Creative England Launches First Brand Marketing Campaign, Giving a Leg Up to Creative and Tech Leaders

Nonprofit company Creative England, an accelerator for startups and ideas in the industries of tech, TV and film, and games, recently launched its very first brand marketing campaign, shining a light on the creative and tech leaders it champions, who got the chance to tell their inspirational stories via user-generated content. Creative England was a big supporter of 3D content generation startup Whispering Gibbon; we wrote about their work in freezing and 3D printing video game action a few months ago.

The #EnglandIsCreative campaign gives some of Creative England’s brightest innovators a platform to speak directly to the next generation of creative talent, and tell the story of how their own businesses were able to grow, through the use of four films produced for the campaign. The first is a brand film to tell the Creative England story, which was released as a digital ad earlier this month, and then a film each to sum up the three sectors it works in: tech and digital, TV and film, and gaming. They hope the films, curated and edited by collaborative storytelling platform Seenit, will inspire even more new creative and tech-savvy entrepreneurs to come forward and start their own journey.

#EnglandIsCreative features content from tech contributors (including Simon Riley of MakerClub), generated by filmmakers (including Simon Bird, who starred in “The Inbetweeners”), and from the gaming industry (including Alex Rose of Alex Rose Games).

MakerClub, named one of the 50 most creative companies in the UK by CreativeEngland, creates products and services to get young people excited about design, coding, and hardware development, and engaged in hands-on experiences that turn complex ideas into creative challenges. Their inventive platform includes 3D printed robotics, their own Bluetooth enabled microcontroller, and a browser-based learning tool connected to a mobile app.

Since Creative England’s investment of £50,000 in February of 2016, MakerClub has expanded, and they are working to make their kits compatible with schools in the UK. They were also accepted into FIELD, a workspace for startups that create physical products. Princess Anne even visited and shook hands with their 3D printed arm, which was built by a ten-year-old! Check out the #EnglandIsCreative Tech and Digital campaign film, which also features Whispering Gibbon, here.

Simon Bird’s first directorial credit was the short film “Ernestine & Kit,” which received 50% of its funding from Creative England’s Emerging Talent Fund. Creative England is now working with Bird on his debut feature, an adaptation of the graphic novel “Days of the Bagnold Summer.”

Alex Rose was successfully accepted into Tokyo Game Show with his Super Rude Bear Resurrection game, where the president of Sony Worldwide publicly endorsed it. After he returned to the UK, he approached Creative England and was accepted for a £50,000 investment in their Gameslab Campus Scheme 2015, and was later selected as one of Creative England’s CE50 2015, its annual selection of the top 50 creative companies in the UK.

The campaign is also honoring Creative England’s many successes:

• £27.7 million invested into 1,066 businesses and creative talent
• £25,357,409 leveraged in private funding
• 560 jobs created
• 37 games created
• 205 feature films developed
• 80 industry awards won

Other campaign supporters featured include MediaCom, BBC Click, and former Culture Minister Ed Vaizey. Manchester-based MAGNAFI, another successful film content company supported by Creative England, developed the creative content on the campaign, and also produced the content distribution strategy across paid and earned media.