Untold Fable: The Tech-Led Business Designed to Fix a Broken Production Model
“Three years ago, I felt a shift in production,” says Kate Tancred.
Frustrations that had been gathering weight for years became preoccupations. After 10 years working at the community-led video content platform she’d co-founded, The Smalls, the need for something new to answer brands’ needs was becoming undeniable.
“Brands were looking for production companies to work with. And that was obviously born out of the fact that agencies were doing a great job of the television commercials. But there is now a huge array of production needed for content that lives online,” she says. “The TVC was working hard for the brand, but there was a whole sales funnel that now needed to be filled with different content that the traditional process of agency to production company couldn't service.”
That is one of several converging trends that led to the birth of her new company Untold Fable – a solution that could create tangible change for brands, talent and society. Part production company, part tech platform, part talent agency, the platform connects brands with a curated network of diverse filmmaking talent – over 3,000 creators in 40 countries to date.
The idea fleshed out, Kate partnered with AnalogFolk Group (AFG) to create the technology-powered platform. At The Smalls, she had worked with clients directly as well as agencies and publishers, and work was pretty evenly split between those three. But when she decided to start something new, the space for a company focusing only on direct-to-brand work felt most exciting – making all the content for points of the sales funnel that many agencies (as well as more traditional production companies) didn’t have the inclination to make. “I knew that working as part of AnalogFolk Group, given their amazing reputation and also having access to some of their talent from a creative and strategic perspective, gave me an incredible opportunity to build a production company that went direct to client,” she says. “But we could, if we needed to, access some of that magic from them, if the briefs required it. It was assessing the industry, and then assessing who I was going into business with and what advantages I could have, knowing what they provided.”
Her experience made her uniquely suited to building something in this space. “I specialise in building part tech, part production companies,” says Kate. “It's quite niche and unique. Having that dual experience, I really wanted to build a new piece of technology. I loved from my time at The Smalls the decentralised network of filmmaking talent and I saw the power of that. There are some real limitations to having a roster of filmmakers as a production company. You have to keep them happy. You are limited to their capabilities. And often you get defined by them as well as an organisation. And I loved having the flexibility when it came to skill set and interpretation of briefs and locations. Having filmmakers all around the world is such an advantage. Particularly when you have huge global requirements on most of your clients.”
The human structure of the new company would be composed of a production team, from production company backgrounds, and a client services team, drawn from agency backgrounds. “That's intentional so that we provide our clients the service and the information that they need throughout the process. But we behave like a production company in the sense that we are nimble, quick and production-first. So we won't try and take you down a different route. We are there to make content and assets. But there's that guarantee from us that you will have excellent service and be helped throughout the process.”
Working direct to brands, many of Untold Fable’s clients have strong in-house creative resources. “What they're looking for is a production solution with service, but also a little bit of in-house creative, but coming from a content perspective.” As a result, many of the creatives with Untold Fable are content creators with editorial backgrounds.” They might be screenwriters or directors, but they specialise in this editorial content world rather than campaign-driven content,” says Kate. “So that's how we delineate between our creatives versus AnalogFolk's creatives.”
Badoo’s ‘Let’s Fix Dating’ campaign illustrates this shape of project well. Made for the European market and rolled out in 10 markets across TVC and social, Untold Fable collaborated closely with the brand’s in-house creative team, using real dating app behavioural insights to develop scenarios and scripts, then led every stage of production, shooting in multiple locations in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Kate founded Untold Fable in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, during the miserable winter of 2020/2021, so the covid factor is impossible to ignore. It was a time of unprecedented-ness in all things. And the world of production was finding its feet in the previously eccentric practices of remote shooting. Companies were assembling crews in the places they needed to shoot. And brands were gaining confidence in trusting specialists to make their video content without having to fly marketing executives to every location. The shifts were hard to ignore. And the sustainability gains were glaringly obvious.
Untold Fable’s first campaign was for TikTok, shooting in five different locations, all remote from the central team. Kate found comfort in this success. “The world has got more accepting of that production solution,” she realised. “Which I think is awesome – great for the environment and you get to do more with less, from a budget perspective.”
Almost three years on, Untold Fable often works with Meta, which has high expectations when it comes to production’s carbon footprint. One of the reasons that they chose the company as partners was its adherence to AdGreen sustainable production practices. “We help to source crews for them around the world, not fly talent around,” says Kate. "We come to it with the lens of making the greenest production possible. The nature of our model really helps to facilitate that. We have processes internally which we combined with a global network that enables us to commission local talent in over 40 countries"
As one of Nike’s key content partners, regularly making in-app videos for Nike Run Club, a global footprint is crucial. “We are always shooting all around the world for them,” says Kate. The week we speak, Untold Fable has just shot in both Germany and France for the sports brand.
