We spent the summer talking to Telly Award winners from around the globe, hearing from award-winning companies that create inspiring video and television work from all four corners of the world.

First up is Jack Nimble – a creative production agency based in Australia focused on creating fast-craft social media content including live action, stop-motion, GIFs, and animation. Jack Nimble is a team of short-form storytellers that develop ideas that are made for social, and create content with the platforms front of mind.

Here’s what we asked them!

How does your creative process change when you’re creating content to be used in a specific social media context, such as Instagram Stories?

At Jack Nimble we think social first with all of our ideas. But each channel certainly requires its own approach. Just like radio and television are very different broadcast channels, Facebook and Instagram are very different social media channels.
With Instagram Stories, one of the first things we think about is how we’re going to use the vertical frame. There’s nothing worse than seeing a landscape video in an Instagram Story. We shot our ‘Gumtree – Tap to Furnish’ campaign in a way where we could style the rooms perfectly to work in that 9:16 frame, prioritizing a sense of height. We also framed the shots so that we left ample space for the ‘Swipe Up’ button at the bottom of the screen and the profile information at the top of the screen. It’s the little things like this that need to be thought about in advance to give the content the best chance at being successful.
Another aspect we always consider is the way in which people use the platforms. With Instagram Stories, users can tap the screen to see the next story, so we wanted to ’gamify’ this experience for users in our ‘Gumtree – Tap to Furnish’ campaign. We wanted to make people feel like when they tapped the Story they were pressing a button that activated the stop motion. So, our first Story encouraged users to ‘Tap to Furnish’. When pressed, it skipped to the next Story, which showed the ’tap’ button being pressed and the stop motion coming to life.

How do you feel that intertwining elements of entertainment or humor affect consumerism, such as with your eBay video?

Comedy is king on social media. Think about the types of content you tag your friends in — it’s usually stuff that makes you laugh. So if a brand can make consumers laugh with their content, they’re making a strong connection.
But making people laugh is easier said than done. Comedy is very subjective. You’re always going to get haters. But as long as you’re factoring in your target audience and finding an insight that’s relatable to them, you’ll generally come out on top.
With our ‘eBay realistic furniture ads’, we landed on an insight that spoke to millennial females. Basically, we noticed that almost every furniture ad featured women wearing ball gowns and heels. When in reality, no one looks that glamorous when sitting on their couch at home. And this is what struck a chord with our target audience. By pointing that out and having a laugh at it, eBay made a connection with its target audience.

Who else in Australia is creating work that inspires you?

There’s a lot of cool work coming out of Australia. We’re fortunate to have a business where we can regularly collaborate with all kinds of creators from photographers, to DOPs, directors, comedians, illustrators, to stop motion animators. Here are a few that come to mind:

@mattcherub – an incredible photographer, who’s regularly traveling across the globe for tourism bodies. We travelled across Australia with him to shoot a bunch of content for Virgin Australia.

@yelldesign – an amazing papercraft stop motion studio out of Melbourne that we’ve been lucky enough to work with a few times.

@imprettyricky – an awesome director living in Melbourne. He’s made a visual effects videos that have gone viral across the globe. We were lucky enough to work with him on a lightning strike trick video that went viral in Australia for a client of ours. He’s currently in pre-production on a feature film called Punk starring Cara Delevingne and Vince Staples.

@betootaadvocate – these guys are hilarious and an absolute comedy staple in Australia. We’re yet to work with them, but they’re a constant source of inspiration for us with all of our comedy work.

Andrew Goldsmith – stop motion genius based in Melbourne. He’s so good he’s even been shortlisted for an Oscar with his short film ‘Lost & Found’.

What do these wins mean for you and your team?

These are our first awards wins for Jack Nimble so they’ll always mean a lot to us. It’s great to be recognized for the hard work that went into these campaigns and our constant strive to make engaging social-first content!