A year on from their website and brand re-launch, national intellectual property specialists James & Wells have released the latest addition in their campaign to champion Kiwi innovation – an animated video, shot by Toybox Auckland.
It captures the story of New Zealand’s lost innovation, illustrating James & Wells’ mission to ensure Kiwi businesses realise and capture the value of their ideas. For the firm, the video is the cornerstone of their brand overhaul to the ‘Champions of Innovation’.
James & Wells enlisted the expertise of Auckland-based content producers Toybox, charging the animation gurus with bringing the brand to life.
“To be honest we initially thought that being lawyers, they would probably want something safe, conservative and dry,” says Toybox executive producer Nanette Miles.
“But from the moment we walked into their very non-lawyer-like offices we knew this project was going to be fun.
“They also wanted to push the boundaries and produce something that was visually fresh and funny, yet still be relevant to their audience. They knew that as the champions of innovation, they had to be innovative themselves. It was a great place to start.”
The video highlights great Kiwi ideas like the egg-beater, re-sealable tin lid, and John Callender’s farm bike, which unfortunately never reaped the rewards of their inventors’ genius. Miles says these underline the video’s key message – that knowledge is wealth and ideas are gold, but only if they are owned, controlled and protected.
True to their brand, James & Wells has maintained a casual and irreverent tone to the video, but behind the humour the video delivers an important message – New Zealand can no longer rely on commodity products, and should instead look to high value technology as the future.
James & Wells partner Ceri Wells says the recent further slump in dairy prices once again reminds us how vulnerable the New Zealand economy is to price fluctuations for commodity products.
“It’s alarming that our most valuable exports are renewable commodity items – dairy, meat, logs and oil – and the message needs to get through that New Zealand Inc must diversify and start seriously encouraging and supporting innovation,” he says.
“But Kiwis just don’t seem to be able to get away from striving to sell a commodity for less and less – surely not a recipe for long term success.”
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