Napoleon Creative

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a General Practitioner working within the Haringey GP Federation as the Clinical Lead for Immunisations.

For what projects/services did your company hire Napoleon Creative?

We were wanted a video asset to use to encourage parents in the Haringey area to book their child’s vaccinations. As well as responding to the usual issues around vaccinations, we wanted to reassure parents that we were following Covid guidelines.

What were your goals for this project?

As we are a very diverse community, we needed the animation to represent that community visually, but also to show that diversity in the characters in the video. We also needed it in multiple languages. We wanted something colourful and engaging, that would hold the attention, but not be too long.

How did you select Napoleon Creative?

We were recommended to them by a colleague, who’d worked with them several times before.

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

We spent a long time on the script, as it had to be signed off by several different stake holders. It needed to have the right tone, but also be technically correct. Napoleon Creative helped us get the right balance between the two.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

Given this was during Covid, most communication was by phone. Once we were in production, we used their online platform to review storyboards and video clips.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We ended up with 4 versions of the video with different language voice overs. Each of these has all 4 language available as subtitles – so which every version was shared, our key communities would be able to understand it! Going beyond the agreed deliverables, the team at Napoleon also provided a version in each language that was small enough for What’s App. They added a different end board, encouraging people to forward it to those who might need to see it. As well as hosting this on our social media channels, I’ve been using the films in my practice when sending text message reminders to parents. The wider Haringey team are now looking at how they can launch it alongside other programmes, and create bit sized clips from it.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The online review platform was simple to use, and really helpful for us to give very specific directions on the angle and position of the injection.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Gavin really took to the time to understand the brief and was able to create videos that delivered the message. Their team was very patient in ensuring the right script and deadlines. His suggestions for edits along the way and attention to detail were greatly appreciated.

Are there any areas for improvement?

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Please describe your company and your position there.

Communications Lead for SameYou. SameYou, founded by Emilia Clarke, is a charity dedicated to creating a future where anyone affected by brain injury can get the support they need to recover and to live a rewarding life.

For what projects/services did your company hire Napoleon Creative?

We hired Napoleon to edit two patient video stories discussing their stroke and rehabilitation treatment.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to edit the length of the video down by a number of minutes without losing the essence of the story, the emotion and impact of the rehabilitation.

How did you select Napoleon Creative?

We have worked with Napoleon previously and always been impressed with their work. We wanted a company that understood our goals and could create the right kind of film for us.

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

The video was filmed as a two way conversation and Gavin was able to edit out the other person and use storyboards to tell the story to enable us to cut down the length of video. He focussed on the key emotional elements that we required.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

Napoleon worked patiently with us, going through a few rounds of editing until we had the perfect final cut!

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

These videos will be used on the charity website and in communications to our supporters to help encourage regular donations to fund repeat rehabilitation programmes.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is always spot on with Napoleon and Wipster is a very easy way to make comments to edits.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Gavin takes time to talk through the project in detail and really 'gets' the brief. He also brings some great suggestions and improvements to the brief to get the most from the edit.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Kneads Must is a massage company that provides hand-held massage tools for trade and public use. I'm Una Tucker, founder of Kneads Must and creator of the Kneader massage tool.

For what projects/services did your company hire Napoleon Creative, and what were your goals?

Our award-winning body massage tool, the Kneader, is easy-to-use for both professional and non-professional massage use. Massage therapists use the Kneader a great deal as a supplemental tool in their treatments because it helps save wear/tear on their hands during deep or repetitive moves.

We created Kneader Chair Massage - a massage routine that uses two Kneaders - to provide easy and effective chair massage for public and corporate clients. We wanted to create the Kneader Chair Massage online course to teach massage therapists this successful massage routine as well as providing them a structured way of learning how to use the Kneader in all their other routines.

We approached Napoleon Creative to help us create clearly-branded course video content that was clear and engaging.

How did you select Napoleon Creative and what were the deciding factors?

A few years ago, we sent out a competitive tender for filming some demo massage moves which accompanied the Kneader in its first run packaging. Napoleon Creative won the tender because they not only responded to the brief, they challenged it and made it better. They knew the product and my business - they were the perfect fit for this project.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We spent some time going through the course, so they understood what we needed. We then had a couple of days intensive filming, often with two cameras: one on a wider shot and one close-up on the massage move. From the start, the NC team really understood our brief and were able to expand upon it. While I saw just a person demonstrating with a model, they suggested animation running by the side of the video to show the moves, the hand-holds and the muscles being worked. Their solution really took the end product to a whole new and exciting level. They were also keen to ‘modulise’ all the animation, so it was easy to reuse elements for speed.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The course wouldn’t be the course without the videos, and the course participants find them really easy to follow. I have to admit I didn’t always listen to Napoleon Creative's advice. When they strongly suggested each clip should have a voice over, I disagreed. Later, we showed some clips to a test group of massage therapists and the first thing they said was “it would be great to have a voice over explaining the moves.” So, lesson learned, we went back and I recorded a voice-over for each one! The NC team also advised to keep the creative look and feel of the clips continuous throughout all the course material, including various PDFs and learning documents, so they helped us create those as well.

