Curtin University’s Environmental Health Trachoma Project aims to reduce the incidence of trachoma and skin infections in ‘trachoma at risk’ Aboriginal communities in remote WA. They commissioned Lush to create a suite of content that would help move their vital work forward.
The Lush team travelled to these remote locations to shoot a series of films documenting their environmental health checks (which required us to encourage community participation in the content creation), providing instructional content for their personnel, and sharing stories from these communities.
“Lush really got to know us and captured our message with professionalism and sensitivity. The videos are powerful resources that have made a real difference to our organisation.”
Melissa Stoneham, Curtin University Environmental Health Trachoma Project
Owning a place in the market with a clear identity
Like many start-ups, the duo at Glask Construction didn’t have any clarity on who they were. It was less of an existential crisis and more of a branding issue—they needed to go on a strategic journey that would cement their brand identity before their public launch.
In the space of design and construction, the leading competitors were not investing heavily in brand work; therefore, Glask had the opportunity to show their customers exactly who they were, what they stood for, and how they were serving their needs. The focus clearly needed to land on the consumer. By diving deep into three avatars—the progressive entrepreneur, the implementer, and the benefactor—we uncovered what they valued, what worldviews they held, their media behaviour, and the pain points that motivated their actions.
The rollout:
A consumer-focused brand story
A brand tone that breaks the patterns within the industry
Website copy, design, and development
Capabilities document
Case study copywriting
Strategic thinking to guide a brand identity
The strategic brand work gathered insights from a staff workshop, one-on-one interviews, and desktop consumer research.
“This project was clearly focused on the words. The team at Glask needed a way to speak about their company and the USP they own, but that all comes from a strategic origin point. Gaining insights into their consumers was vital and really drove the work—we took the focus off the company and spent time in the world of our consumer avatars, asking ourselves things like, ‘What do they care about?’ ‘How do they want to be spoken to?’ Someone once called it method marketing and that’s exactly it.”
Clare Reid, Senior Copywriter.
With a vast amount of audience intel, we developed a brand tone of voice that Glask could own, one that also felt authentic for the founders. Honest and straightforward, inspiring, charismatic, assuring, reliable, and altruistic. It’s the kind of voice the audience avatars see as authoritative but not arrogant, a competent partner who can drive their project forward.
Caving out a clear space in the market
Carving out a space for Glask in the market really came down to branding. The product itself was largely comparable to others in the industry, but the way the team approached the work and what they stood for as a company really gave them an edge; the creative and strategic thinkers at Lush could then deliver these values-based differentiators to the market with a notable identity.
“Clare is a gun, fantastic at what she does. She really helped us build our brand and identify who we are and what we’re all about. I feel so proud of what has been created to date. Brendan has pulled the website together, listened to us, and hit the mark from the start, nothing is too hard and it’s a pleasure dealing with him and the rest of your team.
As we grow, these ideas will remain the pillars of our business. Reaching out to Lush was one of the best things we’ve done.”
Kieran Glaser, Founder and Director, Glask Constructions.
Airbridge is more than just a carbon-capture company. They partner with big businesses to create carbon-fed supply chains that have the power to change the world for the better. By capturing the world’s largest cause of climate change and transforming it into products the world needs, Airbridge technology is making a global impact on the health of our planet through decarbonisation.
With an upcoming opportunity to present at the global 2022 ONS conference, Airbridge brought on Lush to create a powerful brand strategy and supporting materials that would maximise the impact of their presentation. We needed to clarify their messaging through a consolidated elevator pitch that effectively communicated the value of this new technology.
Bringing together insights from a brand workshop, desktop research, and interviews with the company’s CEO, we developed a comprehensive brand strategy that would guide Airbridge’s communications moving forward. We defined their brand’s essence, story, USP, strengths, persona, and tone of voice; in addition to identifying and investigating their stakeholders, audience avatars, internal consumer narratives, and audience worldview.
To make the most of the ONS conference presentation, Airbridge needed to communicate its technical content and value proposition in a clear, concise manner to a diverse international audience. Our animator transformed the company’s technical diagrams and data into a sleek, contemporary video at the heart of the presentation. Our editorial team put their speech-writing skills to work, articulating the CEO’s ideas with increased impact; while our design team crafted a set of slick presentation slides to showcase the business.
