'Bold Truths'
Rocking Horse Pictures' awareness piece Fund That for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and mental health charity Harrison’s Fund delivers the creative ambition typical of this producer, in a field of brand film that presents real challenges for strategy and film.
Charity is one of the many sectors that Moving Image has tracked and benchmarked for several years. On the one hand, not-for-profit campaigns and their use of video often achieve so much with so few resources, typically stemming from chronic and broad underfunding. It is a field that works hard for every penny, and every click. On the other hand, Charity brand films and strategies must also continually innovate. Standing out often means the difference between funding fuelled research that leads to treatment development, or a worthy cause that unfortunately drifts into a faceless limbo. Crafting brand film in this area can influence, quite literally, the quality of life for those effected.
From the creativity/data relationship standpoint this makes the sector an excellent study, both for those looking to understand the emotive power of story in brand film and those concerned with impactful visibility. Here, story and form simply must carry a greater portion of project weight.
Harrison’s Fund are known for being dauntless disruptors, perhaps most acutely from their ‘I wish my son had cancer’ campaign that first moved viral and then into coverage from high-profile editorials such as The Guardian. Rocking Horse are similarly agents of change, and their creative decision to harness and fold founder Alex’s well-known use of an ‘extended vocabulary’ into their narrative is a nice touch. Again, doing much with little things.
With UK and US social audiences in mind, Fund That is a part of a campaign fashioned to not only promote an underrepresented cause but also drive financial investment in it. A precarious task in a huddled sector. But by using plain language and focusing on the message rather than trendy mossing, Rocking Horse and Harrison’s Fund manage to emerge as one of the few voices heard over the crowd.
