Plastic Wax Case Study

Plastic Wax has been producing and creating unparalleled animation for the game and film industries for more than 20 years. Their incredibly talented team of over 130 artists use the latest technology in a state-of-the-art motion capture facility to produce award-winning work for their clients.

Client

Plastic Wax

Team

James Kouzinas | Director, Brand Strategist, Designer, UI/UX

Bec Jones | Brand Strategist

Eva Kowalski | Social Media and Campaign Consultant

Task

Define the brand strategy for Plastic Wax. This included defining the brand voice, determining the current position, competitor analysis, user research, and drafting a social media strategy and content calendar with sample posts.

Help the client address key challenges including, but not limited to:

Attracting top talent
Building relationships with an online community
Building a strong project pipeline
Boosting credibility

The Power of Brand

Nike, Tesla, Patagonia, Apple; These are brands that are so powerful, they’ll out-live their existence. “A brand is more than a name—it is the sum total of a consumer’s experiences with a recognizable product— and it is powerful.” (Investopedia).

The Competitive Landscape

To establish a solid base, we started with competitor analysis, focusing our attention on three impressive companies.

"to create GREAT WORK with GREAT PEOPLE”

Animal Logic

"At the heart of all great entertainment is a great story”

Elastic.TV

"We tell stories"

Blur Studios

Key Findings

Animal Logic is the category leader in social, posting the most content and maintaining a consistent schedule.
The audience is male-oriented with the ages ranging between 25-35.
The content posted is similar amongst all of the competitors.
Industry secrets appear to be guarded, with no one showing ‘behind the scenes’ creative work.

Opportunities

Our competitor analysis unearthed several opportunities for Plastic Wax to pursue.

Consistently post content.
Interact with your audience.
The content posted by all of the competitors is similar, so change it up
Showcase behind the scenes work.
Target niche’s within the industry (women/next gen of up and coming talent).
Publish thought-pieces on how to drive the industry forward and what’s important to Plastic Wax.

Some of the ideas we presented regarding the above opportunities will be detailed later in this case study.

Trajectories, Audience Research and Personas

We sought to understand the industry’s talent and consumers, as their needs, desires, and goals helped guide content creation for both Plastic Wax’s Social Media and Website content.

Before commencing user interviews, we explored industry trajectories. We concluded there are four defining trajectories that are impacting the future of the animation and visual effects industry — We used our interviews to understand what these trajectories mean to each audience.

Trajectories

Technology (Realtime Animation)

Animation Production pipeline improvements.

Realism

Facial capture and rendering abilities.

COVID-19

Impacting workplace.

Consumer expectations

Consumers are engaging strongly
with quality productions that integrate more VFX and Animation
culture and project start dates.

Takeaways

Realtime Animation is the future. It saves time and money, and provides directors with greater flexibility and control.

Quality is what separates the best from the best. Facial details, lighting, and scene realism is becoming very advanced and studios that bring their own creative style and uniqueness to projects are in demand by top production
houses.

Consumers are engaging in high-definition visual experiences and they now expect high-quality products. They are also consuming VFX and Animation content on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok.

COVID-19 is impacting workplaces, however, remote work is broadly accepted by employees.

Changing Behaviours

How people perceive the Plastic Wax brand

FROM

Brand Archetype

The Creator archetype is a natural fit for Plastic Wax. Their use of Unreal Engine is truly unique and as they continue to break new ground with this technology, their audience will connect with their work. This, above all, will guide their outward digital marketing strategy.

Desires

Fears

Expressing Creator Characteristics

— Inspire your audience through original work.
— Be unapologetic in your creative expression.
— Break the rules.
— Leverage powerful visuals.
— Be collaborative.

Brand Positioning and Story

Taking into consideration all of our findings, we wanted to ensure Plastic Wax’s positioning is unique.

Plastic Wax’s superpowers are quality, detail, and real-time animation. These ingredients allow them to produce unique work that pushes their creative boundaries and brings stories to life.

Strategy on a Page

To pull everything together, we developed a ‘Strategy on a page’.

Ultimately, Plastic Wax is seeking to revolutionize the animation industry through real-time animation.

Social

Our next phase of work revolved around Plastic Wax’s social media presence. Our thesis was that if Plastic Wax could leverage the right platform with the right content, they’d be able to build meaningful relationships with their audience, and in doing so, attract top talent.

Overarching Strategy

Our strategy sought to create an online presence that builds credibility and helps Plastic Wax connect with their audience.

Key elements included the following:

Content Ideas

We presented several campaign ideas centered around helping Plastic Wax unleash its creativity.

Frontier Opportunities

Part of our content strategy also saw us develop ‘Frontier Opportunities’ — on the edge strategy ideas that would significantly elevate the Plastic Wax brand.

Managment

Content marketing can sometimes feel like a burden. Often, it requires volume output which turns many companies off, however; by being organized, and using the right tools, a sophisticated content strategy can be executed.

To help Plastic Wax execute our ideas, we drew up a plan and included software that could be utilized to assist with management.

Visit Plastic Wax

Quality is everything

Website