Richard Beer

Creative Director

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Work

Award Highlights

About Me

Interview with The Lovie Awards

I am a lucky son of a bitch. That much I know.

It took me a long time to find that elusive segment of life's Venn diagram where "Things I love", "Things I'm good at" and "Things people will give me money for" overlap.

But here I am: telling stories. A writer and creative director who looks forward to Monday mornings.

Contact me at:


The National Autistic Society -
Too Much Information

A campaign to change perception of autism forever
More than 99% of people have heard of autism, but very few actually understand it. The National Autistic Society wanted to raise awareness, challenge public attitudes and change behaviour. We created “Too Much Information” a 360 multi channel campaign to do just that.

Launching with ‘Can you make it to the end?’ an emotionally powerful video which showed, through the eyes of an autistic child, what it’s like to deal with sensory overload, the film earned headlines and coverage everywhere from the Daily Mail and Unilad to Mumsnet – even meriting a mention at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Most importantly, though, the NAS achieved 50% of their yearly sign-up target in just 10 days. The film was so well received, a cinematic cut was played across the UK in Empire and Odeon cinemas without a penny of media spend.

Partnering with The Guardian, we reached a huge audience beyond YouTube and Facebook, with the TMI Guardian hub receiving so much traffic that it earned its way onto The Guardian’s homepage, the first paid-for content hub ever to do so.

The campaign was also supported by a 360 degree autism film that was used in schools and taken on an experiential tour of the country using Samsung Gear VR headsets.

Launch film views: 56M+
Launch film shares: 1M+
Growth of Awareness of NAS: 26%
Behavioural change (NFP): 16%
Headlines: 80+ Articles, The Guardian (Front Page x2), Daily Mail, Unilad, Mumsnet
Coverage: BBC TV & Radio 6, Discussed in Prime Minister's Question Time

Save The Children -
Still The Most Shocking Second A Day

The sequel to the biggest charity viral video ever made
Two years on from the original "Most Shocking Second a Day", everything had changed for refugees in Europe. Whereas in 2014, the objective had been to get the plight of Syria's children into the headlines, now it was about pushing back against the increasingly inhumane narrative that was labelling this "swarm" of refugees as a threat to Europe.

Launched with a comprehensive PR, media and seeding strategy the film inspired headlines and studio news reports across the world, quickly accumulating in excess of 18M views across multiple platforms with an engagement rate of 4.24%. The film saw a record amount of Likes on Save The Children's Facebook page, doubled their Twitter following and increased web traffic to their main site by 62%.

In the period after release, Paypal donations to the charity increased 143% and regular donations by 62%.

Picking up a year or so after the first film left off, the sequel follows Lily as she is driven by violence from her new home in a camp for internally displaced refugees, crosses the channel in a dangerously unsafe boat and fights to survive in a hostile Europe.

Still the Most Shocking has also brought in the precious metal, so far having won:

Clio Awards x2
British Arrow Craft Awards x5
Shots Awards x3
LIA Awards x2
LOVIE Award
Epica Award
Ciclope Award
Art of Creativity Award

Greenpeace -
LEGO: Everything is NOT Awesome!

The viral video that broke up a $65M partnership
There's a common psychological tactic employed by less ethical businesses. It involves donating to good causes, sponsoring the arts and partnering with brands in good ethical standing in order to distract people from the fairly heinous stuff the business gets up to behind the scenes.

Shell is one such business, and one of its critical pieces of PR activity was a partnership with much-loved toy brand LEGO. Greenpeace asked us to create a film to spearhead a campaign to break up this partnership and shine a harsh, unforgiving light on Shell's plans to drill for oil in the fragile Arctic.

Our film of LEGO figures, set to a haunting, melancholy parody of The LEGO Movie theme tune, inspired so much public support that LEGO was forced to dump Shell as a marketing partner, ending their 50-year-long, £65m deal. Thus drowning the oil company’s marketing objectives in an irresistible tide of views, shares and press coverage.

Industry awards include a much-coveted D&AD White Pencil, a Webby, a Lovie, 2 Cannes Lions, a DADI Chairman's award and several others.

