How we sent Breathe Skywards

In some of the more traditional agencies where I’ve plied my trade, a client with a budget of under £30,000 asking for a TV campaign with full digital and social support to be turned around in the seven weeks remaining before Christmas would be met with a weary shake of the head.

But RocketMill isn’t what you’d call a traditional agency.

So when Breathe asked us to provide the very same in late 2020, the answer was a swift affirmative.

I’ll admit I had my reservations. I’ve made enough ads to know that both time and budget would be challenging. For my fellow RocketMillers though, thirty grand was workable and seven weeks was time a-plenty. Instead of seeing limitations, all they could see was possibility. I find that kind of attitude infectious.

This campaign would be a TV first for Breathe. Since 2012, Breathe’s easy-to-use ‘People First’ software has helped companies with up to 250 employees manage their HR admin more skilfully. With less time spent on admin, companies can focus on creating a happier workforce (which brings proven financial benefits). However, with COVID impacting heavily on its SME customer base and with the critical New Year sales period fast approaching, Breathe urgently needed to raise awareness and drive trials.

Our strategy was to communicate the emotional and rational value of having happy people in the workplace, via a creative vehicle that embodied the effortless simplicity implied by the Breathe brand name. Activity was planned across the following channels:

• Sky Ad Smart 
• LinkedIn 
• Facebook 
• YouTube 
• Search (Google & Bing)

Trusted  local production partners BeTheFox were introduced early in the creative process to advise on which ideas would be the most viable with the budget and time available. This fluid approach to pre production allowed RocketMill, Breathe and BeThe Fox to collaborate on script ideas and align early on the best production approach. To give the campaign scale and diversity at minimal cost, we cast Breathe team members along with some hand picked professionals (plus one or two of our very own). And on shoot day, we were wired for remote attendance, so client, agency and production teams across multiple locations could provide real time feedback to the studio and sign off on the work without a minute wasted.

Our backstage video gives you a flavour of how it all went.

And this is the finished campaign.

All campaign assets were delivered on time and on budget, on the very last working day before Christmas 2020. The campaign launched on Sky Ad Smart in mid January 2021.

The important thing for me in all this is the people. RocketMillers are an aromatic blend of art and science, youth and experience, with minds both fantastical and analytical. From a pure digital core, RocketMill is now developing as a full service creative agency. That’s a lot more fun than trying to digitally transform a creative agency and it has created a magnificently eclectic (and growing) squad of people who are continually learning new skills and finding new strengths. With these resources we can pick the right team for each job and trust them to deliver what we call Total Performance.

Total Performance connects your insight, strategy and media plan to a clear creative brief and a robust testing strategy. It creates a launchpad for creativity as well as a guidance system. As soon as a campaign goes live, we’re all across the data – measuring, analysing and optimising to make sure your brand fame comes with a side order of hot metrics.

And as we proved with Breathe, Total performance doesn’t need to come with a totally unrealistic price tag.