Come December our thoughts turn to the festive season. In our multimedia world, Christmas cards are no longer simply a card in an envelope. Our brief was to create a Christmas card that stood out and gave the recipient a frivolous moment of abstract fun. The idea needed to work universally, bridging cultures and beliefs. It needed to make an impact and raise a smile. The making of the Christmas card also needed to be time for the team to be together, creating a fun and celebratory season’s greeting that was innovative and refreshingly different.

Our Christmas card came to life in the form of silent movies. Playing on the idea of ‘Cirque Du Soleil’ we created the ‘Cirque Du Silly’ and the movies depicted our teams showing off their incredible acrobatic skills as we created festive shapes and scenes. We needed to shoot from a ‘bird’s eye view’ to create the acrobatic optical illusion and the art direction and choreography was a key challenge. Scenes needed to involve our teams in both London and New York so another key challenge was how to logistically incorporate our teams from both sides of the Atlantic.

We sent out a series of festive emails to selected contacts. Each email revealed a different movie clip and took people to a specially created page on our website. Over the course of a week a new window was opened each day thereby revealing a new acrobatic advent scene. Following the Christmas card there was an average of 47% new visits to our website which is brilliant. It led directly to conversations that instigated new business proposals, refreshed relationships with several dormant clients and generally filled our current clients with festive goodwill for us!

Inspired by the early days of the silent movies, we wanted to create our own tongue-in-cheek version of the Cirque du Soleil, turning ourselves into mock acrobats. Every move was choreographed and each scene shot from a bird’s eye perspective to achieve the optical illusion, making our teams appear highly talented in the acrobatic arts, while keeping the naïve and surreal humour alive by clearly showing that our dexterity was merely a trick of the camera. When editing the movies, we took inspiration from old fashioned acrobatic and circus acts with music and copy that celebrated our feats with exaggerated veneration.