Octopus Energy is one of the fastest-growing energy companies in the UK, and they’ve trusted me and my agency, Indigo Productions, with their story for the best part of a decade: award-winning recruitment films, multi-camera coverage of their annual Octopalooza festival, and an eight-episode podcast series taken from concept to release.
The film that kicked off Octopus Energy’s recruitment series. I directed it documentary-style, built entirely around real staff rather than actors, so the engineers, operations people and customer-service candidates watching would recognise themselves in it.
Octopus Energy needed recruitment video that could keep pace with how fast they were hiring, without ever tipping into corporate showreel territory. They brought in Indigo to make films that would actually persuade the right engineering, operations and customer-service candidates to apply. The brief grew from there, into annual festival coverage and eventually long-form podcast production. The good briefs tend to grow.
I’ve directed every piece of this work personally, across three very different formats. The recruitment films are shot documentary-style, built around real staff rather than actors. Octopalooza gets the full crew treatment, multiple cameras and all, because it’s a proper festival and deserves to be filmed like one. And when Octopus wanted a podcast, I produced Women in Engineering from the ground up: eight episodes built on honest conversation rather than scripted messaging. Different formats, same instinct: tell it straight and trust the audience.
The recruitment films have picked up awards at the FIRM, ISE and Recruiter Awards. Octopalooza coverage is now a fixture in Octopus’s calendar. The podcast landed with measurable impact on applications from the very audience it was made for. But the number I’m proudest of is the years. Octopus keep coming back to Indigo when the brief is interesting and the bar is high, and clients don’t do that by accident.