 5 years. We got to do so much cool stuff from storyboarding, writing, interviewing directors and of course the best part, I got to hang out with all my work friends in the beautiful city of Barcelona as we had to film the TV ad over there. Also, it was great to bond with Hannah on this journey and we were like 2 peas in a pod and became a strong unit of creative strategy and planning.

Hannah: My favourite part of the process was seeing it all come together at the end and that everyone's hard work had paid off. We decided to go on a media trip to London once the painted mural placements were secured. It was a little surreal to see our work out there on the side of a building in the centre of London. It’s crazy to see an idea and some sketches come together into the campaign for the public to see. It definitely made all the time, effort and dedication worth it.

Overall, It was a great project that brought the whole team together from copywriters, photography, illustration, videography, social and the overall creative team. It was awesome to have a brief that allowed the whole Together team to get involved.

Did You Face Any Challenges On This Project?

Anil: None of this brief was easy, but that’s what makes this job exciting! It was hard as we had to think from a satellite level, about the overall campaign and how everything would work together.

The core of the challenge was, how can we bring insight, product benefits, emotional benefits and why customers should choose Natures Menu all together in just 30 seconds for an ad. We also didn't want this to be another typical and boring functional advert, we wanted to create something more fun and soft.

Hannah: The timings for sure were the biggest challenge for this brief. We were working out how to be as agile as possible and everything was running in tandem with each other as well as remaining holistic and consistent!

Any Other Fun Stories About This Project?

Anil: As Hannah said earlier, the client was keen to see the TV ad first so this was a top priority. The TV ad had to be filmed in Barcelona, hence our trip out there. However, We had to make a Spanish setting look British and at first I was really worried that it couldn’t be done. We came together with a great production company in Spain called Garage, who assisted us with production, set design and casting the actors and dogs (of course). Our main aim was to educate the production company on what looks typically British to make this TV ad look like it was set in an English town and we managed to do it.

The client was actually there when we took the first shot and it was great to see them so happy with the outcome, it was better than the storyboards and what you could have imagined. We were all so proud. We went straight from the shoot into editing and voice-over recording, it’s safe to say we didn’t get a lot of sleep in Barcelona. Once we touched down back in the UK we got to work on producing the assets for the wider brief.

Finally, we had a wrap-up meeting with the client, they came to London to meet us and gave us feedback on the whole campaign. It was amazing they had nothing negative to say. We were all so pleased and I’m so proud of the entire team for what we have produced for our client. The big boss from Natures Menu even said it was the best TV advert they have ever produced, what better feedback can you get than that?

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