Cryotherm, founded in 1980, designs and manufactures specialist bespoke products for structural fire protection, and thermal and acoustic insulation for commercial buildings in the UK and overseas.
The primary challenge for Cryotherm was helping its customers understand the need for uniquely designed structural fire protection casing systems. Past experience showed verbal or written explanations alone couldn’t convey clearly enough why bespoke products are more effective for reducing fire risk.
Previously, Cryotherm had mainly used written content and case studies supported with images alongside traditional sales tactics to promote products. However, Melissa Cowen, Business Development Director at Cryotherm, knew video marketing was growing in popularity and could see how video would be beneficial in explaining technical and complex products.
Melissa asked us to produce 3D animations of their Spiralite and Rockliner Products – two of the company’s leading products.The objective was to not only promote the products but to educate prospective customers on the thickness of the casing solutions comparative to the size of the structural steel and that their fire protection systems are all independently tested in line with the Association For Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP)’s latest yellow book edition recommendations.
During initial meetings with Melissa, it was important for us to understand exactly who Cryotherm are, what they do and their audience. We needed to gain an understanding about the market, competitors and the barriers and triggers prospects have when choosing fire protection and thermal insulation systems. We also needed to understand why Cryotherm wanted to introduce video at this stage and what they hoped to achieve. All of this information helped us to gain an in-depth and detailed understanding of the client, enabling us to provide advice on the best approach.
From this point we worked closely together with Cryotherm to produce a script, storyboard and some renders of the product. After this, Melissa knew we had grasped the fundamentals of the product including one key requirement; prospects need to understand how the thickness of the Rockwool needed to be unique to each individual situation to have the correct time required for delaying fires. As Melissa was happy with our process and approach, she knew she could trust us to move forward with producing the first animation for the Rockliner product.
To produce the animation we needed to create models of the product and add textures to create the board from the images we had taken. After discussions about how Cryotherm wished to present themselves and their tone of voice we sent a range of voice over artists to Melissa who selected the right one for Cyrotherm.
Throughout the process the project went smoothly. We kept in touch with Melissa throughout keeping her up to date with progress, answering any queries and taking on any suggestions. This meant after the first draft animation was produced only minor amendments were needed before it was ready to go live.
After our discussions with Melissa about how she wished to use the video we suggested uploading to YouTube, which would help her to easily share and monitor views. Having never used the platform before, we provided Melissa with some simple training on how to use YouTube to promote the video.
The 3D animation was well received by Melissa and all the team at Cryotherm. They were very pleased with how the video explains so clearly and concisely information about Rockliner in a quick and simple 30 second animation -something which had previously taken much longer and was not as clear to potential customers.
The Cryotherm team has received great feedback from existing customers and other stakeholders about how easy the video is to understand and, because it’s easily loaded onto a tablet or laptops, the sales managers can add it to their sales collateral.
We continued to follow up with Melissa after the video went live to advise on using the video to its full potential. After developing a great relationship and being impressed by the quality of the animation and the service received Cryotherm and Feature Media are now working together again on another project for the Spiralite product.
“Julie has been brilliant throughout the entire process. She has taken the time to understand what we do and what we wanted to achieve to make sure they got it right and we were happy with it. The team made the whole process quick and easy and were always there if we needed to contact them and the follow up aftercare was great”.
Melissa Cowan, Cryotherm