NSPCC -
#ListenToYourSelfie

Helping reassure teens it's ok to say no
Teens are increasingly worried about online sexual abuse, with ChildLine seeing a troubling 24% rise in relevant counselling sessions in the last year alone. But it's a difficult subject to talk about online, let alone create something viral that kids will share.

So we created the #ListenToYourSelfie campaign that included two films: The Party, aimed at girls to warn them of the dangers of peer pressure, especially from older men, and The Game, aimed at boys just getting to grips with their sexuality and the dangers they can face online.

The campaign changed ChildLine’s tone of voice, allowed them speak to an older youth audience and showed teens there is place to turn in the face of all sorts of issues (from sex, to bullying, to depression).

“The ChildLine videos are more helpful than other campaigns… they show actual situations, real people and what those situations look like.”

To accompany the hero content we created range of tailored campaign assets that sat across digital platform, from Facebook and YouTube to Instagram and Snapchat.

For Instagram, we created images, voice boxes, messenger style gifs and teaser videos that gave ChildLine’s Instagram following a huge boost of over 100% in just two weeks. And our Snapchat vertical video teasers and story exceeded the Snapchat swipe up rate (benchmark 5%) with a rate of 29%.

In addition, the campaign received more than 100 media hits including from The Times, The Guardian and Sky News.

Most importantly, the ChildLine website saw a 400% uplift in traffic and three times as many new visitors.

A focus group of boys and girls aged 11-14 had a hugely positive response to both videos. They found the videos easy to understand, engaging and relatable. Importantly, it would make them think twice about how they would act if faced with either situation.

Facebook Creative X -
More Together brand campaign


So let's talk about Facebook and brand authenticity.

I had the genuine pleasure of working at Facebook Creative X for 6 months in 2019 on a UK version of their global More Together campaign. As part of a diverse team of talented people, I helped create an ambitious and creative series of videos about genuine Facebook groups that captured one of Facebook's core strengths: the chance to meet new people who share a love for the same thing you do, and bond over it.

It was an awesome campaign featuring some beautiful shots and touching moments that took us from Battle Rapping in an abandoned Manchester warehouse to diving into freezing water on a winter's morning in the Lake District. We met dozens of amazing, passionate people and worked through Christmas to edit, tweak and score dozens of pieces of social content.

And then, after 6 months of effort, everything got chucked in the bin.

Why? Because focus groups were watching Facebook brand content and not realising it was for Facebook. Brand Linkage was off the bottom of the charts.

When brands create content, one of the most important qualities the content has to have is authenticity. It must FEEL like the brand itself. Nike does this extremely well. When you see a Nike advert, you know it's a Nike advert. That mix of personal ambition, determination and hard work that comprises "Just Do It" comes through in everything they make. You see an emotional story of an athlete triumphing against the odds and your brain goes "Ah, Nike." To the extent, actually, that its a problem for competitors like Adidas.

This is because the feeling people have about Nike (i.e. its brand) is completely aligned with the feeling the content inspires in them.

Which means that when Facebook tries to make content about how fun, fulfilling and joyful Facebook Groups can be, and inspires people to feel uplifted and motivated to find their own group... it doesn't really feel like Facebook.

The problem isn't the content, it's the distance between the content and the brand. It's the headlines about genocide in Myanmar, Cambridge Analytica, online privacy, fake news, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump. It's all negative. And until Facebook can convince people that they're one of the good guys, that they are a responsible connector of people around the globe, then the happy, joyful content is always going to have a problem with brand linkage.

So how can a brand with a reputation for playing down its role in social decay and amplifying the darker side of humanity remind people that, actually, there are some awesome things about Facebook too?.

There's no easy fix. No simple post-production answer. And just making the logo bigger (which is what Facebook tried for their 2019 Emmies More Together ad - right) is just going to get in the way of the content.

Like I said, I loved working at Facebook. It was one of the nicest working environments I've ever experienced. But it doesn't matter what you or your employees think you stand for - it matters what your customers think you stand for. That's why branding doesn't work if it's not authentic.