Category: True

Petrol’s gas stations are indispensable for many of us – and not just in terms of gas. How many times have you bought a cup of coffee at Petrol? How many times have you went to their gas station to buy a carton of milk or a package of toilet paper? And how often have you gone there to buy a pack of cigarettes when all other stores were already closed? Perhaps you went there to ship a package, pay a bill or buy a ticket for an event. In such situations, living close to a Petrol gas station is a huge convenience.

However, Petrol is not only indispensable for people,but also for the business community and the public sector. After all, it is one of the leading energy brands that encourage and accelerate sustainable development in the region. They renovate the public infrastructure through energy contracting, replace outdated lighting to reduce light pollution, build new wind farms, install solar panels and provide e-mobility services to reduce the emissions of harmful exhaust gases.

Our client wanted to present these efforts in a new corporate video, which they premiered at an internal event marking the acquisition of Crodux, a Croatian oil company, in October 2021. With this strategic acquisition, Petrol now ranks as the second largest supplier of oil products. Moreover, the acquisition further strengthened their presence on the regional markets.

In producing the concept, we wanted to present the multi-faceted importance of Petrol for people and the business community in a way that would engage viewews. We knew that this can only be achieved with exceptional copywriting, a convincing voice-over, picturesque B-roll footage, graphics with concrete business results and accompanying animations.

We started by writing an emotionally charged voice-over copy. In the first part, it presents all of Petrol’s touchpoints with consumers and general society. In the second part, it focuses mostly on Petrol’s commitment to sustainable development. To truly do justice to the copy, we paid special attention to selecting voice-over artists that would bring the message to life – for the Slovene voice-over, we ultimately decided to go with Ivan Lotrič, whereas the English version was read by Luka Ličar.

The voice-over was equipped with relevant B-roll footage. Some of it was taken from archived footage, and the remainder filmed. This footage was further equipped with graphics depicting concrete business results and an animated glowing band. The latter appears throughout the video as it impersonates the energy from Petrol’s tagline, “Energy for life” and internal slogan, “Energy is us”.

As a public employment service, the Jožef Stefan Institute receives part of its financing from the state budget. But the scientific projects led by the institute demand a state-of-the-art infrastructure and multi-million-euro equipment which state financing cannot cover entirely. For this reason, they apply to public calls for tenders, mostly European ones, where they get a hefty portion of the resources necessary for an on-going infrastructure development and the salaries of their
highly educated employees.

Among the most important tenders that they apply to are tenders by the European Research Council (ERC), which the frameworks of which both established and young researchers implement their projects at the central scientific institution in Slovenia. The management of the institute thus wanted to produce a video that would present the most notable projects that they lead within the framework of the ERC.

The concept and storyboard for the video was created in cooperation with the Center for Technology Transfer and Innovation at the Jožef Stefan Institute. Its mission is to ensure that the technologies and innovative solutions develop at the institute fin their rightful in practice and thus contribute to the development of our economy, the advance of information science and environmentalism.

We filmed their scientists while they were doing their work and asked them to present their projects and their application. The video was equipped with animated graphics laying out the key information about the institute and the projects that it leads within the framework of the ERC. The employees of the Jožef Stefan Institute were so thrilled with the video that we are already preparing a whole new series of videos for them.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Faculty of Arts, which enrols thousands of students each year, was forced to move the study process to a virtual environment. Not just studies, the information session for high-school graduates also had to be carried out online. For this occasion, the Faculty wanted to produce a video that would present the Faculty and its departments to year-four high school students.

And while the client wanted us to make a few-minute-long video, the Faculty comprises a total of 21 departments and the Physical Education Division. An in-detail presentation of all the departments was out of the question as they wanted each department to be equally represented. This meant we had to approach the project a bit differently. Since we believe in the power of stories, we decided to present the Faculty through storytelling.

After a few initial meetings with the client, we decided to invite former students at the Faculty of Arts, who are actively engaged in different areas of the Slovene society – culture, non-governmental organizations, media and entrepreneurship. By doing so, we wanted to show that the Faculty of Arts opens up doors to a plethora of different careers paths.

We conducted short interviews the speakers. We asked them to share some memories of studying at the Faculty of Arts and to comment on the current events in the Slovene and international culture and politics by viewing through the prism of the knowledge and experience they gained during their studies. After all, the common ground of all study programs at the Faculty of Arts is that they encourage the development of critical thinking skills among students.

As a cherry on top, we invited Vlado Kreslin, who is also a former student at the Faculty of Arts, to cooperate on the project. He accepted our invitation. Especially for this occasion, he recorded a remake of his song “Nocoj bomo mi prižgali dan” with the Kombinat female choir. We filmed his performance on the roof of the Faculty, and Kreslin also used these recordings to produce a music video for the remake of his track.

Our client posted short and long versions of the video on Facebook and Youtube. To this date, the initial Facebook post, dated 10 February 2021, has garnered over 38,000 views, 771 likes and 15 comments. We are proud that our video has become the most viewed and engaged-with post by the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.

We are constantly on the lookout for good practices by other production teams and agencies, and we would like to point out the trailer Poljane Grammar School’s video, which was released on the same day as our video for the Faculty of Arts. No, it wasn’t us who produced the video, but we like it nonetheless. As we keep emphasizing – the stories and faces of people are the best and most personal way of presenting any institution, company or organization.