Friday, 3 March 2017

Twist and Shout's 2016 Year In Review

2016 was a rollercoaster of a year for everyone, and it was no different for  us. This was a brand-building year for Twist & Shout. We were less production heavy in 2016 as we were reaching out and connecting with customers and industries on a face-to-face level.

We invested heavily in events this year. We flew to Portland, Oregon and joined people and businesses from all walks of life for the 5th annual World Domination Summit. We sponsored and spoke at the B2B Summit, where 850 of the best minds in B2B marketing came descended on London. We even went out onto the high seas, boarding a cruise ship with marketing professionals from all over the country at the 24th annual Richmond Marketing Forum.

We went out into the world and showed people why comedy is the best communicator. We physically showed them why comedy is the best marketing tool. And it’s much more fun to SEE someone laugh so hard they blow coffee out of their, than to hear about it later on in an e-mail.

Attending these events and meeting people, facilitated LOTS of customer feedback. We learned what does and doesn’t work right there on the “shop floor” so to speak, and we weave that feedback right into product development.

We’ve enjoyed creating new seasons for our sister company, Twist & Shout Media. We were back inside doing porridge and making the 4th Season of Tuesdays With Bernie, the show with the breakout approach to bribery and corruption awareness training. Did spending so long filming behind bars change the T&S crew? It’s hard to say, but we do now refer to cigarettes as “snout”.

Bernie wasn’t the only one doing a four-stretch in 2016. Twist & Shout Media’s smash-hit infosec training sitcom Restricted Intelligence went into production of its 4th Season. It’s been tremendous fun getting to shape and develop these characters during their journeys in the infosec world.

2016 also saw the launch of a spin-off series from Restricted Intelligence. Helping parents to combat the problems of raising a constantly online generation, Parental Control is a free web-series that delivers awareness training through through the medium of sitcoms. Check out the first episode right here


Working with the kid on Parental Control is great fun, mainly because they’re the children of our Glorious Leader Jim, and we’re contractually obliged to say that. But Parental Control wasn’t the only time we broke one of the Golden Rules Of Showbiz and worked with youngsters.

The RANT conferences are some of the biggest cybersecurity and infosec networking events in the UK, and when attending in 2016 we decided to bring something very special with us. We re-created the cybersecurity industry … but with children. We cast three precocious and talented youngsters as the CISO, Security Consultant and Infosec Manager of a top international company, and had them recreate a budget meeting.

We presented our little film to the infosec professionals and it was the smash-hit of the RANT conference, lighting up our social media with praise. Check it out for yourselves!



Not content with merely the medium of video, 2016 was also the year we launched our very own podcast! The episodes are a series of chats between our two Creative Directors, Rob McCollum and Jim Shields. Whilst originally conceived as being discussions solely about upcoming and ongoing projects, the episodes usually end up being broader conversations between Rob and Jim discussing B2B and comedy marketing as a whole. Check it out here.


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