In a world flooded with content, the brands that break through aren’t just lucky – they know what will connect with their target audience and invest in content that really works for their brand.

The most important aspect of creating content that really cuts through is raising the levels. This could mean using recognised personalities or disruptive scripts, but more often than not, this means creating content that closely reflects the brand that’s producing it. Brands that are professional in nature need content that reflects this professionalism. Brands that sell exciting, cutting-edge products can never use content that’s boring. And it’s here that the production team makes the difference that matters.

From scripting, storyboarding, shoot planning, model selection, lighting, capture and editing, cutting corners means reducing the effectiveness and relevance of your content. There’s a huge amount of things to get right for a media project. We’ve explored some of the key factors below.

Pre-Production: Where Creative Meets Clarity

Before anyone picks up a camera, be sure to dive into the plan. This is where ideas are shaped, logistics are locked in, and the creative vision gets a blueprint.

More than just meetings and moodboards, these are the make-or-break activities on which everything else depends, including:

• Clear and accurate production plans. Clear goals, sharp brand insight, and creative direction that doesn’t leave anyone guessing.

• Locations and people that fit. Real, relatable, or a little bit wild – your creative assets can only work as they should with the right backdrop and people.

• Styling and art direction that serve the story. From wardrobe to props, every detail should add value to the final asset.

• Production logistics that keep things smooth. No last-minute chaos – just crisp call sheets, backup plans, and a team that’s ready for anything.

The result? A production plan that runs like a dream – and leaves space for spontaneous creative magic.

The Team: More Than Gear, It’s the People

Great gear is great. But the people behind it? That’s where the magic happens.

A seasoned crew brings more than just technical know-how. They bring instinct, emotional intelligence, and that energy that keeps everyone calm, creative, and on point – even when the pressure’s on.

They know how to:

• Make nervous talent feel like naturals.

• Spot the shot before it happens.

• Pivot quickly when the light changes or the weather surprises you.

• Capture the feeling – not just the frame.

When you’ve got the right team, it shows. In every smile, every angle, and every perfectly timed frame.

Post-Production: Where It All Comes Together

The shoot might be wrapped, but we’re just getting started. Post is where the raw footage gets shaped into a story. Whether it’s photography or video, this is where the tone gets locked, the colour sings, and every element comes together to create the final vision.

Some of the most important elements at this stage are:

• Colour grading that sets the mood. Cool, warm, bold or moody – whatever the style, the tone of your assets dictates much of how those that see them will feel.

• Retouching that really enhances. Just enough to elevate, but never enough to lose the human touch.

• Graphics and effects that add, not distract. Think motion design that guides the eye, rather than stealing the show.

• Sound that makes you really feel. Music, voiceover or sound effects – never just background noise, but part of the story.

Everything Matters

The most impactful media never comes from winging it. It comes from a process that respects both the vision and the viewer. From a team that knows how to prep, shoot, and edit with purpose. From people who care deeply about telling a story right.

If you’re looking to create content that does more than fill a feed – something that grabs attention, builds connections, and actually moves the needle – we’re here for it.

Watch our showreel here.

Get in touch and let’s make something great together!

As part of our ongoing growth, we’re thrilled to welcome three new team members to our media production, web development, and business development teams.

We welcome Tom Woolley as our Media Coordinator, Ollie Blasco as our Senior Web Developer, and Dan Retter as our Business Development Manager. Each of them brings their own unique skills and experiences, which will help us enhance our services and deliver even more innovative marketing solutions.

Meet our new team members.

Coming to us with a PR background, Tom, our new Media Coordinator, will oversee the planning, execution, and optimisation of photography and video content. His expertise will ensure our media production services deliver engaging visuals that drive results.

Ollie, our new Senior Web Developer, brings technical expertise to support the growing demand for our WordPress Plus web development service. He will focus on delivering functional, innovative digital experiences that enhance our clients’ online presence.

Finally, our new Business Development Manager, Dan, is well-known in the Midlands business community and will be instrumental in expanding our client base and building strong, lasting partnerships. His experience with the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce will help drive new opportunities for Jask.

We’re excited about the impact Tom, Ollie, and Dan will have on our team and look forward to an exciting year ahead.

Welcome to Jask 🤩

WordPress Websites… but better!

WordPress can sometimes get a bad rap, and it’s unwarranted. It is a fantastic and powerful CMS, but getting the most out of it requires considerable skill and knowledge.

And that’s where the problem lies – in the way many WordPress websites are built, not in the CMS itself.

A lack of technical ability, or “quick hacky” builds, often results in security issues, slow loading times, and a poor user experience for both site visitors and administrators.

So, we decided to create a solution!

Welcome to WP Plus, a new and enhanced website solution for organisations that need a professional website that performs for both their users and their business.

What is WP Plus?

A WP Plus website is a custom-built premium WordPress website that makes the most of the technology available.

WP Plus takes WordPress websites to the best standard they can be and is the ideal choice for ambitious businesses looking for a premium website solution that retains much of the backend familiarity and ease of use that makes WordPress such a popular option.

Did you know!!
61% of WordPress hacks are on sites running an outdated version 😱

What makes WP Plus a premium option?

This service is built from years of experience from our expert in-house team solving common technical issues that businesses using standard WordPress websites regularly face. Common issues include websites built with limited design and UX input, badly coded sites that are then difficult to maintain, sites that are built from restrictive templates or ‘page builders’, those that rely on the use of multiple plug-ins to support functionality, inadequate hosting setups, and a host of other poor practices.

WP Plus websites are custom-designed and hand-coded by our in-house team of skilled developers. This means they are fully secure, incredibly quick to load, and come with a guaranteed 99.9% uptime.

Our developers carefully customise and refine your CMS to work specifically for your needs. Using the latest technology, updates are as simple as dragging and dropping pre-styled content blocks before editing and posting.

Once launched, WP Plus websites are fully managed and supported by our in-house technical team and hosted in a bespoke environment tailored to your website. This eliminates the need for inferior third-party hosting, eliminating a range of common problems while increasing the site’s speed and security further. It also ensures that future changes can be made to the website quickly and hassle-free.

Did you know!!
52% of WordPress hacks are caused by poorly coded and unpatched plugins 😱

Why should your business opt for WP Plus?

WP Plus offers businesses the advantage of having an expert creative team work side-by-side with a highly skilled development team under the same roof. This means the creative, UX, and UI approach to a site will work seamlessly with back-end technicalities—a common problem when separate teams come together to work on the front end and the back end of a website.

There are no restrictive web templates or template builders involved in WP Plus sites, allowing our team of experts to code your website to fit perfectly with your requirements.

WP Plus websites are bespoke, lightning-fast, fully secure, a joy to update and future-proof, meaning they can grow with your business.

Fully managed, supported and hosted, a WP Plus site means you can sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge your website is in good hands. And if you ever need additional support, our team are just a phone call away.

For more information on WP Plus take a look here.

Our new LED Wall is ready to greet people to Jask Creative HQ 👋

Designed to spread a little joy, we all have our own video linked to our key fobs.

From videos of family members to clips of Knight Rider ⚡️, you can’t help but smile as you come into the office.

We also use it to show off our company showreel during the day and to play a personal greeting when clients come to visit.

And I can’t wait to see what will be playing over Christmas 🎄

In a word, it’s ace 🔥

And it took some building too. What started out as a spark of an idea was brought to life by our tech team, who basically made it up as they went along.

Ordering the parts from China with little to no documentation, our team had to work out how to safely satisfy the power requirements, how to handle the amount of data / processing required and use some seriously complicated software to drive the panels.

Once they’d figured all that out, they needed to devise a way to mount the panels using the skills/tools available. This meant mostly wood but with some custom-cut steel sheets to allow us to use magnets to align the 96 panels as seamlessly as possible.

Stats at a glance 😳

• 2m x 1.5m BIG!
• 96 LED matrix panels
• 786,432 individual LED’s
• 12 x 350W power supplies
• 720 amps at 5 volts at full brightness
• 50m of Ribbon cable

All in all a stellar achievement, well done to our tech team 🌟

What would you like playing when you come to visit? Let us know by dropping us a line.

As the old saying goes, “The pen is mightier than the sword”. Or in this case “The pencil is mightier than the abundance of design tools now at our disposal”. Or at least for idea generation, it can be.

The creative process has evolved massively, but sketching remains a crucial part of it.

Concepts often start life as a sketch, before becoming a reality

Technological advancements in graphic design software have been astonishing, and now with the augmentation of AI tools into design programmes, our old friend the pencil can seem like a relic, consigned to the back of the draw, gathering dust with its trusty companion the sketch pad.

In the creative space, however, keeping the idea process free and easy is crucial. So sharpen your pencils (or take the lid off your Sharpie), dust off your sketch pads and start drawing. It is as important for the modern-day designer as it was years ago.

Here’s why sketching still holds a critical place in the creative journey:

• Sketching is Unrestricted Creativity
  
  Sketching by hand provides the freedom to explore ideas without the constraints of digital tools, proving especially beneficial for logo creation, storyboarding, and advertising. It supports the evolution of ideas from their inception to the finished product.
  

• Sketching is Efficient
  
  The act of translating ideas onto paper with a pencil is significantly faster than mocking up concepts with design software, only to realise the concept doesn’t work. Sketching also allows you to engage clients early on in the creative process, ensuring they grasp the direction and concept of your projects from start to finish.
  

