Meet Basil. He joined us in October 2024 as our Production and Account Manager and has already produced some of our biggest, most ambitious campaigns to date. Here’s a little about him.
Having worked my way around commercial film, short film and social content sets, I transitioned from freelancing to working in-house with Socialed as their Production and Account Manager. The common thread across film sets, and collaborative creation more generally, is the collective energy of a group of people working towards a unified vision. That’s what I love about production - that unified energy.
So at Socialed I work producing our campaigns. Taking the reins at the pre-production stage, I cast, crew-up, budget and then run our shoot days. On the account management side, I liaise with our clients, manage timelines and asset deliveries. With regards to those shoots upcoming, I am particularly excited for our campaign with Brain in Hand, as well as work with Atelier Gooch. The former very scripted, the latter much closer to a found-footage approach, the two projects give me widely different scopes and styles to explore.
When I’m not producing for Socialed, I write-direct my own narrative fiction short films, in which I work extensively with still frames and improvisation to explore character-driven narratives that allow those characters to inform space and script. Outside the moving image, I shoot stills on my dad’s old Pentax ME Super. I read - a lot - and write and can often be found either at the BFI or the Almeida.
When not working with storytelling, I am usually outside: cold water swimming (in a pond, lake, river, sea whatever is fresh and cold), hiking, walking, playing tennis, or in search of some mountain somewhere.
I cook messily, dance enthusiastically and insist on cycling in terrible weather, for some reason.
2024 has been quite a year. It has taken us to Monaco, Dubai, Lisbon (twice), Capri, Nice and all around London. We’ve shot content for rebrands and brand collaborations. We flashmobbed Piccadilly Circus. We’ve launched our new website, hired new faces, and delivered beautiful, effective social-first content for dozens of clients. We’ve been busy, here’s a little of what’s kept us that way…
This year has seen a wealth of new visual content from us here at socialed. We’ve continued producing work for our long-term collaborators Pro Hunter, and were able to produce a campaign partnership between the watchmakers and Acid Running, released over September/October.
We’ve shot work for ShaktiMat during which we pulled off one of our most ambitious production days to date, as well as curating visual content for men’s lingerie brand Foxe & Fable, and for sustainable oral care pioneers Life Supplies’ (more to come). This on top of campaigns for Soft State, Solo, PACK’D, Holie’s, Berkeley Group and more.
We’ve also gained two new team members. Mackenzie Thomson joined as our Content Lead, bringing with him a wealth of experience in HETV and Feature Films, meanwhile Basil Lockwood joined as our Production and Accounts Manager and has already produced several of our biggest campaigns to date.
As we wrap up the year, we’re looking ahead to 2025. We are already locked for an exciting new campaign for Brain in Hand, as well as being set to deliver Life Supplies’ content for their rebrand in early January. It is an exciting moment to look at how far we’ve come as we look to where we’re going; we hope to see you there.
We shot a campaign and also shot shooting the campaign - where do the layers end?!
In the Autumn of 2024 we produced a campaign for Dutch granola brand Holie’s as they launched with Ocado here in the UK.
Unlike our campaigns and content, which is carefully planned and executed to a brief, the vlog took a more documentarian style, in which we shot the process, narrating the picking up whatever the day offered us, from which we were able to craft a narrative in the studio. Our tongue in our cheek, we set about finding the threads of our day out in Piccadilly Circus: here’s what we got up to…
When we first received the brief and agreed our partnership with Foxe & Fable, we were instantly excited. There are few things that get us more motivated than a daring founder challenging an industry, a brilliant product and almost complete creative licence. This project has it all.
Foxe & Fable are pioneering a new space; male lingerie. It may sound somewhat alien to most of us but have you ever stopped to think how uninspired (and unsexy) you feel in your bog standard underwear. This is where Foxe comes in, they’re spicing up the underwear drawer, creating a boxer (more to come) designed to be desired and to add a spark to the bedroom.
Given the nature of the product, Foxe turned to us to showcase the elicit through a socially acceptable lens. The brief was simple, “push boundaries to the point where our content may be taken down”. So we quickly went about creating a daring, social-first content strategy that got people sharing, talking and ultimately buying.
We honed in on three content buckets that aligned perfectly with the brand, “Experience, Education & Lifestyle” all underpinned by an audacious thematic approach.
As a new brand, it is fundamental to tell the story of the brand, its mission and the people involved. So this sits under our education component. For our first month we interviewed founder Sam about all of the above to create a deeper connection than one solely centred around a transaction. This is integral for us to build the Foxe & Fable community and opens opportunities to empower the community, dive into the process and document the growth of the brand in public further down the line - all things that social media loves.
The next element is lifestyle, showcasing how and in which scenario’s Foxe & Fable’s should be sported. From sleeping, to date night preparation to spicing things up in the bedroom, we take our audience through all the ways to wear, through the lens of a Foxe wearer. These are bitesize, narrated, social-first snapshots into the lifestyle behind the brand.
And finally the fun and incredibly un-PC component of our content strategy, Experience. The true ethos of the brand is to awaken the desire, so our third content bucket was designed to make the audience a little hot under the collar and question whether it is allowed on socials. So we peep through the keyhole to see what happens just before the Foxe’s are removed. Social is about capturing attention and providing an entertainment factor. We want people sharing our content with their friends or partners as this garners greater engagement.
The ideas are well and good but to truly stand out the key component that runs through everything is high quality visuals with a social-first lens. Beyond this it’s about testing and learning and constantly optimising our strategy (social, content & performance) to meet audience behaviour and grow our reach.
We’re merely two weeks in and engagement and the following has increased massively. We’re not going to talk too soon though as there’s plenty of work to come (as well as the full case study, once we have some tangibles to extract), but we’re heading in the right direction. Watch this space…
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