‘Run For Now’ saw Untold Fable lead every stage of creative development and production, delivering videos, articles and stills to Nike. The ‘Play New Community Challenge’ asked members to run one mile together – in whichever way they wanted. Untold Fable was challenged with creating impactful content to get them going. To connect with Nike’s gen z audience, that content series was led by TikTok and Instagram influencers revealing how they bring the ‘Play New’ spirit to their run – from dancing, to music to turning it into a computer game. Their ideas were brought to life in the app and on social media in colourful style by Seoul-based illustrator, Ya Wen.
Kate designed Untold Fable to deliver the future she wants to see, where diversity in production is the norm, not the exception. The technology behind the platform allows Untold Fable to connect brands with new perspectives and voices, and through increased transparency and richer data, is able to support them on their own diversity journeys. That’s why its global network of production talent is proudly open to all. It’s how Untold Fable can connect brands with diverse talent, experiences and skillsets, anywhere. And it’s how the company is able to create meaningful content that truly reflects its world.
Kate had already seen some of this power in the best work she’d played a role in, but relished the chance to put her values at the heart of a new production model. “If I had to reimagine the whole thing and build the technology, what would I do,” she asked herself. “I had witnessed the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion. And I'd done my best to help that. We had film festivals that were dedicated to 50/50 gender inclusivity, for example. I was really passionate about that. So I saw the opportunity, from a technology perspective, to really provide that.”
Taking away the barriers of geography and fighting to get on a roster, technology could assemble diverse talent and offer transparency for clients who wanted to walk the walk on their values. “My aim was to build a piece of technology that gave clients a tool to live their DE&I goals,” says Kate. “Most clients now have quantified those goals, but they lack the tools to get there. So my aim was to build a piece of technology that helps them with that.”
The 3,000 filmmakers in the Untold Fable network provide DE&I data, from gender to nationality, sexual orientation, age, and some socio economic data points. “That's a major part of the decision-making process, because it often isn't.” Through that data, Untold Fable is also able to measure the DE&I credentials of the whole production process, from directors and talent to crew, post and the delivery. “We give our clients a report at the end of every project,” says Kate. “Often we compare it against the goals that we set out to achieve. So we will sit down with a client at the top of the project and really try and drill into that and work out what success looks like for them, and then use the technology and the filmmaking network that we've built to execute that.”
Some brands are genuinely demanding diversity early in the process of their content pipelines. “It really varies,” admits Kate, who’s heartened by brands like Diageo putting the work in. “They've spent a lot of time, money and so on trying to fix this. I feel like they've made it their mission, and you can really feel that. Sometimes brands have the impetus but not any of the processes or tools to bring it in. Doing things with DE&I in mind, when it comes to a production perspective, takes longer and costs more money. That sometimes isn't afforded in every opportunity if the client doesn't stipulate. So the control is with the clients.”
In the meantime, Untold Fable’s more transparent data model gives visibility to brands about how it’s delivering on its promises, at the very least “reminding people of the issue if it wasn't in their consciousness.”
On the qualitative side of things, the company is working on areas like naming conventions, how the company can be more inclusive on set and how it can train everyone before they get on set to be more inclusive.
All of these were key considerations when Untold Fable worked with femtech brand Elvie to create content to promote and explain its Trainer product – a marriage of hardware and software to help people strengthen their pelvic floors through gamification. “As a product, it had a broad, female audience,” says Kate. “Given the sensitivity of the subject, we wanted to create an inclusive set. So our creative director worked with their internal creative team. Then we went into finding the director, DOP and the crew. They wanted a female director, given the nature of the product. We over-indexed on the female crew because we wanted everyone to feel comfortable on set. We also created a really conducive set to that.”
That project served as a blueprint for a new way of Untold Fable to help its clients shift the needle on their diversity goals. Kate details it: “We saw it as an opportunity to create a behind-the-scenes video that discussed the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in production, and specifically around the qualitative inclusivity on set issue. It includes these harrowing stories from the crew on the day about how they'd been treated previously and where we’re at as an industry. You've got someone in the video raising the question around how one crew role is still called ‘best boy’. So there's a lot of qualitative aspects as well that are really key for what we're trying to address now, through the work that we do.
“Every brief can be a form of activism with our clients,” Kate reflects. Her company, born out of the flux of 2020, can’t spring back to the old forms of business that so many others are gravitating towards again three years on. With a global perspective, sustainability and diversity hard-wired into the structure of Untold Fable, its values and objectives are inseparable.
