OUR CREATIVE PHILOSOPHY
We specialise in identifying and telling powerful stories to open hearts, minds and wallets. Over the years, we have developed systems and processes for understanding audiences, brainstorming ideas, testing possible routes and creating the final outputs.
Our approach has five main pillars:
Audience driven.
Throughout the entire process, we are guided by one question: “Who do you want to do what?” We use demographic and psychographic profiles of the audience segment(s) to understand what emotional beats are needed to lead them to complete the campaign’s action(s). This single-minded focus on influencing actions to meet the campaign goals ensures that all people, processes, and productions are pulling in the same direction.
Research led.
Depending on the scale of the project, we start our work by turning to academic and industry literature. This can include understanding the sector, the audience, and key motivators. In the gap between academic findings and industry common practice, we often discover creative routes to test.
Iterative story development.
Once we have a clear sense of our audience and of possible routes to influencing their behaviours/beliefs, we move on to the testing phase. We develop possible ‘Story Approaches’ which the academic or industry literature suggests should work. For each viable route, we produce example creatives and test with representatives of the target audience(s), using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Powerful creative.
Now that we have discovered the most effective Story Approach, we develop a specific creative direction for the final campaign. We believe that audiences need to be attracted via curiosity gaps, taken on a narrative journey, led to form an emotional connection, and to envisage a better version of themselves via the campaign’s call to action.
Capacity building.
We have a long history of teaching and training, both professional storytelling training and linked to specific campaigns. Our aim is to empower and inspire people across the organisation to deliver the current campaign and expand upon it.
Each project is different and so this model is adapted to create a bespoke solution for each brief. Some projects only require some of the pillars listed above.
“ Working with Catsnake was a pleasure from start to finish. We came to them with a complicated brief – to explain restorative justice, a technically complex and largely unknown process by which victims of crime can meet their offender to explain the impact of the crime. Catsnake immediately understood the challenges of reaching the target audience and worked with us to create a narrative which spoke directly to the emotional and psychological needs of victims. They listened carefully to our requirements, many of which were entirely at odds with creating an impactful film, and still came up with a concept which worked brilliantly. In addition to their total professionalism, Catsnake’s strength lies in their ability to engage audiences with intelligent, highly crafted storytelling. We learned a lot from working with them, and hope to do so again in future .”
Safi Schlicht – Head of Communications, Policy and Stakeholder Engagement