As we reach the end of the year and productive meetings give way to festive piss ups, sorry, networking events, it feels like a good time to take stock of the ground we’ve covered as a company on the asphalt of 2023.
At times the road has felt more like a racetrack, and the vehicle that is Indigo 24 has pitted for several significant upgrades as we’ve moved from “stock” to a fully fledged production services talent agency hybrid.
Metaphors aside, we’ve had the opportunity to produce work for some great organisations over the past 12 months; some established household names - see Campari, Dune Group, Charles Tyrwhitt, Frieze - and some more aspirational - see CBI, Marble, Climate Bonds Initiative.
Revisiting our business plan has been as illuminating as it is fun, taking note of some aspirations which have all but been forgotten (and clearly weren’t that important anyway), and some that have been well and truly manifested as we’ve kept several plates spinning at various speeds whilst traveling at breakneck pace, as all those who have navigated the early years of a startup will testify to.
We hit our financial targets for the year by the end of Q3, around the same time we issued our 100th project invoice. In hindsight perhaps this deserved a little more fanfare than the brief acknowledgment it garnered in our weekly general meeting, but someone had to keep those plates spinning, whilst our depleting hair stocks could surely be let down at Christmas anyway.
Fiscal victories aside, it has always been an aspiration of ours as both a company and as individuals, to align ourselves with organisations and brands who aspire to create purpose driven campaigns. Naturally in these relatively early stages of our gestation we have taken on a broad dichotomy of clients to maintain momentum and subsidise our less than extravagant (for now) personal expenditures, however this concrete aspiration, for want of a better objective noun, has provided us with the opportunity to turn our skill set for storytelling to some truly inspirational causes.
Kicking off the year shooting for the Cartier Women’s Initiative in the chilly climes of Cambridgeshire and the even more baltic balkan state of Bulgaria, we worked alongside award winning documentary filmmaker Remi Bumstead to create content for 2 of the 32 nominees for their annual awards which “shined a light on the incredibly diverse forces for good tackling complex social and environmental challenges.”
We were thrilled to hear that one of our subjects, Iva Gumnishka, founder of Humans In The Loop, a hybrid social enterprise that employs conflict-affected and displaced individuals to provide human insight to artificial intelligence systems, was awarded 1st place in Europe. We’ll be back shooting with Remi and the CWI in January 2024.
In the corporate sector we maintained our relationship with Deutsche Bank, producing content not just for the Frieze art fairs, but also their Ocean Resilience Philanthropy Fund which focuses on advancing NbS to support ocean conservation and restoration initiatives. Whilst over at the Climate Bonds Initiative, a global organisation working to mobilise global capital for climate action, we produced content for their annual London conference and global subsidiaries. Always illuminating, it’s bolstering to see some of the biggest and most influential financial houses in the world working together to make investing in green bonds beneficial for everyone, not just those pulling the purse strings in the top 0.1%.
Our work in the F&B and fashion sectors have borne fruits too, most notably our ongoing relationships with Campari and Dune London, with both social media activations and posterity docu pieces a regular fixture of the Indigo 24 calendar, whilst our more recent allegiance with the UK arm of US organisation Farmers Footprint is set to provide a wealth of storytelling opportunity in 2024.
Their mission is to “inspire will and build capacity to collectively accelerate regenerative food systems as a means to restore human and planetary health”, and we’re thoroughly looking forward to telling stories about regenerative farming practices and the brands that are working proactively to shift the paradigm on the linear yet financially imbalanced supply chain between farm and table / clothes hanger / industry.
A goal of ours has always been to use our commercial endeavors to fund projects we are passionate about, and in January we start shooting our first feature length documentary, a co-production with artist Opake about mental health and addiction underpinned by his own struggles and subsequent success, shining a light on creativity as salvation with the ultimate goal of empowering others to overcome their demons. We are not alone.
So what does Indigo 24 look like in 2024? Who are we? Who are our clients, and why should you consider us when looking for an outfit to take your pictures and make your films?
Let’s start with the elevator pitch…
“Indigo 24 bridges production services with talent.
Our clients are brands and agencies looking for a complete solution for their film and photography needs, and we pride ourselves on our capacity for marrying the right talent to each brief whilst executing the production process from beginning to end.
We represent a host of Directors, Cinematographers, Producers and Photographers, with access to a broader network of creatives as and when the pitching process requires.
We tell stories we love through film and photography. Let’s tell some together.”
It’s a real zinger, right? If you haven’t madly pressed the ‘open-door’ button whilst awkwardly looking at the floor, ceiling, or anywhere else bar our earnest salespeople faces for that matter, then I suppose that’s a small win for the Indigo copywriting team (aka Company Directors, sales team, marketeers, DOP’s, editors, janitors etc…)
All jokes aside (funny because they’re true), we are truly excited by the possibilities that the future holds, and as we make progress the connection we feel to our ever developing code of ethics and the extended moral obligation we have to use our voice for good, particularly in the current geopolitical climate, our resolve only becomes more resolute.
From Indigo 24 we wish you a warm festive break and a fruitful start to 2024.
Over and out,
Charles & Mike
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