We craft a series of films to launch explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ brand ambassadorship for company TMF

Brand ambassador films

TMF asked us to produce a series of short films to promote the appointment of their new brand ambassador, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

TMF, one of the leading providers of global business services, helps companies expand into new markets and countries.

They identified key brand values that unite them with Sir Ranulph.

Those values are: recognition of local knowledge, building a team of experts and conquering new territories.

A lifetime of expeditions

The first film in the series is an overview of Sir Ranulph’s many achievements.

On a chilly autumn day, we headed to Exmoor to film Sir Ranulph pulling tyres across the moors, a gruelling training regime he has returned to time and time again whilst training for polar expeditions.

We edited this new footage in with archive footage of Sir Ranulph’s expeditions to create a short film about his achievements.

Included is our own footage we filmed whilst on expedition with Sir Ranulph in Nepal for the Everest expedition and the Sahara Desert for the Marathon Des Sables, Sahara. Watch below.

A lifetime of stories

Sir Ranulph has been described by the Guinness Book of World Records as, ‘The world’s greatest living explorer.’

And with a lifetime of leading expeditions comes a lifetime of awe-inspiring stories and leadership insight.

We wanted to unearth stories that reflected the TMF brand values whilst capturing an intimate, behind the scenes look at his life.

Searching for stories

We dug deep into Sir Ranulph’s archive of footage and photographs dating back to the 1960s.

We also looked through our own footage and photographs from a decade of filming Ranulph Fiennes’ expeditions.

We identified exciting stories and moments that would engage an audience and illustrate TMF’s key brand values.

Storytelling with memorabilia and treasured objects

Ranulph Fiennes’ headquarters is full of fascinating memorabilia and photographs.

We chose significant items and images from seminal moments in his life as prompts for our storytelling.

For example, nestling unassumingly on the bookshelf in his office sits the small globe that Ginny Fiennes, Sir Ranulph’s late wife, had from her school days.

Almost unbelievably this toy was used to plan the ground-breaking Transglobe Expedition.

It still has the wobbly red crayon line on it from 1972 when Ginny drew the proposed route for their groundbreaking expedition.

From small ideas, big dreams grow

This small, unremarkable globe sparked a remarkable 100,000-mile journey across the Sahara via Timbucktu, swamps, and jungles of Mali and the Ivory Coast, and over the huge unexplored crevasse fields in Antarctica.

In this short film, Sir Ranulph talks about the importance of meticulous planning, of never giving up and of always having a dream.

Facing your fears

Sir Ranulph talks about the importance of learning from your mistakes and facing your fears.

Working with experts

It took a team of 52 people who were experts in their field to ensure that the Transglobe expedition was successful.

In this film, Sir Ranulph talks about working with local experts, in particular how a local pilot helped them from the air by spotting routes through the ice floes and subsequently out of the North-West Passage.

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Photo credit: hero image by Mike Goldwater/Fieldcraft Studios