“Lush demonstrated an impressive ability to fuse our technical content with clear, meaningful language and visuals. By taking the time to really understand our work in decarbonisation and the renewable energy space, they were able to develop a high-impact strategic approach for our collateral; which provided the perfect platform for communicating our work to pivotal stakeholders.”
A new campaign for the 2022 AFL & AFLW Derby saw the Lush team working closely with the West Coast Eagles, Fremantle Dockers, and RAC to craft content that would powerfully drive home the importance of road safety.
The videos we created feature some of Perth’s brightest AFL stars; Emma O’Driscoll and Nat Fyfe from the Dockers, along with Emma Swanson and Luke Shuey from the Eagles.
The series sparked heartfelt conversations on social media, highlighting an audience that’s genuinely listening to the message from these respected players and connecting to the work.
“Working on this campaign was really special; being able to sit with the players and listen to their stories in full length was a privilege. They all dug deep emotionally and held nothing back to make sure we captured the essence of what they had all been through personally. I always find it inspiring when people who have earned their platform use it to bring greater good to the community.”
The Republic of Fremantle is a start-up distillery and restaurant in Western Australia where artisan ingredients and passionate craftspeople meet—a classic ‘Freo’ venue with ambitions to share the culture and creativity of Fremantle on a global scale. After a successful first year of trading locally in WA, their eyes were set on future growth; a major renovation to their venue. And for this, they needed investors, preferably locals who shared their vision. So, the Lush production team came together with the creative minds of our sister agency Dear Storyteller in order to make a mini-documentary.
“The Lush team are the ultimate storytellers and have the ability to create brand films that not only wholeheartedly represent our brand, but show a genuine understanding of our audience.”
Mary-Anne Stupart, Head of Sales and Marketing, Republic of Fremantle
Through the documentary short genre, we created a compelling story that captured The Republic of Fremantle in an editorial manner. The film highlighted the history of this unique local business, plus their award-winning product range, existing hospitality venue, and vision for the long term. It was a fresh perspective on crowdfunding initiatives, masterminded by Dear Storyteller and brought to life by the Lush team. The film was at the heart of Glide Agency’s crowdfunding work and paid social media campaign, telling the brand’s story and ultimately helping drive one of 2022’s most successful Birchal campaigns to date.
“When we showed our current shareholders and investors what Lush had created, they were blown away with the ability to balance great storytelling, visuals and a call to action which was needed specifically for raising capital for this campaign.”
Mary-Anne Stupart, Head of Sales and Marketing, Republic of Fremantle
After running on digital channels for six weeks, the mini-documentary secured $1.028 million in capital from 450 investors. 71% of these investors were from WA, proving that the film had generated a groundswell of local support for this grassroots start-up. Now, after exceeding their campaign goals, The Republic of Fremantle is ready for what’s next: overhauling the venue and taking their first global steps.
“We’re so excited that 450 investors decided to join us in our next chapter, as we expand our distribution nationally and Internationally, and develop new products to meet changing consumers’ needs.”
Mary-Anne Stupart, Head of Sales and Marketing, Republic of Fremantle
MatchWorks came to Lush with a simple goal: To create a resource that could help organisations to better tackle the issue of family violence in their workplace.
Every week one woman is killed and every month one man is killed by a current or former partner.
These chilling results were found in a 2018 study by TheAustralian institute of Health and Welfare, and are some of the statistics discussed in MatchWorks’ whitepaper.
As a non-for-profit employment service, MatchWorks are regularly in close contact with both employees and employers. They felt it extremely beneficial to use this position to draw attention to an undeniably important topic. MatchWorks brought on Lush to develop a resource that might alleviate the strain on managers and create a better environment for potential employees.
“It’s an ongoing valuable resource for employers to refer to if they want some practical strategies to put in place for their management.”
The whitepaper is a highly valuable and in-depth report that could effectively express the detail and sophistication that this topic warrants. Our editorial department worked closely with MatchWorks to ensure the right amount of research and attention was put into the piece.
The paper specifically covers three highly vulnerable groups:
People from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
People with disabilities
Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people.
The risk of family violence is higher for women and men within these groups; a fact that that many people are unaware of. The whitepaper aims to bring about education and support for employees, in hopes of creating a better environment for all workers.
