FREE NOW
Local Heroes
Mini-doc series to spotlight why Free Now's ‘Local Heroes’ are worth a visit (via their taxis, of course)
Sometimes a project comes in, and it just clicks. A client has a clear vision and a clear brief which perfectly aligns with the videos that we get a kick out of making. One of those projects was our recent campaign with Free Now.
If you’re a die-hard Uber fan, you may be forgiven for not knowing who Free Now are. But with over 50 million users, they are the largest taxi app in Europe… just not in the UK. They have a pretty strong presence here, but with more apps popping up each year, there is a lot of competition. So, to set them out from the rest Free Now wanted a campaign that showed off who they are and what they’re about — supporting local businesses.
In collaboration with Time Out, Free Now was running a campaign that put the spotlight on eccentric London institutions and why people should visit them (preferably by using their app). They dropped us a line to see if we’d be interested in producing a series of accompanying documentaries that could capture the essence of these ‘Local Heroes’.
Real stories? Real people? Cool venues? When the email came in, you could see Josh light up.
The approach
They knew who they wanted to feature. We knew how we wanted to feature them.
We sent over ideas. They said yes.
Simple, easy, smooth — just how we like it.
Armed with an ideal shot list, a rough interview structure and a whole load of enthusiasm we were ready to hit the road. The series was putting Free Now at the centre of London exploration, so thanks to some generous voucher codes we decided to live the brand message and transform one of their taxis into our own production studio on wheels.
5 venues. 5 days. Lots of great food.
Our goal was to create a one minute snapshot. A visual postcard that gives you an authentic sense of what each venue is about and leaves you wanting to know more. Our time with each owner was also pretty limited (they do have a business to run after all), so it meant that once we arrived we had to think quickly on our feet.
We’re all about embracing the idea of finding your story within your scene and have found that a looser structure helps capture the genuine moments we were after. Once we’d had a quick scope of the venue and lit the scene, it was then a case of finding the shots within it.
When you produce a series of videos, you're supposed not to have favourites. They’re like your children. You say you love them all equally, but secretly deep down you know that there is one you just like that little bit more.
For us, that was Le Chevalier. How much that is influenced by the taste test after the shoot being some of the best food we’ve had is yet to be determined, but what we do know is that we came out with so much footage it was tough to cut it down to less than a minute. Needless to say, that is a great problem to have.
The result? Free Now was happy. Thrilled in fact.
Great project. Great crew. Great stuff. 👌
Working with the team on this project has been an absolute pleasure! From brief to delivery everything has been so professional and well executed. Thanks to Storm & Shelter we’ve ended up with 5 really high quality pieces of content to help take our brand to the next level.
