Animation still from Cheshire West & Chester Council project by Tricks Studio, depicting clear, impactful 2D character design elements.

Creating an animated hero video telling the story of working for the local government

Working at Cheshire West and Chester council is more than any one individual job description, it’s local people helping to better the lives of local people. To help Tell It Better, we used a character based narrative focused on the different motivations of people who worked at the council.

Client
Cheshire West and Chester Council
Release
March 2025
Industry
Local Government

The opportunity

When people think about working for their local council, they might think of a typical job role - a traffic warden, a counsellor, a street sweeper. They might not think about an archivist, a town planner or an archeologist. They probably wouldn’t consider that working for their local council could help transform lives of their fellow citizens, could help give back to the community, or could give them real career opportunities and progression. 

Our animated video needed to showcase and signpost the different underlying emotions that lay beneath the obvious job description labels that someone might have when looking at a job posting or a recruitment page.

What we did

The animation needed to be short and to the point. Our audience was extremely vast, with the video being used as a key asset on recruitment pages for over 100 different occupations. We didn’t want to  focus on a single job role, rather speak to the overall motivations of someone looking for a new career, or a change of career. 

Using a creative style from an existing recruitment campaign, we redesigned the characters for animation and movement. We identified three key intro scenes that could hook and intrigue the audience, staying vague enough to allow the audience to see themselves as the character, whilst being specific enough to keep it within the bounds of a public sector role.

The video was being used online primarily on recruitment and job posting web pages, so we knew our audience had some attention, but wanted to keep the video light on detail but strong on identity and feeling. With just a minute of run time, we devised different voices and personas to help tell the story, and a narrator to tie it all together.

The outcome

Our video is being used as a hero asset for new and existing job postings and recruitment pages for roles across the borough.

Like many brand videos, the key indicator of success was more around perception and awareness rather than any one performance KPI.

Our client and the Head of HR were extremely pleased with the outcome.

Wonderful, very pleased
Mark Gillooley

Mark Gillooley

Apprenticeship & Inclusive Employment Co-ordinator, Human Resources

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