OnePlus

The challenge

OnePlus ran a student marketing competition. A friend and I entered it and won, which came with a month inside the company, and the chance to make the thing we'd pitched.

The idea

A day in the life of a student, made by a student.

Phone brands talk about phones. We made ninety seconds about a day: lectures, the walk home, the bits in between, with the phone in it the way a phone is actually in your day, rather than held up to camera.

The scribbles it started as.

The work

Concept and storyboards, co-created with a friend. Shot on the phone itself, which is why the rig matters: getting handheld footage to look deliberate rather than accidental took a proper setup, and we built one.

The rig, built to make handheld look deliberate.

Same rig, out on the street.

On shoot.

The kit, laid out.

OnePlus Europe's office, 2017.

It went out on OnePlus's own channel to promote a 10% student discount.

The results

~12M views. 216,000 likes. 9,231 comments. Entirely organic. It became the 8th most-viewed video on OnePlus's channel.

Then the founder of OnePlus tweeted about it and named us.

The founder's tweet, crediting us by handle.

That's the part I'd point at. Anyone can put a view count on a website. A screenshot of a company's founder crediting you by handle, in 2017, isn't something you can make up later.

I was very early in my career. It's still the biggest audience anything of mine has reached.