[We’re] really just trying to give employers and colleagues, a resource, with strategies about how they can tackle it if they’ve got someone who’s experiencing it and how they can best support them.
Ronald McDonald House (RMH) Perth had a problem. They needed to raise $22 million. Fast.
The not-for-profit organisation’s sole objective is to help sick children and their families during their hour of need. They provide free accommodation for families travelling away from home to obtain specialist medical care. However, RMH found they were turning away thousands of desperate families across Australia each month due to the limited spaces in their houses. Fortunately, they found a large parcel of land near the hospital in Nedlands that would allow RMH Perth to relocate and build a new facility with three times the capacity. CEO at the time, Alison Salmond, knew this was an incredible opportunity; but with every opportunity comes a challenge. To raise the $22 million required Alison knew she needed a campaign like no other. “We needed to effectively market this project to our stakeholders and get the urgency of the message across in order to gain donations for the project,” Alison explained.
Ronald McDonald House had created some successful videos in the past and knew this was the marketing direction they wanted to head in for this campaign. Through the advice of RMH Perth’s capital campaign consultant, Xponential Philanthropy, Alison was pointed toward Lush The Content Agency.
I hadn’t used Lush before but I was certainly impressed when they came in with the pitch. James and Alex are just professional. They know what is cutting edge and are on their game.
Alison Salmond, CEO, Ronald McDonald House
Lush’s Manager of Video Production (and producer of the film), Alex Lush, said success comes down to one thing: good storytelling. “These families have such raw and powerful stories to tell and showing first-hand the reality of the role RMH Perth has played in their lives helped the audience connect to the gravity of the problem,” Alex said. “Importantly, the video also gave them the chance to be a part of the solution.”
Alison agrees telling the story from the perspective of the people at the heart of the cause allows the message to hit home for the viewer. “I loved the simplicity of the authentic interviews with real families. It just goes to show that genuine emotional connection gets better results than flashy cinematography,” Alison said. “Visual storytelling is the best sales tool.”
When the video was finalised, RMH Perth was able to go out and spread their message to raise much-needed funds for the new house and Alison was amazed at how impactful the video was. Alison recounted the positive reaction the video garnered with stakeholders and investors. “At the end of the video, I would have everyone in the room in tears, engaged and saying, ‘what do you need and how can I help?’ It was so effective.”
Lush produced a beautiful, respectful and poignant DVD that captured the essence of what RMH does and equipped us with a tool to help raise much-needed funds to build our new house. Thank you Lush for taking us all on an incredible journey.
As WA’s largest leading apartment builder, Finbar has been a long standing and valued client of Lush since 2013. Finbar pride themselves on their ability to shape landscapes and lifestyles for West Australians that are far from ordinary.
To date, Finbar have completed 76 landmark developments and 6,655 apartments. They’ve touched a whole lot of lives, and Lush have been their go to producers every step of the way.
But, as you can imagine, it can sometimes be difficult to sell a building that doesn’t exist yet. That’s where Lush’s creative team of storytellers come in.
Chase
The goal of this project was to develop a television commercial that would showcase the lifestyle and convenience of Finbar’s newest Belmont apartment development, Chase.
Lush proposed a piece that would highlight the surrounding amenities, the convenient location and create a dream lifestyle that one could only wish to achieve. They called it, ‘more than just somewhere to live.’
But what you might not know, is that you’re not allowed to fly a drone within 6km of an airport. So the building didn’t actually exist yet and they couldn’t get the surrounding shots they needed to demonstrate it’s location and surroundings. This created a bit of a speed hump for the film crew, but it wasn’t impossible. To bring the city to life, Lush’s animation team used a combination of Google Earth data, some very cool plug-ins, and a lot of tedious planting of fake trees.
The end result was a high class, contemporary video, full of desire. Who doesn’t want to live the carefree, resort life, yet also be on the doorstep of the Swan River?
Civic Heart
Generating over $50 million in apartment presales, Finbar’s Civic Heart development experienced a very successful pre-launch campaign in early 2020. Yet this project was like nothing they’d created before. They wanted luxury and extravagance, to evoke a feeling within viewers.
