Fundraise Announcement

Wexler is an AI start-up that helps lawyers analyse documents and verify the key facts in a legal dispute. Greg Mostyn (CEO) had seen our previous work and reached out about doing a fundraising announcement video for Wexler’s seed round ($5.6m). 

For this project we made 1 x hero videos and an additional 4 x standalone videos. Read on to see what we made and how we made it.

Objectives

The first step as always was to define the desired outcomes for this project. Wexler is a relatively new kid on the block so we already knew that creating brand awareness was the first key objective. During the course of our design sprint  also uncovered 2 additional ones: 

1. Announce a new feature 

2. Announce key new clients 

These objectives gave us a rough outline of what the video should contain: 

1. Founder announces fundraise

2. Explain the problem Wexler is solving 

3. Showcase new feature and explain impact

4. Social proof from key customers

Each of these elements could in theory be its own standalone video (e.g. a customer case study) so the challenge for us was to combine all of them creatively into a single hero video instead. 

In the end, we decided we would make a 1 x hero video that combines short bits of each section running to 2-3 mins. We would then make an additional 4 x standalone videos of 1-2 mins each as well: 

• 2 x customer testimonials 

• 2 x thought leadership pieces

Storyboarding

Because Wexler’s hero video would be published on LinkedIn we needed to come up with a strong hook for the first 5-10 seconds that would get people to stop scrolling. 

This meant putting the most engaging part of the video at the very beginning and in our case that was the demo of Wexler’s Real Time Fact Checking feature. We decided the best way to bring that feature to life was  by showing how it fact-checks a well-known Youtube video of Richard Sackler talking lying about his involvement with Oxycontin. 

After the intro, we’d the transition to portrait shots of the CEO explaining what Wexler does followed by 2 more portrait shots with Wexler customers talking about how they use the product day to day.

The actual fundraise announcement would come at the very end because most people watching this video would already know how much Wexler had raised. To make this section a bit more fun we decided we’d get the CEO to announce it by breaking the fourth wall and then popping a bottle of champagne.

Once we had the client’s sign off on this storyboard, we put together a shot list for the day using references from other videos that they liked.

Location Scouting

The physical space of the shoot has a big impact on the look and feel of the final video and unfortunately in most cases the Client’s office doesn’t get the best results. Wexler is a start-up but their clients are large well-established law firms, so our main requirement for the location was that it would look premium but not overly corporate. 

We visited a few locations and decided to go with this place in Old Street. 

The challenge with this space was that it was fairly small without much natural light and we’d need to set up 3 completely different interview shots in there (plus b-roll)

We sketched out a rough floor plan to help us figure out where we should put the lights and the cameras and settled on this set-up. 

Filming Day

Because of all the preparation we’d done up to this point, the shoot itself went off without a hitch. 

The talent were in and out in 45 mins each and our filming crew finished the shoot with enough time for a quick tidy up at the end.

Most importantly, we got all the footage we needed.

Design and Animation

Once we selected cuts from the raw footage we started designing animations that would go along with them. 

We’d already decided the intro section would need some cool animations and we chose the middle and end sections for additional animation magic as well. 

The first step here was to design the static frames keeping in mind Wexler’s brand guidelines. 

After these were signed off, we got to work adding motion.

Additional deliverables

I always tell clients that the most expensive part of a project is the shoot itself. In order to get the most bang for your buck therefore I recommend filming lots of additional content that you later have the option of turning into its own pieces of content.

After we finished editing the hero video we created 2 x additional customer testimonials for LinkedIn and 2 x thought leadership pieces for LinkedIn. 

We were able to convince Wexler’s customers to also post the testimonial videos to LinkedIn which amplified our efforts at generating brand awareness. 

That’s it for Wexler. If you would like to chat about an upcoming video project – book a call with us here.