England & Wales Cricket Board
The Birth of a Partnership
In 2020, we were appointed as the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB’s) video production partner with a brief for change and digital transformation.
A shared pivotal moment. Allowing us to bring our creative synergy whilst aligning on the ambition to take cricket to new audiences
and uncharted territories. Our continued partnership is still going strong today, continuing to push the sport into new digital spaces & environments.
A meaningful partnership built on cooperation that provided us an opportunity to grow and expand our in-house team into a core retained model. Our versatile team of content creators were briefed to deliver multi-channel content across video, animation, graphics and design. In turn, expanding the skillset available on ECB’s side whilst working as an extension of their small, in-house team.
Adopting an always-on approach to team structure and workflow we had to rigorously plan across all peaks and troughs throughout the cricket season, whilst using the off-peak months to work across creative ideas and design templates.
Covering all aspects of output from grassroots clubs and participation through to the England Men’s and Women’s senior teams. Our remit was to create, produce and deliver a broad range of social edits, sponsored documentaries, talent-led series and tour content to provide both bespoke and always-on channel content.
A MEANINGFUL PARTNERSHIP BUILT ON COOPERATION
EVERY
ASPECT
COVERED.
As their video production partner, we cover all aspects of the content wheel. Bringing our economical creative experience to make sure all ideas are powered by strategic thinking to ensure the content is fit for platform and fit for purpose.
The results have seen us produce creative ideas driven by audience insight, delivering client value across ECB’s company-wide objectives.
Dealing with a pandemic
The ECB were one of the governing bodies that were allowed to play professional sport behind closed doors. This was at the height of the pandemic, when offices were closed and we weren't allowed to shoot anything but our agile approach allowed us to work from home efficiently.
By clipping live streams, we created content as it happened quickly turning around briefs that went out during each series. We then looked to expand on this by working closely with staff within the bubble. We created edits which featured the presentation of significant milestones for England Men’s and Women’s cricketers. This reactive content consisted of ‘in-bubble’ footage capturing team camaraderie, skills and personality traits. All edits were produced for ECB platforms, including cut-downs for social channels, plus some partnership content for their brand sponsors such as Royal London.
DELIVERING CLIENT VALUE ACROSS ECB'S COMPANY WIDE OBJECTIVES
Dream Big Desi Women
Dream Big Desi women is part of the grassroots ECB City Programme setting out to inspire 2,000 South Asian activators to Dream Big through cricket and to get involved in coaching. Our brief was to produce video content with the aim of inspiring more women to get involved and showcase the programme.
While Covid-19 majorly disrupted the year’s cricketing calendar, ECB shared with us stories of activators who were finding new ways to keep cricket alive. We knew we couldn’t go out and film but we drafted a call-out asking the community to submit their own user-generated content to capture the cooking classes, yoga sessions, chai x chats and volunteering that was taking place across the country.
We paired UGC with dynamic kinetic typography to celebrate how these women were keeping their cricket community going. Resulting in a film that showcased the great work of the activators and inspired others to sign up.
TRYING TO BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE, IS ALL YOU CAN CONTROL.
As part of the ECB’s partnership with NatWest, we directed and produced a series of documentary films aimed at telling personal and emotive stories from the best players around, how cricket, as a sport has the power to change and impact lives. We titled this 'No Boundaries'.
One of the episodes, “The Making of Jack Leach” saw Jack open up about his own mental health struggles to tell the untold story of how he rose to the top as one of England men’s best spin bowlers. Alongside the full piece, we sweated the assets, meaning the series had the necessary content to reach wide audiences.
Venue Big Screens
The ECB had undergone a complete brand refresh that we had already implemented through its social channels. This left in-stadia screens looking fairly dated. So, we were tasked with refreshing the big screens in-stadia content.
Our big screen content was made to feature on stadium screens all across the country during England matches. As a project, this required one of the highest number of deliverables to date, with a combination of content as follows:
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Cricket animations
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Static graphic templates
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In-crowd templates
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Inspirational VTs
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COVID-19 messages
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Holding logo loops
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Player-specific animations
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Interactive cams
IN OVER 8
NATIONAL
STADIUMS
HUNDREDS OF TOURNAMENT SPECIFIC
ASSETS
WHO DOESN'T LOVE GETTING THEIR HANDS ON A BRAND NEW STASH?
But what’s better than free stash? Probably facing an over from some of England’s great bowlers.
To launch ECB’s multi-year partnership with Cinch, as the new principal partner to England Cricket, we were tasked with producing a content series that helps establish this new partnership and highlight Cinch’s support for cricket at all levels, with the shared determination to make cricket a game for everyone.
In the lead up to upcoming series we developed a series that saw us surprise fans across three episodes, seeing England players embark on a car ride across their hometowns to deliver rewards to some of England’s biggest and youngest fans in person.
The final series saw us produce five to six minute hero episodes that went live on both England Cricket’s and Cinch’s digital and social channels, as well as a suite of campaign assets that teased out each of the three episodes. Episode two captures an amazing reaction from a family of young cricket fans who were surprised by their heroes Kate Cross and Lauren Winfield-Hill.
The Ultimate Test
Test cricket. It’s a game of skill, strength, precision, and patience. For the first time ever for ECB, we wanted to break down the four key elements of Test cricket to create a hero documentary series that demonstrates the extraordinary journey that players go through and the human experiences that go with it.
To launch the 2021 overseas Ashes series for the England Men’s Test team, we pitched the idea of creating an online video series that delved into the on and off field processes and moments that make a Test cricketer.
With an hour to interview five key players, we were tasked with creating an in-depth, emotive and inspiring series that could live as four 10 minute episodes. Bringing in series archive across England’s Test cricket history we explored the battle, the grind, the extraordinary to ask the players ‘”is it all worth it?”
