Te Tari Tūtai
1 million+ views in 3 months
Online marketing campaign, designed to make te reo Māori fun, easy and automatic
Roles / Capabilities
Writer, Director, Motion Designer, Animator, Artist, Marketing Manager, Social Media Manager, Paid Ads, Community Management
The Brief
Objective
Create a social media-centric series that helps viewers to learn and engage with te reo Māori in a way that’s fun, easy and unintimidating.
Challenge
Many of our target audience struggle with whakamā (shame) around not knowing their language, meaning they immediately disengage with Māori-language content.
Key Constraints
The cost of producing an action comedy is prohibitively high, compounded by the fact that the target audience is very small, making it even harder to justify large budgets.
The Solution
Solution
Create a high-octane comedic series, that uses a very easy level of Māori language, so that viewers can laugh, enjoy themselves and feel like they’re already pretty fluent in te reo Māori. Using original hand drawings and real actors’ performances, we employed AI-powered performance capture to speed up production times, thus keeping costs very low.
Every clip was optimised to every social media platform where we did organic marketing as well as paid ads through Meta Business Suite.
Ownership Summary
Created the action comedy concept and characters, wrote the script in te reo Māori, directed the filming in front of a green screen, edited the episodes, hand-drew the character drawings, managed the AI-powered performance capture, composited the scenes, and completed motion graphics and sound design. Ran the marketing campaign from end to end: ideated the creative concepts, optimised clips for all social media platforms, managed organic growth and community engagement, and managed paid ad campaigns.
Outcome
Over just three months of Season 2, we exceeded 1 million views (total across all platforms). Other results included a licensing offer from Whakaata Māori (Māori Television), ongoing revenue through merchandise and Patreon, an article by RNZ and shoutouts and remixes on TikTok, Instagram and Reddit.
Attribution
Production Company
Pēnei Productions