Keyy Productions celebrated 5 years in business in 2021! Holy smokes! When we think back to how it all started as a husband and wife team of two, to now having 6 employees plus a wider team of production crew, it makes us pretty damn proud.

We wanted to share some of our favourite moments + milestones from 2021, our 5th year in business, because the end of the year is a great time to reflect on what our team has achieved.

We encourage you to do the same! Share those goals you've kicked and tell us all about your achievements. Tis the season for celebration, after all...

Our Keyy Milestones of 2021:

Our team grew by two!

We welcomed not one, but TWO new team members, Caitlin and Ibnu. Let us introduce them to you:

Caitlin Lopez, Client Relationship Manager

With a background of (are you ready for it?) professional acting, directing, writing, producing, teaching and makeup artistry, Caitlin has a wide range of experience and tools under her belt.

Caitlin loves meeting and working with new people; her customer service knowledge is vast and proves to be a valuable asset when connecting with others. She believes authenticity is Keyy... #punintended, and believes in the art of active listening.

You can find Caitlin creating her own original content on the weekend and collaborating with like-minded creatives, bringing to life narratives with a powerful message at its core!

Fun Fact: Self-care is where it’s at! When Caitlin isn’t being a social little butterfly, you can find her getting lost in a TV show or movie, with a nice glass of red, wearing her LED Light mask, accompanied by her little cat companion Daisy.

Ibnu Zein, Videographer + Editor

Ibnu is a Videographer and Editor at Keyy Productions with an extensive background in video production.

He lives to be creative and channels that energy in his work.

When not behind the camera or a computer screen, you can find him screaming obscenities at his TV in the early hours of the morning watching his beloved football team - Tottenham Hotspur. [Side note: Ibnu is also a big UFC fan, which has been greatly celebrated by Rhys!]

Welcome to the team Caitlin and Ibnu!

We held our first ever webinar

You'd think we'd all be Zoom'd out by now, but alas, webinars are still having a big moment and we decided 2021 was the perfect time to share our expertise with our network. So we teamed up with content expert, Annie Wylie from ReachOut Australia to chat all things Safe Storytelling. We covered content in this space, the duty of care required when using lived experience or personal stories in marketing + comms campaigns, and how to do this safely.

Things we learnt along the way while making our first webinar:

• You'll need to create so many graphics for many different platforms, emails, landing pages, social posts, and all of them will be different dimensions.
• You will text the entire team "Woohoo! We got one!" when you get your first webinar sign up. Many more will come, but the first one offers the most relief and excitement.
• You will realise the recording you promised to send through the day after the webinar will need to be edited and turned around in less than 24 hours, and you forgot to warn your Head of Production.. (sorry Rhys!)

All-in-all, it was a mega team effort and a super fun project to work on together. We enjoyed it so much, we've got a bunch more webinars planned for 2022, so stay tuned!

Watch the Safe Storytelling webinar here:

We made our first ever Instagram Reel

Reels exploded in 2021, so we took the leap and created our first ever Instagram Reel. As a video production company it took us a while to figure out our way-in to reels. We were questioning things like: does it matter if the footage isn't the professional quality we deliver on a daily basis? What do we have to contribute to the content overload? What do all the buttons even do?

And then one day, Samm, our Communications + Engagement coordinator bit the bullet and threw one together and BAM! Engagement. It performed way better than expected, and was actually not that scary at all.

As with most marketing efforts, the only way to figure out what works for your brand is to put stuff out there, test and adjust based on your analytics. So the sooner you start with reels, the quicker you'll find your feet.

If you've been waiting to tackle this new form of content, take this as your sign to have a go at reels in 2022.

Go to our Instagram to see our first few Reels 👀

We had a Play Day

As a creative agency with a very creative team, we decided to create space and time in our schedules to work on non-client work with the sole purpose of Having. Fun.

Our first ever Play Day saw us use confetti, chocolate sauce, polaroids, cupcakes and cocktails, and we created 21 social media content videos that we shared with our community for free. You can download them here.

But guess what. One of our cards corrupted and we lost some of our favourite takes. This is everyone's worst nightmare and has never happened with client footage before, so was it the universe trying to tell us to stop having so much fun and get back to work? We'll never know. But it was a great lesson in letting go of expectations and outcomes and embracing what the day was all about: play.

Here's one of our favourite behind-the-scenes moments of Bridget getting confetti'd.

We worked with some of our dream clients

We were stoked to work with some amazing organisations in the care and support sectors in 2021, including Black Dog Institute, MS Australia, Life Education (omg, Healthy Harold!), GO Foundation, NAPCAN, NSW Health, and so many other great businesses.

To be very (too?) candid, some of these organisations have been on our radar for years, so it was very exciting to finally be able to make content with them. One of the key values at Keyy is relationships, and being able to work with great people at great organisations doing great things, was SO GREAT! We can't wait to see who we get to work with in 2022.

We created a mailable webcam kit (and couriered it all across NSW)

I don't know if you heard about this, but there was a 'lil lockdown in NSW in 2021. But #contentdemand waits for no one (not even Covid), and so we created a mailable webcam kit that could be couriered to regional and remote NSW to allow us to interview people entirely remotely from our HQ in Sydney. And then we made this very satisfying instructional explainer video to teach people how to set it up properly.

This webcam kit has travelled far and wide to 10 different locations (including one over the border in Victoria), and delivers quality footage without the need to travel an entire crew across the country. Easy! But dealing with multiple couriers, AirTaskers, and delivery drivers? Well, that's a story for another time...

Final wrap up of 2021

Well, we did it. We all made it through our 5th year of business bigger and better than we could've imagined. Thank you to everyone who was a part of it.

We thought it was only fitting we immortalised this year with a video, so please watch and enjoy, and see you in 2022!