01 March 2018
Tim Piper
Bachelor of Design, Visual Communication
Founder Partner, Piro (www.wearepiro.com)
You have probably heard of Dove’s Self-Esteem campaign to change our perception of beauty. The campaign’s fame is largely thanks to the Dove Evolution video that features a model who is primped and polished with makeup, photographed and then altered in photoshop.
What you may not know is that the video was the brainchild of award-winning creative director and UniSA graduate Tim Piper. On release it immediately went viral and won Tim and his employer at the time two Cannes Lion Grand Prix awards, the gold standard for media advertising.
We caught up with Tim recently while he was in Adelaide taking a break from his busy life in New York where he co-runs creative agency and production company Piro.
“I started my career in Adelaide with a graphic design collective that was set up with some fellow graduates, then I heard the local advertising industry produced commercials in Adelaide and I was hooked,” said Tim.
“I ended up at a small firm directing a commercial for RAA without realising that I was the director” he laughs. “We didn’t have a huge budget so we invested in a cinematographer (to shoot on 35mm film) and I would scribble thumbnail boards for each of the scenes, then discuss with the cinematographer how to tell the story. I didn’t know at the time that I was essentially acting as the director.”
Tim quickly made a name for himself, winning local awards for TV categories. Soon he had a portfolio of work that allowed him to establish himself as associate creative director in Toronto, Canada.
It was there he won the two Grand Prix Lions for Dove Evolution amongst other awards for various clients.
“After this big win I realised how frustrating the industry could be. Despite this ad doing so well I didn’t get the next stage of the creative work for Dove’s campaign.
“They gave the next film job to a top European director and we had to scramble enough money to put together our next pitch, Dove Onslaught - which they ended up using instead of the expensive European production.”
But after his experience on the campaign, Tim had started to explore a business model that he sensed could turn the traditional advertising method on its head.
“The concept we’ve been working on at Piro is about creating marketing that is as engaging as the shows people watch or pay to see.
“In one case the entertainment industry has paid a license to show the marketing content. Meaning our client is getting paid for their marketing (and not the other way around). This is quite possible and should be a goal of marketers, but the infrastructure or business model is not apparent to brands right now.
“It’s a disruptive model. But it has to be, as I’ve learnt that in the advertising and media buying industry there is little to no incentive for creativity to thrive.
“If we can get brands to spend money intelligently within entertainment infrastructure, then we can do something really exciting. Certainly more effective than traditional, interruptive advertising and more typical branded entertainment efforts.”
Tim’s approach is embedded in discovering the specific cause or value that brands can align themselves to. Then the creative team works with the brand to come up with a concept that is very different to the strategically placed Coke can in your favourite television series.
“What’s needed is really an entirely new industry - because the entertainment business is so different from the marketing and advertising business. They don’t talk the same language. With Piro I bring marketing and advertising experience and my partner Daniel Rosenberg brings his 20 plus years of experience producing film and TV so we can tackle this divide.”
Shortly after teaming up, Piro attracted the attention of Chipotle - a major fast food chain in the US.
“We were really lucky that Chipotle wanted to work with us. They’re all about ethical farming, sustainability and getting people to realise that fast food can be kind to animals, people and the environment.
“They’ve had a hard time with some of the big industrial farming organisations in the US. So we sat down with Chipotle and came up with a four part Hulu series called Farmed and Dangerous.
“It was a satire on the industrial food lobbyists. Chipotle invested their marketing budget in a creative team with an Oscar nominated screenwriter to help us develop the script and some great actors. It ended up becoming one of the most successful shows on Hulu.”
The show was supported with branded and non-branded content including a Huffington Post portal that became that sites most successful social impact section.
Shortly after the series aired, a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found the show to be the most persuasive piece of social awareness entertainment released in the last few years. It was the show most likely to cause viewers to change their habits – beating several acclaimed activist documentaries, such as ‘Food Inc’, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and other social cause blockbusters.
Most importantly, Tim and Daniel proved their model works. The numbers were assessed both in-house and by an independent party, showing a conservative 800% return on investment. It was an incredible result for a fresh, bold approach.
Now Tim and the Piro team are working to engage more brands in this new take on branded entertainment. One that is straight-forward about the brand as a culturally relevant part of society.
“When people think negatively about branded entertainment I ask them to picture this scenario. Imagine a sports goods company says to a studio that they will help make their film, but only if they have a leading major star scream his love for their product over and over and that the product should also be a character in the film.
“That’s the most absurd thing you’ve ever heard right? Well, then picture Cast Away with Tom Hanks and his relationship with a Volleyball brand - Wilson, his only friend on the island.
“People assume that this type of marketing is expensive but it’s really not when you compare it to traditional marketing expenditure.
“Brands don’t have to make a creative endeavour worse, they can enhance it. Find something important to align the brand with and let creative people come up with something new and magical that’s able to deliver brand awareness that’s on strategy.”
For more information about Tim’s work visit www.wearepiro.com.