Lush and their sister agency, Dear Storyteller, worked on the project together with a vision to bring the promise of Civic Heart to life.
Dear Storyteller’s general manager, Mike Drysdale, formulated a poem that he voiced over the action on screen.
Together, what they created was a vivid demonstration of life on the South Perth foreshore. From picturesque sunsets to socialising at local bars and cafés. The imagery complimented the poem in a way that encapsulated the luxury of this 360 degree architectural landmark.
Having built more than 40,000 homes for WA families, Summit Homes are one of Perth’s leading residential builders. They wanted a clean, presenter-led film to showcase each of their three newly opened display homes and direct traffic to their website.
Highlighting family-focused living spaces and standout features, the Lush team created a video series that captures the comfortable lifestyle on offer in each home.
Lush helped document part of the five-year build that is Prelude, a floating natural gas facility built in South Korea and now located almost 500km offshore from Broome in WA.
Having flown across to South Korea to shoot a two-week period of the ship’s construction, the Lush team created a short recruitment film on location for the WA market. The video captures ‘a day in the life’, showcasing what it’s like to be one of Shell’s Australian staff members working on Prelude.
Rio Tinto is one of the world’s largest mining corporations with operations in over 30 countries. Producing materials such as iron ore, aluminium and copper, their work is essential for human progress. Founded in 1873, they live by their key values of care, curiosity and courage.
Lush began working for Rio Tinto in 2010 and have formed a close connection over the last decade of content creation. Lush first started by producing their fortnightly internal news, and have since produced thousands of hours worth of content and more recently, live streamed the CEO to a global audience of stakeholders and staff.
Lush have also worked on training modules and inductions for Rio Tinto, long form storytelling, internal and external short form videos, corporate videos, media reels and are currently producing a coffee table book.
That’s quite a lot of content, isn’t it?
Lush’s partnership with Rio Tinto has spanned across multiple sectors of the company, from media and external affairs to the geologists and hydrologists behind the scenes. These connections have allowed the two companies to form a unique relationship, Lush know the ins and outs of Rio Tinto’s work and the vision for each piece without a second thought.
Lush content production projects for Rio Tinto
London’s Global Financial Results Meeting
A stand out project for Lush was the live streaming of Rio Tinto’s CEO for a global audience.
The financial results meeting takes place annually in Rio Tinto’s London office, however, due to the restrictions of Covid-19, the company’s CEO was stuck in Perth. Lush had to help them rethink how they might still have a global meeting within the constraints of a worldwide pandemic. The solution was found. Part of the London set was flown into Perth and set up in the Lush office where the livestream took place.
The pandemic placed immense pressure on the abilities of all content creators, but the drive of Lush and its storytellers is what kept them going.
Recruitment videos for The London Olympics
Another key project took place in 2012 during the London Olympics. During this global campaign, Lush partnered with Rio’s lead global agency ‘Content is King’ on a recruitment campaign which ran parallel with the London Olympics.
Lush were tasked with producing recruitment videos based around Rio’s Australian mine sites. They flew out to all Western Australian mine sites and spent 2-3 weeks shooting for the project. It’s opportunities like this that help Lush to build connections and understanding with the mining process and the workers themselves.
Dollars for Doers campaign
Dollars for Doers rewards Rio Tinto employees who volunteer 50 hours or more of personal time per year for a Western Australian based not-for-profit organisation. Successful applicants receive a $500 grant for their nominated organisation.
Lush needed to create a series of videos that showed the difference the program is making to people’s lives by telling the stories of those involved – and that meant getting out to where these programs operate.
The Lush team visited the various projects, filming with Rio Tinto staff and those who have benefited or are benefiting from the Dollars for Doers program. This involved traveling into the North-West of Western Australia for several days.
We created three original videos plus a fourth “highlights” video for Rio Tinto that can be used not just to honour those people and programs who earned a Dollars for Doers grant but also to encourage others within Rio Tinto to become volunteers.
The relationship Lush shares with Rio Tinto has for the most part, been a breeze, but on occasion there can be extremely tight timelines, a lot of travel and during the pandemic, a lot of rethinking.
When a shoot is scheduled, it used to be as easy as jumping on a plane and flying interstate. However, when travel restrictions came into play, Lush had to rethink their shooting regime. By hiring freelance camera crews with access to these locations they were able to work around the restrictions of the pandemic while still producing high end content.
