New Zealand Marketing

AGENCY

This is the story of an ambitious idea that started small in a student flat before quickly gaining massive momentum and attracting the attention of a stack of innovative brands. Be sure to bring your motion sickness pills along for this ride.

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Some of the most interestin­g stories start in the most inconspicu­ous places, hidden from the continuous scrutiny of curious onlookers and developed bit by bit without anyone taking too much notice at first. One such a place would be a poorly heated Dunedin flat, which, in 2012, served as host to three University of Otago students thoroughly uninterest­ed in slogging away for The Man.

“I’ve always had a bit of an entreprene­urial streak I guess. I’ve never wanted to work for anyone else,” says Sam Stuchbury, who quickly realised the best way to achieve this was by selling the skills he honed in the university lecture halls—and thus Motion Sickness was born.

Stuchbury didn’t have to travel far to find his first buyer, with the university commission­ing the early Motion Sickness crew to produce a few videos. “When we pitched to the Vice Chancellor for the work it was the morning after a fairly big flat party... we lived a life of contrast”

One thing led to another and before long they were delivering video and social media content for Dunedin Tourism.

From these early days, Stuchbury quickly realised that the best way to market on these new digital channels was by creating a quality product that consumers actually want to watch.

“We have a very low tolerance for cheese,” he says. “Anything that’s too forced or too scripted just won’t do. We don’t make commercial­s full stop, we make content that people actually choose to consume”

This, he says, has led to Motion Sickness developing a distinctiv­e aesthetic style with social media at its core. But Stuchbury is quick to separate his agency from the slew of recent startups that sell themselves as social media specialist­s.

“We don’t refer to ourselves as a social media agency,” he says, with a slightly sterner tone relaying the importance of this differenti­ation.

“It’s more like we’re an attention agency. Everything we do is to grab people’s attention, and more often than not, that happens online.”

From there, however, the message can be stretched and adapted across any channel necessary.

“We try to just look at what would be best for the client,” he says. “That might be a video content series, a strong image or brand activation. It’s always just about looking at the client’s business and finding what’s missing.”

NO COMPROMISE ON QUALITY

A cursory glance across the social media landscape invariably reveals a dark and grainy collection of videos, many of which have been produced by brands hoping to fit in. There remains a perception in the industry that social video doesn’t have to abide by the high standards that continue to typify television advertisin­g. This, however, is a perception wholly rejected by Stuchbury and the team at Motion Sickness.

“The aesthetic of the work is a huge focus for us,” he says. “I’m never satisfied with the work we do. I always think it can be better. One of the reasons our stuff stands out on social is because of its top execution. I really don’t think there should be a gap in quality. I think it’s time people stop thinking of social as an afterthoug­ht for strategy and content. It can, and should, lead your marketing”

That said, Stuchbury adds that things shouldn’t just be made beautiful for the sake of it. Regardless of how beautifull­y something is shot, he argues, it simply won’t be watched unless it resonates with a continuous­ly scrolling audience.

“People always talk about this or that new feature on Facebook, but it’s still just a channel and you still need to put something meaningful inside it,” he says. “So, the first thing we focus on is finding a strong creative idea, which we can then execute really well.”

However, even the finest piece of art will never be seen if it remains hidden in dungeon beneath the museum. Incidental­ly, this is exactly what happens to the vast majority of creative work published online. It sits dormant in the dark space of the internet, passively waiting for users to stumble upon it serendipit­ously. The reality, however, is that this rarely happens.

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