Animated opening film for a live keynote,
Challenge
We’ve worked with Worldpanel by Numerator’s Global Marketing team to create the opening film for one of their most important events in China: the introduction of Penetration Led Growth (PLG), their framework for how brands actually grow.
The film would open the event, projected on a large screen just before the keynote.
The brief came from the China marketing team, with Global closely involved throughout. That meant balancing two perspectives: the global brand and message on one side, and the Chinese market, language and audience on the other.
The film had one clear job: introduce PLG without explaining it, the keynote would do that afterwards.
We only needed to make one idea land: brands grow by winning more buyers, on more occasions. If the audience understood that — and wanted to know how — the film had done its job.
That meant telling the story visually, through a 60–90 second, music-led film with no voiceover. Chinese and English copy had to work naturally within the animation, with Chinese leading the way.
And Worldpanel’s distinctive shapes had to become more than brand assets. They would represent the consumers themselves — appearing, multiplying, connecting and disappearing as the story unfolded.
The setting mattered too. This was a film for a Chinese audience, in China, so the purchase moments had to feel recognisable and contemporary: real channels, real behaviours and details that belonged to that market. We wanted to avoid the generic imagery that can easily make an international film feel like an outsider’s view of a place.
With no narration to carry the story, music and sound design became part of the storytelling itself. They established the rhythm, created tension around buyer loss and built towards the final PLG message. The soundtrack wasn’t there simply to support the film — it was what gave the story its highs and lows.
The main creative challenge was to bring all of this together: turning a brand identity into a visual storytelling system, and a complex business idea into something people could understand in seconds.
And there was one more constraint: we had one week to produce the film.
That kind of turnaround is only possible when there is already a strong relationship behind the project. We’ve worked with Worldpanel for around 15 years, so we already understand their brand, their business, how they communicate and, just as importantly, what they like. There is a level of trust and familiarity that removes a lot of the back and forth that normally comes with a project like this.
We could focus on making the film rather than spending time getting to know the client. And in a one-week production, that makes all the difference.
