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Special event video provides antipodean touch

Darryl Anderson
by Darryl Anderson
21st November 2013

German agricultural machinery manufacturer, CLAAS, wanted to celebrate its 100th birthday with a live global broadcast. Landpower Ltd, who distributes CLAAS machinery in Australia and New Zealand, needed three video segments filmed for the global video event to reflect its large sales region.

In association with JWL Marketing & Communications, Landpower returned to us because we have:

  • experience filming in Australia and New Zealand
  • a clear understanding of the client’s brand
  • a large video library of existing footage.

While some parameters were set by CLAAS’s head office in Europe, our brief was very much about creating content that reflected the antipodean territory.

For more than 30 years, CLAAS products have been distributed in Australia and New Zealand through Landpower, a privately owned company. We wanted to explore the strong link from CLAAS, a family-owned company in Germany, through Landpower’s regional network to families working on the land. The videos would celebrate family-owned businesses that ran CLAAS farming equipment.

The result was a set of three visually stunning and highly emotive videos to highlight the strengths of the CLAAS brand – reliability and technology – and the valuable contribution CLAAS machinery has made to farming in Australia and New Zealand.

Part 1 — Our family

Part 2 — Our land

Part 3 — Our song

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Landpower used the three corporate videos in the CLAAS 100 live global broadcast event, and continues to use them for brand marketing:

When a local voice matters

Our creative director, Michael Neil-Smith, encouraged the client to record an alternative version of a song that had been written for the CLAAS 100 broadcast event.

“The client’s original recording had a Jimmy Barnes meets American country music anthemic feel to it, and we encouraged them to record a new version with an antipodean tone and local vocalist,” Michael said.

“I worked with ZigZag Lane to record the song using Erana Clark as a vocalist. Erana is from New Zealand, and she is a singing coach for Australian Idol. Her version of the song (in Part 3, above) is fantastic.”

When timing is everything

Michael added that it was a real challenge to overcome the timing of the event; the video was commissioned in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

“Being winter, we didn’t have a lot of access to CLAAS machinery during harvesting at any of the filming locations,” Michael said.

“The global nature of the client’s event—a 24-hour ‘live’ broadcast from 42 CLAAS territories around the world—meant that we had to develop pre-recorded video content across the three themes and mould it to the broadcast.”

CLAAS agricultural machinery for CLAAS 100 eventOverall, this was a job that brought out our best. It blended our understanding of agriculture with a suitable creative approach that was sensitive to both the client and its rural audience.

If you are considering an audio-visual production to celebrate an aspect of your business, contact us on 1300 768 101 or [email protected] to discuss your video ideas … or complete an enquiry form now.

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