Sign in with Google Dominie Fearn is the founder of The Wild Hare Group, which brings organic ready-meals to major U.K. retailers.
At The Wild Hare, our brand is deeply rooted in the British countryside. For us, the idea of a hare is central to our identity: they thrive when the right farming practices are in place, which is when you’ll see them darting through thriving landscapes.
We’ve always wanted to bring this vision to life in our marketing, but the high costs and long timelines of traditional video production were a significant hurdle.
Bringing a classic vision to life
Earlier this year, we needed a way to create compelling, story-driven content without breaking the bank. We had a limited budget for this — £20,000 — half of which was to cover concepting, production, social strategy, posting, and analysis, and half of which was for creative. On top of that, we only had a tight two-week deadline to coincide with our launch in 53 Tesco locations across the U.K.. This meant we needed a cost-effective solution, in a hurry.
Our dream campaign was an animated series of videos inspired by the very British charm of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. We wanted Hector the Hare, our “cheeky chappy” brand mascot, to connect with our audience on the same kind of nostalgic and emotional level.
Our campaign’s primary goal was to create a range of fun, visually engaging assets for social media that featured Hector, while concisely conveying the brand’s key messages.
We quickly found out we couldn’t use traditional animation, given our time and budget constraints. So, we faced a dilemma: stick to static images that didn’t fully capture our brand’s vision, or risk a huge portion of our marketing budget on a single promotional video.
Pulling the rabbit out of the AI hat
We were introduced to Veo 3 by No Biscuits, our marketing partner. This AI video generation tool was a game-changer. It allowed us to brief our concept directly into the platform while having real human input at every stage. The No Biscuits team wrote prompts describing the style, the character, and the scenes we envisioned, and the AI did the rest.
This balance in creative oversight came as no surprise to Ben Malbon, Google’s vice president of brand and creative for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He says: “With Veo 3 you can get straight into the making. It really excels at adhering to detailed prompts, which allows for precise control over the generated video’s content, style and action — and it’s very good at keeping characters consistent.”
The process began by feeding an illustration of Hector into Gemini to generate a still image and a detailed description of the character. This information was then used in Veo 3 to create the animated video clips.
As James Cooper, creative director and co-founder of No Biscuits, told us: “Thirty seconds after our first prompt it was clear that this idea would work.”
Traditionally, this part of the process alone would have taken two to three weeks, as No Biscuits searched for the right partner, tied down a scope with fees and timelines and then got some prototypes back. We would then give feedback, and the animation would go through a series of revisions before we received the final product.
But with Veo 3, No Biscuits sent us the first video within just 30 minutes. And I loved it. In a single afternoon, they generated over 20 unique video assets, from short GIFs to 30-second story-driven clips. Interestingly, the texture of the hair and the hopping motion were the most difficult parts to get right.
As to the learning process, Flo Heiss, fellow creative director and co-founder of No Biscuits, explained: “We refined the initial prompts, largely by simplifying them. For example, we removed the word ‘chap’ to prevent the AI from generating human-like features.”
Veo 3 allowed us to bypass the need for live-action shoots, lengthy adjustment processes, and complex animation studios. This was all achieved at less than 10% of the cost of a single animated video from a traditional agency and in a fraction of the time. The AI perfectly captured the whimsical, quintessentially British feel we were aiming for with minimal adjustments.
Watch the video
Our bunny-fide truth
Our success with Veo 3 taught us two crucial lessons:
- Choose the right format for each channel. AI is brilliant for converting ideas into platform-native content. This means we were able to create vertical videos for social media from the jump, ensuring they felt authentic and engaging.
- Give the AI a clear creative vision. AI truly excels at bringing imaginative, animated concepts to life. Which is why our idea was a perfect fit, and Veo 3 delivered beautifully, with minimal iterations. By leaning into the fantasy element of Hector the Hare as an anthropomorphic brand ambassador, we played to the technology’s strengths.
Working with Veo 3 has fundamentally changed our approach to content creation, and opened up a range of new possibilities that we previously were unable to consider as a smaller brand. We have received positive feedback on this campaign, and are looking forward to its wider rollout.
For those hesitant to take the first step, I would say: lean into AI and start experimenting.
