Huawei video 2021 – gone viral

“Shooting the new video campaign for Huawei was one of the most demanding projects we have done to date.” Victoria Taylor, Creative director @ Beast video production company.

Huawei came to us with a big problem. After the recent bad media surrounding the Huawei’s security issues and the decision of America to ban them, Huawei found themselves in a place where they needed to re-educate the public about their brand and their motivations.

Our brief was to create a creative video campaign that centred around a hero video and four hub video’s that helped shine a light on the security accusations surrounding Huawei. But also to show the world more importantly what was at the core of the brand; collaboration and innovation.

It was important for us that the hero video focused on Huawei’s core brand vision. We didn’t want to let the video be over taken with Huawei protesting these recent claims too much. So we came up with a vision and messaging strategy that had innovation and collaboration at its core.

Innovation plays a profound part in moving human life forward. But it doesn’t just come from the obvious scientific and engineering routes. Inspiration is drawn from all aspects of life whether it be, cultural exchange, or artistic expression…..the boundaries are unlimited, and this is what we wanted to explore.

One of Huawei’s key message’s was “innovation know’s no borders’. This became the overarching theme and creative direction of the hero video. We translated this visually by using multiple layers of video on different backgrounds and in stylised 3D transitions to really emphasis that feeling of a collaborative and multi layered world.

To take this vision further we wanted to create a memorable visual effect. Something that would define the film, and also connect the rest of the hub video’s to it afterwards so we had a uniform and coherent campaign. We wanted to create something that felt innovative in itself. Visually progressive and unexpected. So we worked with a brilliant 3D motion graphic designer , Flashframe, who helped us create a template that transformed certain shots into a ribbon like texture that beautifully dissolved into the next image taking the viewer into a new world each time. The result was visually stunning.

Video Production for Huawei Videos

The production itself was very challenging. We had to shoot over three time zones across three weeks while managing the impact of Covid and the new filming protocols that came with that.

Our London shoot was Directed by Lawrence Jacomelli, who also directed the Singapore shoot remotely from London as our crew were unable to fly. And Sebastian Artz travelled from LA to direct the Baltimore shoot. These two amazingly talented Directors worked closely together to develop a visual style for the film. That vision then had to be realised across all productions, so the footage and creative style matched up perfectly.

The videos were all structured around our three contributors; Jim Rogers , International Investor, Singapore. Andy Purdy, Chief security officer at Huawei and Paul Scanlan, Chief Technology Officer Huawei. All three of them bring a personal and enlightening perspective to the importance of openness and sharing and how its fundamental in the development of world economy and the future humankind itself.

Using their specialised insight we were able to build a script outline that covered all the subjects important to Huawei for this campaign, with the fine tuning happening in post production.

The end result saw our final hero video entitled “Huawei, our game is innovation wanna play?” go live at the end of October 2021. In less than a month it’s received over 1.1million hits on Youtube. That makes it officially viral.

You can also see a Huawei BTS video – Behind the scenes video from the London shoot if you click on this link.