Massage Therapy is a business based on anatomy & physiology knowledge, so showing the tool working the wrong muscle would have been unacceptable. Napoleon Creative were very patient with us moving the animated moves inch by inch to get them just right! They used an online platform which made this process simple, so we could work iteratively through the changes.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

This was a long, slow project. We created over 100 short clips, which were then turned into 12 long summary sequences. In the early stages, the NC team were very good at looking at what we needed structurally and so they built reusable assets, which has really helped. They were also good at delivery clips with clear names, so that they organised themselves within the folders. It may sound like a small detail, but it’s been critical to managing the assets.

I’m very detail-orientated and therefore wanted to go through all my editorial comments over the phone and the NC team were happy with that. However, they suggested an online review site to share the clips, which turned out to be amazing and quickly became our go-to way of communicating. We would have regular catch-up calls though, which helped to make sure we were on track. The budget for this grew quite a bit as the scope of the project widened. I did find there were occasions when I found it hard to keep track of how much budget we had left to finish each section, because it was a complex project. We did spend more than I had originally anticipated, but the level of quality – how it looks and communicates with the learners – was totally worth it.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Napoleon Creative was incredibly professional and patient with me, even when I missed deadlines or made poor choices. I was completely out of my comfort zone producing this level of online content, but they held my hand throughout and together we achieved more than I could have ever hoped for! They genuinely care about how the video content is seen within the larger picture of the project. It’s not just about the finished video file in isolation, but how the player will work, where the video will be positioned on the course page and how will people view it. This sum of all parts is why the course has been so well-received.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None that I can think of - I was genuinely very satisfied with the process and finished product.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm global director of capability at a major communication services company. My division specialises in government and public communication. As part of this we run an executive education programme with Oxford University and the National University of Singapore.

For what projects/services did your company hire Napoleon Creative?

Covid-19 forced us to move our teaching programmes online. Participants are global, often with significant cultural and linguistic differences. We needed to create video content to supplement live teaching in order to maintain energy and focus over what are often long and quite academic sessions.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to create engaging content that was easily understood by those who did not speak English as a first language, but also not be felt as patronising by those for whom English is their mother tongue. The content needed to make an immediate impact, be highly memorable, and complement our live teaching which is now via Zoom rather than face-to-face.

How did you select Napoleon Creative?

Colleagues recommended Napoleon Creative, so we issues a brief to three agencies, prioritising creative response, previous experience, price and, importantly chemistry (would they be fun to work with).

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

We explained the world we work in to Napoleon Creative and our requirements in terms of broad content and duration. We then worked collaboratively on bringing academic content engagingly to live. I drafted outline scripts which Napoleon edited and improved considerably.

They were also great at storyboarding creative inserts and visuals, and the overall brand identity for the content, given it was spread across eight different modules. Their direction and editing were fantastic.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

They provided a two-person crew given social distancing constraints, plus animation and editing support.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We launched the videos within two months, using them on our Singapore programme and with participants from across south-east Asia, the Middle East and Australia. Anecdotal feedback on the videos was highly positive and we're now using them in additional circumstances. Additionally, the videos contributed to extremely high participant evaluation - something we knew would be difficult because we had taken a face-to-face teaching experience and taken it online where a loss of fidelity with students was a high possibility.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Their project management was excellent. The team were really easily to work with, highly focused, flexible when necessary, and fun to be around. All deadlines es were met.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Great creativity and project management; really easy and fun to work with. Lots of meaningful collaboration.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything works as anticipated.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior management consultant for a consulting firm for this particular project. I was working for one of our clients, the ministry of defense in the UK.

What challenge were you trying to address with Napoleon Creative?

I was working to produce a marketing campaign. In specific, we wanted to create a video promoting the digital section of the ministry of defense which is focused on automation technology. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on the editing, directing, filming, creating animations to overlay the footage during the voice-over, building transitions from one footage to another, so the final deliverable was a four-minute video.

We started with designing the budget and defining what kind of solution we could get with the budget. We knew from the beginning what kind of product we would get. Then, I worked with Napoleon explaining what automation was and defining the draft of the video. We showed it to stakeholders and kept working on changes.

We eventually got to the stage where the script was agreed upon by all parties. And at that stage, we could then start doing the filming. Some of it had to be done on warships and on army bases. That meant that they sometimes had to manage filming remotely because they wouldn't be allowed onto those places.

What is the team composition?

I worked closely with Gavin (Founder).

How did you come to work with Napoleon Creative?

Napoleon Creative has worked with our company for over ten years, so this is just a standard relationship.