Bankwest is a customer-focused national bank that was first established in 1895. They began as a small regional bank responsible for servicing the rural farmers of WA and are now operating on a national level, offering competitive rates and more personalised service.
Since 2012, Lush has worked with Bankwest to express their message of community focus and reliability.
From TV commercials to staff training, Lush have provided many different services for Bankwest, creating content that is unique to their brand and their values.
Bankwest Heroes
Bankwest’s values are care, courage and commitment and the projects they undertake embody these values. A very memorable project from 2016 was, ‘Bankwest Heroes’. This internal piece aimed to show Bankwest employees that there’s more to a person than just their work. They wanted to highlight the skills that you might not necessarily see during the day-to-day interaction with clients.
This called for a non-traditional approach that would capture the lives of those Bankwest clients naturally. Which for the crew at Lush, included a 5am start at Scarborough Beach for surf life-saving training on the coldest morning of the year.
The end result was a video that captured the personalities behind the business and certainly expressed a message of care, commitment and courage.
Bankwest Brokers
When Bankwest needed to inform their brokers of changes to processes within the business, they came to Lush. The pair discussed what might be the simplest way to impart the information that would also be easily palatable. They decided to go with animation. This was where Senior Creative, Lead Animation and 3D artist, Davide Boscolo came in.
Bankwest tend to use similar characters throughout all their animation projects so Davide was able to draw on previous designs to bring this piece together. He used simple, flat animations that were consistent with the many videos he had made for the business previously.
The client wanted to mix text animation with character animation but also keep the budget low. This would take two, maybe three days to put together and because it was a flat animation, it was much easier than most.
Davide Boscolo, Senior Creative, Lead Animation & 3D Artist
Learning Moments
‘Learning Moments’ was an internal staff training video series on how to deal with credit card fraud and other changes within the organisation. To express this information in a simple and engaging form, Lush once again turned to their lead animator, Davide, to create a virtual environment and characters to tell the story.
Home Loan Specialists TVC
After working together for almost ten years, you get to know one another pretty well. So when Bankwest came to Lush looking to create a TV commercial that focused on its customers and their needs, Lush knew exactly what to do. For this piece, Lush worked as the production house alongside Bankwest’s lead agency to create three television commercials to be used across broadcast and digital platforms.
What they produced was a series of videos that took a step into the lives of three different families and what Bankwest employees did for them. It was thoughtful, personalised and represented all the things you want from your best friend, let alone your bank.
As with any business relationship, there can often be tight turnarounds and busy schedules. Add on a few Covid-19 restrictions and you’ve got yourself an average day in the Lush office.
Fortunately, the close relationship and like values that the companies share allowed for constant communication and understanding.
Australian mental health care organisation Beyond Blue commissioned Lush to develop a place-based resource for educators teaching in regional rural communities across the Kimberley and Pilbara regions.
Working alongside Nani Creative, this project called for a partnership of agencies that understood the sensitivities of Indigenous communities, whilst creating content that effectively met the corporate brief and delivering on Beyond Blue’s project objectives.
We chose to partner with Lush because they recognise the importance of creating culturally sensitive content that shows respect to the traditional owners of the land. Their team took care to uncover stories that both met the brief and honoured the Indigenous communities we worked in.
Kevin Wilson, Creative Director, Nani Creative
With Nani Creative taking on consultations and illustration work, Lush brought to life a suite of video content to support their material. Our team travelled to the far north of WA to interview Indigenous community members, in addition to coaching other locals on interviewing practices to bring all the stories together.
Lush assigned a senior producer to work alongside Nani Creative and the client to understand the key messages, what the brand was trying to achieve, and deliver that in a respectful manner. The resulting video series and social media cuts represent a sensitively produced body of compelling work that meets the corporate requirements of Beyond Blue.
As the go-to editorial partner for Perth builder Smart Homes For Living, Lush completed work across strategy, copywriting, and crisis communications. The brand uses a unique voice to reach millennial and Gen Z buyers in the cluttered home builder market.
Taking a collaborative approach, we worked alongside the client’s lead agency &Partners as well as their SEO agency, internal marketing team, programming team, and business development team. Our task was to infuse creativity into a data-led editorial strategy.
