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.