How much have you invested with them?

Through the project, we invested £15,000 (approximately $21,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together on this project from November 2020–April 2021.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The video made it very easy to market automation to a wide audience, as automation is one of those topics that can turn people off. Most people don't always understand it, but this video made it very easy to do so. That’s exactly what we wanted from the video.

The quality was very high, and the final output was superb. The process itself to get the quality was at times difficult, but it was all for the purpose of getting the best footage and the best quality. 

Gavin panicked about the details of the project and lost sight of the bigger picture while focusing on very small details, but it was because of those small details that the quality shone through. If you don’t take care of those details you don't get the same level of quality from the project. I was wondering why he was so panicked about the tiniest details. Now, because of that, the video looks excellent.

How did Napoleon Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated across multiple different channels, including instant messaging. However, we didn't use a proper project management tool.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They focused on the right details, and they brought their expertise to parts of the project that I hadn’t noticed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I did ask a couple of times for a formal working plan, but I never got one. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Define the success of the project, and have them be accountable to the plan on a weekly basis because, otherwise, the project will drag on.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Head of Marketing & Comms for a change agency, supporting public sector organisations with digital transformation, service design and community development. Our company of 100+ works with local government, central government and health organisations across the UK and Europe. As Head of Marketing & Comms, I lead the strategic and operational direction of marketing activities as well as internal and external communications.

For what projects/services did your company hire Napoleon Creative?

During the first few months of COVID-19 in the UK, we helped local authorities and NHS partners with their immediate emergency response. This meant a lot of rapid change in a historically bureaucratic sector, adopting radically new ways of working at a pace previously unseen. It was clear the scale of the emergency was too big and needs to people too complex for any one organisation to address alone. Which meant local authorities needed to adapt to work in truly multidisciplinary ways across services, the Voluntary Community Sector and the local community to provide support to people at the earliest possible opportunity. Working with one London authority, we built a digital platform that enables local authorities to keep a combined list of vulnerable people in their borough, record their needs, and keep track of their fulfilment. Called Beacon, we can capture resident needs and connect them to the right support to ensure these needs are met through council and voluntary and community services. We built the platform in a matter of days and weeks, and needed a way to quickly and clearly communicate the benefits and uses of the platform to a range of stakeholders. We enlisted Napoleon Creative to help us achieve this.

What were your goals for this project?

For a first use case, we needed to quickly and clearly communicate the benefits and uses of the platform to a range of stakeholders - from senior council leaders and Voluntary Community Sector leaders to council staff and voluntary staff as an introduction to the platform. Second to that, we intend to use the animation video for sales and marketing purposes, sharing the video on our social media and website.

How did you select Napoleon Creative?

A colleague recommended Napoleon Creative, as we'd worked with them for a separate animation video years before. We knew we needed the video created quickly and trusted their ability to understand the brief, understand the context of the emergency response and deliver a well-designed and useful video.

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

Our entire video process took 3 days. From brief to delivery of a final product, the Napoleon Creative worked FAST. After sending an initial speculative email, I had a call with Gavin to discuss our brief and desired outcome in more detail. I followed up this call with a written brief recapping our call with a budget, two examples, timeline and branding details. While Napoleon Creative got to work on style, I started drafting the voice over script. Gavin sent over video examples of their previous work to help us decide on the overall style. Due to the tight deadline, we chose to repurpose animations they'd created previously, which was very smart. With the style approved and visuals of our platform provided, Gavin and I went through the script together to check for clarity, clear story and timings. With a bit more work on my end on the story, I got to work recording the voice-over myself, leaving Gavin's team free to focus on creating the animations and sequencing. Once the voice-over was complete, I provided the raw audio file for Napoleon Creative team to manage audio editing. They put all materials together and provided the first version on a collaborative feedback platform. I love these platforms, as it makes it so easy to add comments collaboratively with the team. After a few edits and versions, we had a completed video.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

We had a small team of people working around the clock to complete in our very condensed time frame. We worked together through every stage from planning to script creation, with multiple rounds of drafts for feedback. Because of the tight turnaround, we had open and continuous communication using phone calls and Whatsapp messaging, in addition to video feedback platforms.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to share the video with our client stakeholders to help facilitate important discussions about their immediate and future ways of working for the emergency COVID response. We've continued developing the platform with that client over the past year.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow between teams was phenomenal. I trusted the Napoleon Creative team to make smart decisions and ask for guidance when needed. For the three days, we had completely open channels of communication, using phone calls and Whatsapp messaging for quick communication. Overall, I was impressed by their willingness to take on such a rapid piece of work and come up with creative solutions to help us meet our deadline.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The professionalism and communication shown by Napoleon Creative was next level. They clearly know what they're doing, know what they need from clients in order to create their best work, and come with no ego. The team worked with immense speed without sacrificing quality.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.