Connecting with a hyper entertainment-led audience
In the highly competitive residential construction industry, many brands centre their voice around sales tactics. Smart Homes For Living disrupts that expectation by utilising a confident, relatable tone to connect with its millennial and Gen-Z audience. It was critical that every piece of editorial work by Lush expressed that voice.
We sought to speak to millennial experience seekers and cause-minded, stability-focused Gen Z home buyers. In doing so, this work required careful attention to balancing retail-driven marketing with an awareness of what’s happening in the media spheres its audience connects with.
We needed to find the balance between timely pop culture references for socials, and having an entertaining edge in copy that’s going to be used long term.
Clare Reid, Senior Copywriter
Fast-paced editorial production, driven by data
In this rapidly changing market, fast turnarounds are key in meeting launch deadlines. The Lush team efficiently crafted editorial content with a strong focus on conversions, ensuring tight word counts and restrictions were met whilst infusing the content with creativity.
Providing editorial services across SEO/SEM, social advertising, campaign copy, website content, blog articles, brochures, and signage, we created powerful work within parameters designed to maximise performance. For example, the team crafted flexible Google AdWords copy for A/B testing. This copy was further optimised through rapid iterations in collaboration with Smart Homes For Living’s SEM agency.
Powerful communications during a challenging time
Lush worked with Smart Homes For Living over one of the most difficult times ever faced by residential building companies. Throughout industry-wide trade shortages, construction delays, and a series of major government announcements surrounding COVID-19, Keystart, and building grants, one thing was for certain. Smart Homes For Living needed crisis communications produced swiftly and effectively.
In response, our editorial team crafted media releases, articles, COVID-19 announcements, and EDMs for communicating critical information both internally and externally, in addition to leading strategy development around changes to Keystart.
Inspired by a “Game of Thrones” storyline, Western Power wanted a video that was quirky and fun that their staff would engage with.
Lush’s lead animator developed shape-layered characters rather than complex, detailed ones as the turnaround time on this job was very tight. A vivid colour palette, dramatic music bed, and informative script work together to get the message across.
The outcome is an entertaining internal communications piece that uses creative storytelling to connect with its intended audience.
Murdoch University wanted to create an engaging video showcasing their new IT Innovation Hub. Their goal was to highlight what and how students can study within this space. This is a key point of difference in studying IT at Murdoch University.
The Lush team documented students engaging with facilities across the areas of game development, app development, software engineering, augmented reality, cyber forensics, network security, and more. Appealing to both prospective and current students, the resulting video effectively highlights the technology that sets this hub apart.
For many years now, Lush has worked extensively with CBH, one of the world’s largest and most efficient grain supply chains. CBH delivers millions of tonnes of quality Western Australian grain to customers around the world every year.
The team at Lush have a natural ability to connect with people and draw out content to produce quality productions for our regional audience.
Annie Bolton, CBH, Lead – Corporate Affairs
We’ve delivered a series of short animations explaining the interactive tools available to growers through the CBH website; produced a similar series introducing the capabilities of a newly launched CBH app; worked closely with the CBH marketing team to produce another series of animations explaining a change in board and governance; produced further films highlighting their three year mental health partnerships program; and finally, produced a new brand video in 2019, and updated it in 2020.
Having worked in close collaboration with the CBH communications department from the early planning stages to messaging right through to execution, the Lush team has a wealth of agriculture industry experience – from grass roots to executive level.
I have felt complete confidence in the team and their ability to engage with our regional communities, while ensuring our brand was consistently at the forefront of their activities.
Lush created a series of videos for WA Ballet representing the Woodside values of discipline, excellence, creativity, innovation, and working together. We documented the intensity and dedication that goes into being a professional ballet dancer; rigorous exercise, a strict nutrition plan, years of training, endless hours of rehearsal, and a drive to perform.
The videos were shot over several years, each coming together as budgets permitted. The Lush team managed every part of the process from the initial concept through to the final execution.
This work gives viewers a peek into the world of a professional ballet dancer. Each video is emotionally charged and highlights the level of commitment and strength required to pursue ballet. The final outcome was a series of five videos, each documenting one dancer, that paint an inspiring picture of the performers.
