British Film Institute
The creatives behind an award-winning campaign
CASE STUDY
We delivered for the
British Film Institute
A flexible suite of static assets and motion templates that strengthened BFI Player’s brand recognition, showcased its extensive catalogue, and enabled the team to produce consistent, high-impact creative at scale.
The Background
In an increasingly competitive streaming landscape, BFI Player needed its creative to communicate better its value proposition.
Competing against global streaming platforms meant every touchpoint had to communicate not only individual film releases, but the strength of the BFI Player brand itself.
At the time, much of the platform’s advertising focused on individual film artwork, with minimal BFI Player branding. The result was title-led creative that lacked consistency and did little to build long-term brand recognition. The in-house team also needed a more efficient way to produce high-quality assets across multiple formats without compromising creative quality.
The Mission
Our challenge for our creative team was to develop a distinctive, scalable creative system that strengthened the BFI Player identity, showcased its rich catalogue of independent cinema, and empowered the internal marketing team to create consistent, on-brand assets for future campaigns.
We created an enticing, cohesive brand experience across paid media and landing pages that captures attention, builds connection and inspires people to take action,
whether that’s signing up for a trial or subscribing.”
Matt Stokes
Arke’s Head of Creative
The Strategy
We started by getting into the minds of the BFI Player’s team to understand where the creatives were at the outset. Through collaborative workshops, we defined the suite of assets we would produce, noting considerations for the relevant platforms they would be used on, and strategised the positioning we aimed to achieve.
This informed our development of several creative routes, each of which we refined through a collaborative review process with the BFI Player marketing team.
Having a clear direction, we created template-optimised assets for BFI teams to utilise for the subsequent releases. The BFI brand identity had to be clearly placed across every asset and template, with a watertight process to create ads at different sizes.
These templated assets enabled BFI’s marketing team to create ads that worked across 12 different formats, requiring significant design flexibility while ensuring consistent branding, messaging and promotions.
In addition to title-specific ads, further assets were created including engaging video and static ads that effectively communicated subscription benefits, capturing audience attention across segments.
The Challenges
One of the biggest creative challenges was striking the right balance between promoting individual film titles and building recognition for the BFI Player brand.
We experimented with title treatments and layout options before refining a system that maintained legibility across every format while ensuring the BFI Player identity remained front and centre.
The project also coincided with a wider BFI brand refresh, requiring us to evolve the templates as the identity transitioned to a new visual language. By designing with flexibility in mind, we ensured the creative system could adapt without disrupting campaign production or compromising brand consistency.
The Results
The end result was a cohesive creative system that connected every touchpoint. By aligning ad creative with the BFI Player website, we created a more consistent brand experience that increased consumer confidence, reinforced brand authority, and supported higher sign-up rates.
The new assets unmistakably looked and felt like the BFI Player brand itself while showcasing the breadth of its catalog. We developed a flexible library of static and motion templates, including lightweight animated assets, alongside Photoshop templates. We equipped and empowered the BFI’s Team to produce creatives in 12 different formats while maintaining complete brand consistency.
Additionally, we created templates for ads that were solely retargeting visitors to BFI Player’s site, and allowed the user to shortlist titles and make ‘sets’ of films to retarget potential subscribers with specific interests (horror films, French films, award winners) and further cemented the relationship between the paid media ad creatives and content on the website.
The designs allowed to include promotional offers, such as periodic discounts at peak marketing points in the calendar.
The Impact
By transforming BFI Player’s creative approach from title-first to brand-first, we helped establish a more recognisable visual identity while creating a scalable system that continues to support campaigns, promotions, and audience growth.
Our creative partnership extended beyond digital advertising. During the project, we proposed multiple out-of-home activation concepts, one of which BFI Player later adopted as part of its London Film Festival activity on London’s South Bank.
This project reflected the collaborative relationship we’d built and our commitment to identifying creative opportunities beyond the original brief.
The creative work Arke designed was instrumental for developing an impactful marketing campaign recognised with the Campaign Effectiveness Award at the EU Agency Awards and Best Integrated Campaign at the UK Agency Awards.
Arke took the time to truly understand our platform inside and out, unlocking new potential
through strategic performance initiatives.”
Senior Marketing Manager
BFI Player
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