Bridge Studio: AEM
Bridge Studio produces more than 400 content campaigns a year for clients in The Times & Sunday Times, The Sun & Fabulous Magazine, talkSPORT, talkRADIO, Virgin Radio, Times Radio and all social channels. It produces content in digital, video, print, radio, broadcast, social media and all live event spaces.
-
How can Bridge Studio – the largest and most successful media-owned content studio in the UK – deliver over 400 campaigns a year while maintaining the highest possible creative standards?
-
To remain platform agnostic we focused our attention on our audiences – who they were, where we could engage them, and most importantly how they feel. Understand that and we could increase our effectiveness at engaging their interest.
-
Using a suite of proprietary and 3rd party data tools we could gain insights into our audiences quickly and consistently, giving our creative teams the freedom to deliver best-in-class big ideas.
Content and advertising that harness our emotions are much more effective than rational campaigns.
At Bridge Studio we put the power of emotion at the heart of our planning process – ensuring we make campaigns for our clients that not only connect with valuable audiences, but also change how they feel about each brand. And then we deliver a return, every time.
We call this the AEM process.
‘Emotion is the highest form of interaction’
– Richard Huntington, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of Saatchi & Saatchi
We harnessed traditional planning tools like PAMCo, RAJAR and Comscore, and added first party data from The Times and the Sun, and other proprietary tools such as Engagement Labs’ ‘Word of Mouth’ database, the AI-driven IBM Watson tools, and Storyful Social DNA, a tool that monitors emerging trends across the entire social web.
This informs our ‘Strategic Framework’ – actionable insights that inspire our creative teams to develop bold, innovative new ideas.
We know emotional marketing is important. A 15 year study by INSEAD concluded that over a three-year period, emotional advertising is over twice as effective at generating a return on investment.
But how do you know which emotional ‘levers’ to pull? Working with Unruly, the video advertising distributor, we have real tangible data that can ensure we harness the right emotional approach with our content. Unruly Pulse is a proprietary data engine that uses AI-controlled facial recognition software that, over a 15-year period, has monitored over 850,000 video responses based on over 2 billion data points. This is backed up by a traditional survey to ensure we have a robust, quantifiable source of data to know which emotions best engage different demographics.
We know, for example, that 35-54 housewives with children value content that makes them feel warm, positive, and happy. 35-54 fathers, however, look for knowledge and humour from their content. This additional layer of insight and understanding helps us to shape our creative approach for clients.
– for the first time we can quantify emotional marketing with billions of data inputs that help us understand what emotions work best
We pride ourselves on making brilliant stuff that works – and have therefore embedded a commitment to understanding the right motivations for our audiences in our planning process.
Together this process create a platform for outstanding, award-winning work. There is a selection below, or you can check out my Creative Direction page for more details.
‘Bridge Studio always gives us bold, fresh, ambitious ideas – but they’re rooted in data that proves they will work. And then they do. It’s incredible.’
– Jane Fenn, Head of Brand Communications, Kia Motors UK
-
Constant evolution
Managing Bridge Studio during a time of constant change both in the industry and society as a whole has been one of the biggest challenges of my career. From pivoting towards a mobile, digital-first and video landscape to helping a fifty-strong team of diverse creatives through the COVID pandemic has been an enormous task. That we have done it so successfully – growing year on year without fail – is a testament to the qualities of the Studio team.
-
Heroes
Studio is staffed by exceptional people. It has been a pleasure and privilege to watch them grow and develop new skills over time – and to see them recognised by the industry with awards, media profiles and plaudits from clients and agencies alike.
-
More than wealth
Bridge Studio has almost tripled its revenues in five years while maximising profitability. But it’s done more than that. In the studio we have created a culture where collaboration is key, where mutual respect and a commitment to diversity and inclusion are celebrated and where people lead a better quality of life rather than being slaves to an inorganic, rigid work system.
-
Legacy
Bridge Studio has been phenomenally successful. But the flexibility of its processes like AEM, and the calibre of the talented people working in it – from project managers to designers, from subs to picture desk – that ensure it has a bright and prosperous future, whatever the world throws at it next.