June 8th was another busy day for BearJam. And we’re not talking about the general election. We were up and down the country meeting pop stars, sports stars, royalty and the B Corp community, creating live streams, Instagram stories and shareable content. Just another say at BearJam!
We took to the courts first thing in the morning with a crew at the National Tennis Centre in South London. We directed and filmed Olly Murs going up against British Women’s Number One, Johanna Konta, in a high-energy tennis shoot out.
The result? Olly won….but Johanna was wearing a blindfold.
More importantly, we created several fun pieces of content to help promote Olly’s new single, Unpredictable, and the start of the grass court season. We were briefed with a very tight media turnaround, so we had to be agile and quick-thinking. Our director and crew had just 30 minutes to capture the footage for two videos and some talking heads and the edits were ready within a few days. The first video already has 260k views on the LTA’s Facebook page and has gained great traction on Olly’s social media feeds and other websites, like Capital FM. A few other edits will be shared during Wimbledon in the coming days, so check them out if you need a break from the tennis action … or if it’s rained off this afternoon!
Next stop? Southampton. All aboard Cunard’s newly refurbished Queen Victoria. We were tasked by Cunard to livestream a tour of the ship. That’s 20 minutes of live streaming, whilst wandering around a 90,000-tonne cruise ship… with no Wi-Fi. Yes, it was quite a challenge. But we devised a system utilising 4G dongle and bonded link of four mobile phones for additional coverage, allowing us to film, encode and wirelessly stream HD video direct to the web without one single drop-out. Phew! During the stream, viewers were invited to ask our presenter questions to be answered in real time. Over 1,500 viewers joined us live. A further 77k viewers have since watched the video. It has received 3.3k reactions, comments & shares and has now reached 135k people. Mission accomplished.
Our dedicated social team were on-board too. We call them our Social Shop. They captured a suite of video assets for Cunard to share on their social channels over the coming months. We created cinemagraphs, stop-motion animations and a number of Instagram stories showing some of the ship’s signature cocktails being prepared. One is already live and has received a 47% view rate – impressive against the standard benchmark of 15% retention rate.
And whilst I was running up and down with crews, celebs and ocean liners, Tom was busy too. He gave an interactive talk in Sussex at the B-Retreat, an event where B-Corp companies come together for a couple of days of talks, mingling, yoga and lake swimming. Yes, it sounds like he had the easy job on that day. But then he didn’t get to meet Olly Murs.
The title of his talk was: “It pays to be good: cause-led video and why brands need to care… Along with some video trends and tips.” He discussed cause-led branded / sponsored video and the most important current trends in online video content: social stories, live video, 360 and augmented reality.
As you can see, BearJam are certainly used to managing multiple projects designed for different platforms and audiences. We take on a real breadth of work and thrive on the new media opportunities out there. So, whether it’s for a website, a social feed, a Snapchat story or a live event, we’re true experts in a variety of platforms and their audiences. We know what’s key in engaging the people you want to talk to, wherever they are.
I hope you can see, we make some pretty ace, ship-shape content (shame about the puns). So, if you’re in need of some content, or would like to have a chat about what makes sense for your company, do not hesitate to get in touch. Myself, Tom and our Social Shop have got you covered.
