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.
- Brand Strategy
- Social Media Strategy
- Campaign Ideation
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”
"At the heart of all great entertainment is a great story”
"We tell stories"
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
Animation Production pipeline improvements.
Facial capture and rendering abilities.
Impacting workplace.
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
- Plastic Wax is just another animation studio.
- Let’s bring a firm in for some work; Plastic Wax will do.
- I’m looking for a job with a studio. Plastic Wax would be pretty fun.
- Plastic Wax post the same content as their competition.
TO
- Plastic Wax is THE animation studio.
- We need Plastic Wax on this project. They produce the best work.
- I want to work at Plastic Wax. Their work is amazing.
- Have you seen Plastic Wax’s socials? They do some cool and creative stuff.
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
- Originality
- Visionaries
- Imaginative
- Inventors
Fears
- Copycats
- Familiarity
- Mediocrity
- Stagnation
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:
- Goals
- Persona
- Voice
- Jargon
- Content
- Management
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.
