I often remind myself & others to be brave, I regularly answer questions too honestly and as a team we always push ourselves to the absolute limit. Our recent Knowsley ad was no exception. I won’t lie. I felt sick from the moment Knowsley signed off the script, until we edited the 1^st offline.

When we started the concept process we could list the scenes, we could see the art directional style, we just couldn’t work out how to fit it all in, how to tell the story without falling into ‘typical smiley family day out’ territory because that, we knew, wouldn’t satisfy our audience’s curious minds or indeed our vision for the brand.

The Bee was a very early morning, moment of absolute brilliance. Suddenly we could take viewers on a real adventure and capture the imagination of our core audience. We could fly over vast areas of open savanna-like Knowsley parkland, duck down and be watching the sea lions show off, twist and we’re slaloming through meerkats. & that was it. We had to find a way to make this happen, to stretch the budget and bring the vision to life.

And we did it!

Behind the scenes

Jo Whiteley, CD

In collaboration with Beautiful Productions