A hero film for the University of Sussex’s undergraduate recruitment campaign, shot in Brighton and built to cut through the noise of endless choice and engage prospective students with a more immersive, experience-led approach.
University of Sussex
Gusto Film
Bobby Eccles
TVC / VOD
Socials
60s Hero
30s TVC
3 x 15s Socials
7 weeks
Subtitle
The Brief
The University of Sussex came to us to create the hero film for their 2027 undergraduate awareness and recruitment campaign: Right Here, Right Now.
The film needed to do more than introduce the new brand. It had to act as the creative backbone for the entire campaign, generating flexible footage and ideas that could travel across multiple platforms, from a 60–90” hero film to TV placements, BVOD pause ads and a suite of social-first cutdowns.
The challenge was to cut through a crowded and often overwhelming decision-making process. For prospective students, choosing a university isn’t a single moment, it’s an endless scroll of options, opinions and pressure. Rather than competing with that noise, the aim was to reflect it, and then break through it with something more immediate and experiential.
At its core, the brief was about bringing the “Right Here, Right Now” message to life in a way that felt distinctive, flexible and genuinely engaging for a digitally native audience.
The Approach
We approached the film by leaning into the reality of how this audience already consumes content, fast, fragmented and often overwhelming.
Rather than competing with that environment, we used it. The idea was to meet the viewer in a familiar space and then shift the experience, pulling them out of passive scrolling and into something more immersive and engaging.
Creatively, that meant building a device that could hold attention quickly, move at pace and sustain interest across multiple formats. The tone needed to feel energetic and native to digital platforms, while still delivering a level of craft and control that holds up in longer-form broadcast placements.
Authenticity was key. Instead of relying on scripted messaging, we layered in real student voices to give the film a sense of truth and immediacy, balancing that with a structured narrative to keep it coherent and purposeful.
From a production perspective, the focus was on flexibility. The concept was designed from the outset to scale across formats, ensuring the same core idea could work just as effectively in a 60–90” hero film as it could in 15-second social cutdowns or BVOD placements.The result is a piece that doesn’t just talk to its audience, but meets them on their terms, using the language and rhythm they’re already immersed in, and then taking them somewhere more engaging.
The Result
The final film delivers an energetic, immersive take on the university recruitment video, one that feels native to how its audience already consumes content, while offering something more engaging than traditional campaign messaging.
Shot across Brighton and the Sussex campus, the film captures a sense of place alongside student experience, grounding the campaign in something real and recognisable.
By building the campaign around a single, flexible creative device, the film works effectively across multiple formats and platforms without losing its core idea.
A distinctive, scalable piece of work that positions Sussex as confident enough to do things differently, and invites prospective students to step inside rather than just scroll past
Subtitle
"Thanks everyone for all their work on this project! It's so amazing. It's super. We're all delighted 🤩 "
Want a film like this?
As a specialist team of nimble creatives we’re uniquely positioned to move with the ebbs and flows of internal business demands
Subtitle
Bobby Eccles
60s Hero
30s TVC
3 x 15s Socials
Subtitle
Explore some of our similar projects:
