Case Study: A Stanley Story with PR Agency Owner Daisy Hoppen

The Stanley Stories are the heritage hydration brand’s ongoing storytelling campaign.

While the viral travel cup, the Quencher, has been making the rounds on social media, the Stanley Europe team are finding that some of its products are increasingly being seen as must-have fashion accessories.

Capitalising off this success, Stanley launched their newest must-have product – The Cross Bottle. The wearable drinkware features all the same appeal as their other hydration products: a decent capacity, insulation to keep your drink cool, and a good variety of colours. But the Cross Bottle is something a little different, as its launch signalled a brand positioning shift towards the fashion industry.

For the protagonist of the film, Daisy Hoppen was an obvious choice to interview – a key figure in the fashion industry, she runs a successful PR agency, working with a wide variety of clients including Ganni, Shrimps, Stone Island and Pleasing.

We’d worked with Stanley on a series of Built For Life short films a couple of years ago. They rebooted the Stanley Stories campaign in 2024, refocusing the content for their evolving brand direction and target audience. They reached out to us to help them rethink this brand activation.

Producing a multi-location shoot in London

The key to an engaging short story is authenticity; and naturally, any first-time mother and agency owner is going to lead a hectic life. That’s why we arranged to shoot in a few locations for Daisy’s story, showing her life at home, at work and on the move. 

These themes helped guide the narrative for the deliverables too. We could have mini-edits focusing on Daisy’s life with her family and at work. We chose locations that were authentic to Daisy – a park she genuinely walks in with her husband and her baby, a restaurant she loves, and her recently renovated home.

There was a lot to consider though – like being mindful of shooting in her family home, and working around her childcare schedule and time constraints. Our crew met on a late summer’s day in London where we spent the day with Daisy, ticking off the shots on our deliverables list. 

We streamlined our pre-production process to respect Daisy’s busy schedule. Permits were secured and locations were scouted ahead of time, meaning the day could run as smoothly as possible. We also dialled in the plan for the day on two brief production calls with Daisy and the client. This was essential, given the time constraints we were working under. We only had six hours on the day to capture all the necessary footage for the film.

Managing the organic and paid social strategy

After the post-production phase was complete, which involved working alongside Stanley and other relevant stakeholders, we rolled out our organic and paid social media campaign.

We produced a variety of assets to post over the launch period, including both video and stills. We launched the hero post using Instagram’s collaboration feature. For Stanley, we could boost the positive sentiment from Daisy’s existing followers. And for Daisy, she could leverage off Stanley’s larger social media presence to increase her own visibility online.

For the paid media campaign, our focus was top of the funnel adverts: video view campaigns on YouTube, along with reach and engagement optimisations on Meta and TikTok. We plugged in all the Daisy Hoppen content we had posted organically in order to reach and engage both existing and new audiences. People who engaged with content could then be remarketed to for the launch of Stanley’s latest product, the Cross Bottle.

Measuring the success of a content-first campaign

The campaign was highly successful, reaching over 653,000 people with 122,004 profile visits. Over 1,500 new TikTok followers were attributed to the Daisy Hoppen campaign, helping Stanley reach their yearly KPIs for the channel. 26.95% of people watching the video played it in full, a great measure of how well the skippable ad content resonated with the audience.

Have a look at our other case studies.

Need help producing your next storytelling piece? Get in touch.