• Sketching Offers Versatility
  
  Sketching doesn’t confine you, and it doesn’t require exceptional artistic skills to be effective. It offers a versatile medium to express concepts, draft layouts, or even craft pitch presentations. Whether your sketches are simple doodles, or complex drawings, as long as they convey an idea or can be explained, they serve their purpose.
  

• Sketching Enhances Creative Thinking
  
  Stepping away from the screen and engaging in sketching sharpens your creative skills and allows ideas to flow freely, refreshing your vision.

For us as a creative agency, sketching is intertwined with all aspects of our work, whether digital or traditional.

We would encourage all creatives to pick up a pencil and sketch pad from time to time. You never know, you may just surprise yourself.

Let us know your thoughts on sketching by dropping us a line.

After nearly 10 happy years in Olton, we’ve made the move to our new offices in Solihull.

With ambitious growth plans and an ever expanding team, increasing our office space was a top priority for us. Continued demand from clients driven from a range of areas, including from our premium web build service we launched earlier this year – WP Plus+ has been driving our growth, and we’ve been lucky to secure such a fantastic location which allows us to better service our clients.

With 3,000sq ft of space, our new base means we can continue with our growth strategy across all areas of the agency. Our new offices are also home to our sister agency – the specialist sports and lifestyle team of Unmarked.

The whole Jask team worked together to create a space that everyone can benefit from. The new office includes breakout areas, a pool table, bespoke sound system and gaming area. We’re also very lucky to have The Farm pub and restaurant just next door – perfect for meetings, staff get togethers and client entertaining.

We’d love to welcome you to our new space. If you fancy a tour, a game of pool, or drink at The Farm – just speak to your account manager, or get in touch with Phil Kean.

This November we are celebrating 20 years in business! 🎉

Twenty years since Jask Creative was founded by Matt Ansell, Phil Kean, and Stuart Jordan, three school friends who had a vision to form an agency built on friendship, honesty and ‘doing it better’.

Two decades later, we are proud to now be one of the Midland’s most progressive creative agencies, boasting a 26 strong team and a diverse set of clients, including several household names.
 
Our three founders have been best friends since early childhood saying “respecting each other’s opinions and regular visits to the pub” is the secret behind their long-lasting friendship and professional bond.
 
However, it’s not always easy remaining best friends in business. So, after 20 years founders Stu, Phil and Matt give their tips and advice on how to make friendship and business work in harmony, for anyone considering taking a similar leap. 

Staying friends in business

Being business partners with your best friends can be a difficult but very rewarding journey. Here are 8 principals our founders champion, which they believe have helped them remain friends over the years 🙌🏻

Values

First and foremost, only set up a business with people who share the same values as you, otherwise your business will be torn apart by conflicting views. And above this these values need to be about fairness and the greater good of the business. There is nothing wrong with valuing personal success, but if a self-agenda or personal gain comes above everything else, it can pull your friendship apart when you are in business together.  

Trust

Like a successful marriage, a successful business partnership must be built on honesty. You must be able to 100% trust each other ⚠️

Commitment

At the start you need to make sure you’re at the same stage of life and can put in equal amounts of work. If only one of you is putting in the majority of the work, it can quickly lead to resentment and ultimately harm your friendship. 

Clarity

It’s crucial to define clear business roles, making sure everyone is doing the role they are good at and the work they enjoy. We’re all good at different things, so play to your strengths. 

Nurture

Understand your working relationship will be different to your social friendship. Work on both and be OK about this ⭐️

Communication

Set boundaries in the early days on how much to talk about work outside of work. There’s no point in pretending it won’t come up – it will – work is a major part of our lives. But in the early days it can dominate all your conversations, so set limits. After time these limits will be “felt” naturally. 

Forgiveness

Mistakes happen. But understand that when mistakes are made, your friend and business partner is doing the best they can, with the best intentions at heart. 

Acceptance

We all have certain traits that make us who we are. Some are good and some need work. Learn to develop and grow together, accepting each other’s key character traits. Remember nobody is perfect, we’re all just trying to be the best we can be 👏🏻

So would we recommend setting up a business with your best friend?

“Ultimately would I do it all again? Hell Yeah! So go for it!!”

Phil Kean – Client Services Director

You may have noticed, we’ve recently re-branded! Hope you love our new look as much as we do?

We’re often asked by clients how we tackle such a project, so we thought we’d write a quick account of the stages we went through to achieve where we are today. Happy Reading 🚀

Gaining Insight

It was important to us to understand what Jask meant to everyone who works here. We’ve always championed honesty, mutual respect and hard work, but were these felt as core values across the agency? And were we missing anything? What about our culture, our personality and how the agency feels to be part of?

What about how we looked, and how we came across to those outside the agency? Was this truly reflecting who we are?

