Eek. COVID-19, amirite?
Very few businesses were immune from the impacts of the global pandemic, and Creativa was no exception. Suddenly all live-action video productions were ground to a halt. With budgets slashed, many of our clients put projects on hold indefinitely.
Things looked bleak, and there was no end in sight. But we weren't about to stop being creative.
Eager to do all that we could to encourage our clients to keep coming to us for content, we dreamt up our #StayCreative #StayConnected campaign. For the foreseeable future, we'd remind our audience of the power of content and communication.
Everything we did as part of the campaign encouraged creativity and connection, two things we're all about at Creativa.
Of course, creating and communicating was being made harder by the restrictions imposed. For many of us accustomed to family dinners and workplace meetings, the simple act of conversing with another was made more challenging.
We were quick to adopt video calls as the primary means of interaction, but not as everyone was as savvy with a camera as us.
For many of our projects, grabbing a camera and going out to location was no longer viable. Fortunately for us, we were able to offer an alternative.
Animation quickly became the best way to produce content. Immune to lockdown restrictions, our animators were able to carry on merrily producing projects from home.
We felt animation was often overlooked in favour of live-action production, and we saw this as its moment to shine.
No doubt a 100+ day lockdown in Melbourne took its toll, but steadfast in our determination to support each other, stay creative and keep connected, we shared our experiences with one another in the hope it could help others.
Mental health became a big focus for us, as it became all the more a subject of concern.
In collaboration with one of our designers, we collected ideas from the team about how they were looking after their mental health and turned them into illustrations to share across our social channels.
I'd later collaborate with the same designer to produce the 'Other Benefits to Wearing a Mask' content you saw at the top of this post.
For sure though, we were eager to give our audience practical advice on how they could turn to video and animation content to overcome the challenges they were facing.
We confronted challenges that were here and now, but also adopted a forward-thinking approach to tackle the future challenges the were only beginning to emerge.
Challenges like, "how do I deliver online training in a post-pandemic world?"
We sought to give our audience a means of staying creative too.
Our designer illustrated two colouring-in templates: one for kids and one for adults. Not only was it an opportunity to stretch a creative muscle, but also to take pause and do a more meditative activity amidst a stressful period.
And when lockdown ended, we announced the return of live-action shoots with a series of clips like the one below.
All-in-all, it was a rocky year full of ups and downs. I'm sure most people will relate.
However, amidst our 100-day lockdown, we posted our biggest August on record and followed it up with a huge February in the following year.
It was a monumental team effort, our incredible sales lead and creative team finding ways to make projects happen despite all the chaos. Everyone kept focussed amazingly well, championed animation or otherwise got scrappy making content however they could.
Whatever contribution the #StayCreative #StayCreative campaign had, it was as much for us as it was our audience.
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