What do you get when you combine a fast-moving financial service provider, a specialised shoemaking factory concept, and one of Birmingham’s leading marketing and media agencies? A colourful campaign captured through video, photography, and a whole lot of creativity.

Recently named one of the fastest-growing private companies on The Sunday Times 100, Love Finance is a fast-moving financial services provider that offers quick and straightforward finance as an alternative to the high street bank. Determined to rethink their approach to corporate communications, the series’, ‘Love Stories’, was born and our work began. The campaign aimed to inspire small businesses across the country to choose Love Finance as their financial services provider through compelling storytelling.

Working with a business that brimmed with potential meant finding a unique and engaging way of effectively capturing that on film. After researching and contacting a list of over 300 businesses to find the perfect first subject, we narrowed it down to London Sneaker School, a factory workshop that teaches people how to make sneakers. This cool, independent small business aligned perfectly with Love Finance’s brand.

Love Finance wanted to reach new creative limits with this project, which meant stringent planning and organisation was needed both ahead of, during the shoot, and in post-production. Crucial to this project was ensuring that all content remained true to the business’ story while also aligning with Love Finance’s newly re-vamped brand identity: our work had to capture authenticity and excitement, while showcasing both businesses as fun and bold.

We knew investing our time in talking with the owner, Jase, getting the details of the content right and visiting the location to scope out spaces for the shoot would be vital to deliver an outstanding video case study. We set about masterminding the creative which included script writing, story boarding and scene setting.

Focusing on bringing the Love Finance brand to life and capturing the essence of the business story, we chose ambient lighting to enhance the space, and considered object placement and clever use of indoor and outdoor space which would make the most out of the location, a low-lit basement studio in North-East London.

We planned a personal interview style video with the camera following Jase around his vibrant, Hackney-based studio as it was the perfect way for the owner to tell his story. The space was small, but its potential was huge.

The details of this also provided the basis for the written accompaniment, which was to be published on the website and tells London Sneaker School’s unique story in more depth. In order to tell the truth of the story, we interviewed him to hear about his love for sneakers, how he learnt how to code, his biggest achievements and aspirations for the future.

Putting a fresh spin on corporate communications, our work with Love Finance and London Sneaker School resulted in a bright and bold one-minute video case study with three snipped accompaniments for social media, and a library of imagery for wider marketing use.

To ensure material could be used across all marketing platforms in future, film was shot in 4K and in a variety of formats. This would ensure the longevity of the content, key to allowing our clients to scale up and use this content for Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in the future.

To shake off any nerves our team ensured Jase was well-prepared and comfortable with the filming schedule and talking points. Key messaging was woven into the owner’s skeleton scripts to ensure our client’s offering and impact were communicated on shoot day. If the speech didn’t feel natural, we adapted the script in the moment to craft content that felt authentic and credible to the case study while still conveying the key messages.

Completed in just two weeks, the case study now takes pride of place on Love Finance’s website and social media. This video case study was the powerful, innovative beginning the series needed.