Our first step was to canvas the opinion of everyone within the business, both through informal chats and through anonymous questionnaires to ensure we got an honest, unbiased picture from across the agency.

Following this we also canvassed the opinion of clients through anonymous questionnaires. It was important to understand how we are perceived externally, why clients choose to work with us, what they value in the services we provide, and how they see us as an agency.

Identifying Trends

Pulling this research together, we were able to identify key trends that crossed both internal and external audiences, which in turn fed into our brand story- helping to further define us as an agency. Read Our Story here

In ways it backed what we’d always felt, but also highlighted things people care about that we had taken for granted.

’No egos, a family vibe, teamwork, no fuss, get the job done, relaxed, down to earth, reliable, go the extra mile’

Creating a new set of brand values

This insight helped us create clarity in our messaging and build an updated set of brand values that truly reflect us as an agency ⚡️

Our values

• Collaborate – Everyone counts, we support each other
• Show Integrity – Doing the right thing matters
• Keep Positive – Give it your all and enjoy what you do 🙌🏻
• Think Creatively – There’s always a better way
• Talk Straight – Life’s complicated enough!

Creating a new visual identity

We also identified common trends around our visual identity:

’Need a new website, different green, less grey, less masculine, soften the look, some kind of devices, new colours’

This insight, coupled with research into wider creative trends and competitor research also helped us establish a creative direction that would better reflect our brand personality.

Key changes were:

• A new softer colour palette with a fresh and contemporary look
• Patterns and flourishes that reflect the creative nature of our agency
• Doodles and scribbles to humanise the brand and add personality
• Bold fonts to project confidence. Softer fonts for greater approachability
• Portray the family feel by showing the people who make up Team Jask 🤜🏻

“For me, the new Brand Style had to do two major things: Incorporate and satisfy the feedback from clients and our colleagues, but also reflect the growing up of the agency itself.”

Simon Lister – Art Director

Creating consistency

Once our new brand was established, we produced a concise set of guidelines and communicated it across the agency. Following this, the brand was rolled out across all on and off-line channels to create consistency across all touch points.

Building a new website

An integral part of our re-brand was the development of a new website. It was important that this not only carried the new brand identity, but also truly reflected the creativity and technical ability for which we are trusted by our clients. The website will now serve as a cornerstone to all the agency’s marketing activity, as well as being an important part of our identity as a whole.

BFS launches new campaign to highlight benefits of invoice finance

Independent SME funder, Bibby Financial Services (BFS), has launched its latest marketing campaign alongside Solihull-based marketing agency, Jask Creative, to highlight the benefits of Invoice Finance for larger businesses.

‘Funding UK Business Success Stories’ is a multichannel B2B marketing campaign designed to demonstrate BFS’s funding capability for Corporate businesses – those with turnover greater than 5m. Since March, the funder has helped SMEs to unlock more than 2.5bn via its invoice finance solutions.

“Our Corporate team recently celebrated a record month, providing more than 40m in new funding so we wanted to do something to celebrate the success stories behind the clients we support. More than ever, at this critical time for UK PLC, it’s important for businesses to understand how invoice finance can unlock cashflow and working capital, without them having to take on additional term debt. Our work with Jask Creative is designed to demonstrate the benefits of Invoice Finance and Asset Based Lending to a wider audience.“

Adam Park, UK Marketing Director at BFS

“With BFS, it’s immediately evident that client relationships are the cornerstone to their success as a funder. It was important to uncover the perspective of BFS’s clients first-hand, drawing out the emotion behind their stories – resulting in a powerful and uplifting campaign.”

Phil Kean, Client Services Director at Jask Creative

According to BFS’ latest Covid-19 Impact Study, more than two-fifths of businesses have been forced to take furlough leave, with half being paid later by customers. More than a quarter (28%) have suffered from bad debt. The same can be said for across the pond in America, they are in need too, and will look towards businesses such as L3 Funding to help business financial needs during this time. It is a critical and unpredictable time for businesses all across the world, with the pandemic having a major impact on most businesses, small and large. Now more than ever, businesses need that financial boost from investors, financial institutions, and the like, so that they are able to recover their losses and get back up on their feet. So, it comes as an advantage when business owners find that they are able to open accounts with merchant providers like Payment Savvy that offer high risk credit card processing so that even at a time when they are unsure of their place on the success ladder, they are still able to sustain themselves. Along with this, leveraging invoice financing options could let businesspeople everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.

Adam added: 

“Despite the significant challenges posed to UK SMEs in 2020, the Invoice Finance sector remains open for business with capacity to support more businesses. Jask Creative have developed a high-impact campaign that gets this message to a wider audience, across a variety of channels, and we’re looking forward to sharing these success stories over the coming weeks.”

Find out more about the campaign here.