Penguin Ventures is the licensing and consumer products division of world-leading publishing house Penguin Random House, managing its portfolio of iconic literary brands and characters including Peter Rabbit, The Snowman, Spot, Flower Fairies and more, across product, experience and digital. Penguin Ventures tells the complete story.

Our video showreel would centre the potential unlocked by Penguin Ventures’ work with iconic characters including Peter Rabbit, The Snowman, Spot the Dog and Flower Fairies and would showcase their work in Licensing, Consumer Products, Collaborations, Experiences, Exhibitions and Stage. With the book themselves always at the heart, Penguin Ventures brings these stories and characters to platforms beyond the page, enabling audiences to connect with their favourite stories in a more profound and longer-lasting way than ever before.

Working with mostly still images, Penguin Random House needed a video production team who could produce a video showreel beyond a plain slideshow to engage their target audience. Giddy with excitement at the thought of working with such an iconic brand that was such a huge part of our childhoods, we leapt at the challenge.

Objectives

We were tasked with showcasing Penguin Ventures’ ability to lift the world’s best-loved stories off of the page and into digital media, immersive experiences, public and retail environments. Our key target audience would be decision makers at companies interested in licensing Penguin’s hero brands and our video content would need to:

1. Remind our target audience of the breadth of the hero brands at Penguin Random House.
2. Celebrate the successes of Penguin Ventures so far.
3. Introduce new target markets to the wide range of opportunities Penguin Ventures can offer.
4. Excite existing partner brands and licenses into exploring further opportunities.
5. Breathe life and energy into its archive of still images through animation and motion graphics.

The video would be released online and would need to be able to serve as a standalone introduction to Penguin Ventures as well as a reminder to familiar partner brands of their work.

Results

We took this from start to finish: from storyboard and archived asset audit, through to graphic design, motion graphics, character animations, music licensing and web optimisation. Working to our highest standards and actioning notes from various stakeholders all whilst remaining faithful to the exacting standards of the Penguin Random House brand guidelines, we we couldn’t be more proud of the results for this iconic heritage brand.

We would also go on to create a standalone video focusing solely on their Peter Rabbit brand. What a dream.