Over two days we shot two sponsored content films for NFU Mutual, one at a Gin distillery in the Wye Valley and the other at a beautiful Dairy farm in Lincolnshire.
Sometimes you get particularly lucky with the subject of your shoots, this one was of those!
The aim of the films was to highlight the relationships shared between ‘The Rural’, ‘The Town’ and ‘The City’ and to position NFU Mutual as a modern insurance provider that can adapt to the UK’s ever changing ‘consumer culture’ and lifestyles.
The films were a documentary portrait of the featured producers. The best hook to keep people watching content is to see someone talking passionately about a subject they love. This was certainly the case with the two producers that we featured and it was great to be able to work with them to showcase their business and their produce.
Perks of the job, yes we tried some Chase Gin (after the shoot of course) and yes we tried some Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese, both were delicious!
Rather than talking about the product directly, letting real people speak passionately about their own work builds a positive association with the sponsoring brand by proximity, rather than through a direct pitch, which tends to land better with audiences wary of obvious advertising.
Genuine, unprompted enthusiasm reads as more credible than rehearsed lines, and audiences are generally good at telling the difference. Letting contributors speak in their own words, rather than a script, is usually what makes sponsored content feel trustworthy rather than transactional.
Tight scheduling and thorough pre-production research into each location and contributor beforehand means shoot days can be spent capturing content rather than figuring out the story on arrival, which matters more the less travel buffer there is between locations.