Many creatives dip their toes in directing their own campaigns. Few dive head first into the rabbit hole to the extent WE ARE Pi co-founder and ECD Rick Chant did this year.
The team sat down with Rick to chat about what it was like to self-direct a production that touched advertising, social content, live events and thousands of party people across the globe.
A bit of context... In 2019, party-starting tequila infused Desperados beer and its creative agency WE ARE Pi embarked on an around the world adventure to make people’s party dreams a reality. Dubbed 'EPIC PARTIES IMAGINED BY YOU' the resulting integrated global campaign touched down everywhere from the UK to Poland and South Africa.
Q> Why did you decide to step beyond creative and also self-direct the events and content?
Rick> It wouldn't have been fair to ask anyone else to direct this wildly experimental idea and keep up with us across a hair raising nine month production rollercoaster. So we directed it ourselves.
Deep House the first campaign self directed in-houseRick> After previous beer and tequila fuelled adventures - at an underwater club at the bottom of the world’s deepest swimming pool, in zero gravity 30,000ft above Las Vegas and in 7 Hot Air Balloons in the Pyrenees mountains - I didn’t think things could get any more technical. Wrong, wrong , wrong.
This was a different kind of technical, a hedonistic, year long triple header. A Live Social Broadcast, or an ‘LSB’ experience which expanded the minds of our crew and the beer and tequila fuelled folks that got thoroughly involved.
9 Parties, in 9 countries over 9 months.
The party ideas were sparked in social by the public, given a creative twist and a kick of tequila, brought to life as an epic party like no other, broadcast live and buttoned up as a series of editorial and marketing assets to be served up fit for each and every platform.
Our job was to capture this process from spark to celebration. To follow the journey, breakages and all. It wasn’t always pretty, things went wrong and that’s what made it so exciting.
We broadcast live along the way, created editorial content within 24 hours and pushed out a whole host of other fit for feed assets throughout.
Rick> The 3 Ps.
Preparation. Preparation and Preparation.
It’s a masterclass in scenario planning. Prepare for every scenario, income, outcome, curveball, success and disappointment and you still won’t have prepared enough. But from this pre-planning we were able to roll with the punches and create compelling narratives, the true reflection of what happens during wild experimentation.