WeRise's project for Age UK Lambeth's HandyFix service

WeRise - PRESS RELEASE

Our latest project for Age UK Lambeth inspired 13 young people to create a professional standard advert and marketing strategy in one week.

Working with professional coaches from the Advertising Industry, our team of 17 year olds came up with a brilliant marketing campaign for Handyfix, a new handyperson service from Age UK Lambeth. They shot a professional advert making use of the expertise of Brixton based coffee roasters Volcano coffee.

The team found that one of the barriers to using a handypersons service was a concern about the quality of the work. Having met Tina, one of Age UK Lambeth’s handypersons, they knew this was not an issue. So they came up with a campaign to associate Handyfix with experts  - “Leave it to the experts”.

On Tuesday the team went to Brixton to scout possible locations and experts and came across James Wise at Volcano coffee, a world champion coffee master who agreed to appear in the advert. Volcano coffee kindly agreed to let We Rise shoot the ad in their beautiful premises on Ferndale Road.

Graham Gardner, Chief Executive of Age UK Lambeth commissioned the project. He said

“We are totally delighted by what we’ve got. The advert looks great and you can see from everyone involved, the energy and the passion.”

Panos Balalas, Marketing and communications manager at Age UK Lambeth added

“Working with you guys was a great experience. You did an amazing, really professional job. It’s always really exciting to see young people get their hands on these kinds of things in the creative industries. I think this is going to give us a lead in making a professional campaign in the future”

Commenting on the final advert, Steve Robertson, Creative Director at Leo Burnett said

 “Brilliant! It looks great and delivers the message clearly. Seriously well done everyone. To get an idea nailed and shot in a week is amazing.”

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The advert

With clever use of photography, mood, graphics and sound the team made an advert that draws out James’s incredible knowledge about coffee, and uses humour to juxtapose it against Handyfix’s practical expertise.

As James waxes lyrical about coffee roasting a graphic suddenly breaks in saying, “Yes, but can you fix a shelf?”.  James responds, “Er, no..”

The words form a shelf that slides down and crashes. Then the words “Leave it to the experts” appear and the Handyfix logo drops down.

Graphics were key to making the ad work and the team come up with different ideas for how to animate graphics to communicate the idea of something needing to be fixed.

The team liked the idea that Handyfix supports its community by giving money back to the work of Age UK Lambeth so suggested a final message: “The only local handyperson service that give back to the community.”

The professionals

Ita Fitzgerald and Rod Main, a husband and wife team of Brixton based advertising Directors helped We Rise put the programme together. They brought together an amazing team of professionals drawing on the network they have built up over many years in the industry.

Professionals took the young team through an end-to-end process:

• understanding the brief and speaking to customers on Monday
• defining the marketing strategy and a creative concept on Tuesday,
• creating a treatment and planning the shoot on Wednesday
• shooting and editing the advert, including graphics, sound and music on Thursday and
• creating and delivering a presentation to the client on Friday.

“I found the group very smart, very interactive, there were a few ideas that came up that I hadn’t thought off.”
Shula Sinclair, Senior strategy partner, Wavemaker

“It was really interesting because there’s passion there. In that room there you start to see bits of that coming through. This is what you need because how can you only come up with ideas from white middle aged men?”
Blake Waters, senior copywriter Leo Burnett, london

“It’s been really good fun. I found the group really receptive and coming up with some good ideas straight away”
Piers Helm, Creative Director, Creative Nuts

“When I was a camera assistant I didn’t have any role models. I very rarely saw women working as DOP’s or operators, so this is very important. I think it’s very important for young people to experience working hands on. It’s very different to being in the classroom. You see what everyone is doing and you watch and you learn. “
Catherine Derry, Cinematographer

Coaches:

Ita Fitzgerald – Director & Overall Programme
Rod Main – Director and Filming behind the scenes
Shula Sinclair – Marketing (Wavemaker)
Blake Waters & Steve Robertson- Creatives (Leo Burnett)
Catherine Derry, Director of Photography
Tiago Morelli, Sound Recordist
Sarjit Bains – Editor
Abigail Melville & Polly Waterworth – We Rise coaches

The young people:

“Its completely opened my eyes to a different world. I’ve discovered that I’m more creative than I thought I was.” Louie 

“It will definitely help me in the future" Wilson

“I liked meeting all the experts and seeing how passionate they are about the their jobs. It made me think I should be passionate about my future job as well”
Ismail

We Rise Team  of Year 12 students from The Elmgreen School:

Louis Aka - Production
Akthar Ahmed –  Production
Ely Nguo – Direction
Alison Cando - Direction
Fabio Afonso – Sound
Joao Fernandes – Sound
Ismail Fauvrelle - Sound
Pedro Dias – Camera
Louis Jameson - Editing
Wilson Gomes - Editing
Chantal Millenn - Music
Imad Alam – Music
Nicholas Galvao – Graphics

Age UK Lambeth will be using the advert to encourage people in Lambeth to use their new handypersons service. For just £40 an hour they can do a whole range of household repairs including fixing leaking taps and putting together flat-pack furniture.

Handyfix: http://www.handyfix.org.uk/

We Rise have also produced a behind the scenes film. Both films will be available at www.werise.org.uk

For more information contact Abigail Melville, Managing Director, We Rise on 07986 291726

Thanks to:
James Wise – Coffee Master @ Volcano Coffee Works and Alex LittleJohn – Managing Director, Volcano
Ad shot on location at Volcano Coffee Works, 244 Ferndale Road, Brixton SW9 8FR

Watch their amazing video below:

Discover HandyFix service