Reimagining Stanley Stories: Savannah Sachdev
Producing branded content with the running and fitness creator for Stanley Europe
As the digital marketing and creative agency for Stanley in EMEA since 2020, we’ve regularly produced narrative campaign content for the brand. Primarily, this has been part of the Stanley Stories series, a series of films that originally set out to feature epic natural landscapes and celebrate contemporary outdoor heroes like The Nomads Family, Fell Foodie, and the Sherperdess.
In 2023, Stanley underwent a makeover. Following the launch of the Quencher product in Europe, the brand began to attract a broader, more trend and fashion-focused audience that was younger and dominated by women. The original concept behind the Stanley Stories didn’t feel as relevant for this new audience and the series was paused.
But in 2024, we were asked to work on a reimagining of the Stanley Stories. This time, the content needed to resonate with Stanley’s new audience. And it wasn’t just the content and the intended audiences that were different, the films also needed to form a more cohesive part of the broader marketing strategy, linking up with key new product releases, influencer events and press activity.
A Compelling Savannah Sachdev Brand Partnership
For the first profile, we decided to work with Savannah Sachdev, a London-based content creator who is currently on a 1000+ day running streak.
We wanted to make a video that was authentic to who we were featuring. Sure, Savannah’s mostly known for her running content, but she’s also a keen gym goer and freelancer. The final film is short – under 5 minutes, but it still needed to cover these bases, as well as touch on Savannah’s Indian heritage and her experiences as a woman in the fitness industry.
In addition to Savannah, the film also had to showcase Stanley in its new aesthetic. The modern, urban, trend-led brand has launched plenty of colourful products over the last couple of years. With this, our objective was to show the products in a wide range of use cases so we assembled a crew and set to work on the production.
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Shooting Authentic Content
Vitally, the project and creative were rooted in London. From the London-specific backdrops of Hampstead Heath to a well-known luxury fitness studio, we depicted Savannah against an urban, athletic background. Despite some brutally wet weather, we authentically captured a day in the life of Savannah and gave viewers a glimpse behind the scenes of a content creator: her daily run, some strength and conditioning exercises and working on her laptop in her favourite coffee shop.
Optimising Content For Multiple Platforms
After the shooting and edits were finalised, it was time to launch the campaign. We planned space the content out over the course of a month, first a teaser, then the full edit, some stills and finally two cut downs with Savannah’s recognisable voiceover.
We played to each platform’s strengths. Naturally the full edit featured across Meta and YouTube while the mini-edits featured on TikTok – a native platform for Savannah. We delivered a collaborative post, the tried and tested best way to engage followers from both accounts.
1,366% more profile visits
The new creative direction for Stanley Stories resonated with the evolving Stanley audience as month on month TikTok saw a 1,366% increase in profile visits, a 427% increase reach and 723% more impressions. On YouTube, this was also the case, we were pleased to see that 18% of video plays were viewed to 100%, getting nearly 1 in 5 people viewing 100% of the video on a skippable ad shows how much the creative resonated with our target audience.
Want to work with us on your creative project? Get in touch.
