The Brief

Wow. PepsiCo Global had come to us with a really great brief.

We were asked to create bespoke video content to engage employees internally on a large scale.

They needed to bring to life their global company behaviours and encourage employees to nominate their colleagues for company-wide recognition in the ‘Chairman’s Winning with Purpose Awards’. The awards were created to recognise those people who strongly demonstrated seven key behaviours, and these behaviours needed to be brought to life in our video content in a visually compelling way.

While also increasing the visibility of the company-wide behaviour set, the video content was going to be shared on their intranet, emailed out to employees and shown on digital screens in multiple offices.

This was very much an open brief. What it cried out for was creativity and a touch of magic so we could capture internal audiences across the whole of PepsiCo.

But the content had to be accessible for different levels of people across the business, and not be reliant on audio as a lot of people would be watching without sound.

So, a strong visual approach was key, and text needed to be minimal to make sure all territories and language barriers were considered.

Our Approach

So what did we make of this?

Well, the best thing about an open video brief without brand guidelines is the flexibility!

It’s a brilliant opportunity to (you guessed it) think outside the box and really go for it. With video, you can do pretty much anything and this was a great chance to come up with some great ideas to develop further.

Our client asked for creative (not ‘corporate’) and quirky, fun, but visually telling a story.

So, like many briefs that we receive, our first point of call is a big brainstorm to gather everybody’s creative ideas across our in-house team of 11 people.

With this type of ask, we like to think as marketeers and often suggest a ‘campaign-able’ approach with a tagline or hashtag to go with our ideas. This helps our clients think about how their video content can work harder for them and be shared across all platforms of their internal communication.

Opting for an unusual and contemporary style, the client chose one of our quirky ideas which involved miniature (and we mean REALLY tiny) models of people. The whole idea was a play on the words ‘make someone feel big’ which linked back to the main objective with an aim to get employees to nominate colleagues who encompass one of the company behaviours.

What We Did

Over the course of a couple of months, we went from initial brief, creative development, storyboarding, shooting, to final completion. A successful delivery in a challenging timeline which absolutely nailed the brief (and then some!)

For each PepsiCo Way ‘behaviour’, we filmed seven different miniature scenes showing tiny toy figures amidst ‘large’ life-size objects to bring to life scenarios which related to each behaviour in an abstract way. The name of each behaviour was cleverly included within the scene but kept simple.

You’d assume that seven miniature scenes was quick and relatively easy to film, but it wasn’t as simple as it sounds!

As a tight crew of four, (director, producer, camera operator, art director) we worked to a jampacked schedule of 3.5 days, shooting each scene within one half day. The filming itself was fairly quick because a lot of our time involved preparing, dressing the set and selecting our chosen miniature ‘actors’ for our key shots.

Using an art director and props specialist before and during the shoot, we ensured the miniature people looked as close as possible to real life PepsiCo employees and so their surroundings had pops of colour and interest for the camera angles we wanted.

When filming, we used macro lenses so the close-up shots could be clear and crisp with enough depth of field to separate the miniature figures in the foreground and their background.

Capturing shots on such a small scale was tricky because every movement we made with the camera resulted in incredibly shaky footage. To solve this problem, we filmed in 4K and in slow motion which allowed us to smooth out and stabilise the shots in the edit suite.

Learn about our workflow process here.

During post-production, we also added sparkle and extra touches to bring the scenes to life even more, including a thorough colour grade to make the most of the shots we filmed. Learn about the difference colour grading and colour correction can make here.

We also used clever audio techniques with a music bed that carried through each scene with layered sound effects that were relevant for each setting. Sound design and audio are a big consideration when it comes to any video project. Find out more in our handy guide here.

After filming, editing and delivering the content, our client came back to us with another request. There were three additional behaviours (‘Faster, Better, Stronger’) which needed to be filmed and added into the mix, and this needed to be turned around quickly. Luckily, we were able to secure a new location, quickly storyboard and plan what needed to be filmed and gathered our crew to make it happen.

The Output

Our solution was a creative, impressive and visually intricate 60 second video piece, which our client was thrilled with!

It’s a video that’s not only interesting and fun to watch, but effectively hits the brief and still feels relevant for PepsiCo.

Watch the final video here:
https://www.ch-video.com/portfolio/pepsico-winning-with-purpose/

We coupled the main video with seven short loopable cinemagraphs with subtle movement in one key area. This helped to push the content further and give our client lots of opportunities to share them in different places.

These offered something different for our client, providing an eye-catching alternative to standard digital posters.

Watch one of the cinemagraphs here:
https://vimeo.com/377320489/d87ea71cd9
Say hello@ch-video.com to get in touch with us for your next video project. Maybe yours will be huge models instead of tiny people?! We’re open to anything…