Made in East Anglia, Watched Around the World: SubMotion’s Creative Production EAMA Win

Q: Huge congratulations! How did it feel to win Excellence in Creative Production on Friday night?

A: To be recognised for your work is always such a wonderful feeling. But when that recognition comes from your peers; the people who inspire you, companies making their own waves, clients and friends – it really does hit differently.

To accept an award in a category that represents exactly what we strive for at SubMotion, and to do it on home turf, was such a joy.

Protect & Lubricate was created by an amazingly talented team who came together purely for the love of making something – no client brief, no restrictions, just a shared desire to create something we thought was funny. So for all the blood, sweat and tears that went into it, this was a pretty wonderful pat on the back!

Q: Where did the idea for the WD-40 spec ad come from?

A: After a stint producing some emotionally heavy charity films, we decided we needed some light relief!

We’d never really experimented with comedy before, so we set ourselves the challenge of creating a short digital spec ad for global household brand WD-40. Writer and Director Richard Prendergast came up with a script packed with British humour, innuendo and a bit of tongue-in-cheek misdirection, all wrapped up in a very simple narrative. Rich loves writing a twist, but would audiences on social stick around to see the narrative through? We’d soon find out!

Like swimming naked in the sea, sometimes you need to make something with no restrictions and no inhibitions! We just wanted to make something that made us laugh and gave the team complete creative freedom. It’s easy to forget, when you work from brief to brief, why you got into this industry in the first place – and for us, that’s a true love of creative filmmaking.

Q: What made you want to experiment with comedy and narrative storytelling for such a well-known household brand?

A: We love narrative storytelling at SubMotion, regardless of whether we’re making a documentary, charity film or commercial. Ultimately, we want people to feel something. We’ve established we can bring tears, but genuine laughter and comedy are harder to achieve – and perhaps even more powerful in these rocky times.

WD-40 was also perfect because everybody knows it, globally. You don’t need to spend precious seconds explaining what the product is or what it does, which gave us permission to play with the audience’s expectations – and, of course, it’s an easy one to have fun with!

We wanted to make an advert that didn’t immediately feel like an advert. Something where the product is integral to the joke, but the story is what keeps you watching.

It’s risky when we’re constantly told something needs to happen in the first 9, 6, 3 or 0.1 seconds – but I think we sometimes underestimate the staying power of an audience when good storytelling gives them a reason to stick around.

Above: Rachel and Richard Prendergast giving their acceptance speech at the 2026 East Anglian Marketing Awards ceremony.

Q: How did the team go from the initial idea to the finished film?

A: Very much in the same way we approach our commissioned work – except when no one is getting paid, it’s paramount you don’t waste anyone’s time with poor planning. And make sure there is ample food!

Richard wrote the script, and from there we treated it like any other production: developing the creative, casting, finding the right location, building the visual language and working out how to land the joke without giving it away too early.

We pulled together a brilliant team of people who were willing to give their time and talent because they believed in the idea. That was a huge part of what made it special. Everyone was there because they genuinely wanted to make something great.

Then, as always, an enormous amount of work happened in post. Comedy is so dependent on timing – sometimes a few frames can be the difference between a joke landing or not – so the edit, sound, grade and finishing were every bit as important as the shoot itself. In his excitement (and possibly his nerves), Rich was editing the first cut the very next morning!

 Q: What was the biggest creative or production challenge you faced?

A: Firstly, probably the fact that it was self-funded, with the team working for love and food – hardly helpful when it comes to paying the bills! So the only real way to thank everyone, outside of those two things, was to produce something they could be genuinely proud of, and that would ideally add something valuable to their own careers and portfolios.

Secondly, it was creating something that showcased high-end advertising production quality, had a narrative that landed and was genuinely funny – with very limited resources, six crew and just 1.5 filming days. No pressure!

Creatively, the biggest challenge was probably trusting the joke. Comedy is terrifying because you can think something is hilarious in a room with five people, spend weeks making it, put it on the internet and discover nobody else agrees. Urgh, the embarrassment would be crippling!

In fact, just the day before posting the video online, Rich had a creative wobble and convinced himself it wasn’t funny, didn’t look good and that we should just can the project. This was one of the few occasions when I, as producer, decided to ignore him.

Thankfully, on this occasion, he was so wrong.

Q: The film has generated more than 50 million views globally – did you ever expect it to achieve that level of reach?

A: Absolutely not!

We knew we’d made something we loved, and we hoped it might get a bit of attention, but there is absolutely no world in which we expected more than 50 million views.

Watching it take off was completely surreal. It hit around 1.5 million views in the first 72 hours on our own channels, and then it just kept travelling – being shared, reposted and picked up by audiences all over the world.

For a little spec ad made in Norfolk with no media spend behind it, watching it organically reach tens of millions of people has been extraordinary.

And perhaps the nicest part is that it proved the original instinct: if you make something people genuinely want to watch, they’ll do the distribution for you.

Rachel’s Advice for entering awards

Q: What do you think makes people stop scrolling and actually watch something?

A: I wish I knew the exact formula – we’d bottle it!

But I think audiences are incredibly savvy now. They know when they’re being advertised to, and there’s an enormous amount of content competing for their attention.

For us, story has to come first. Give somebody a reason to be curious. Make them laugh, surprise them, move them, confuse them for a moment – just make them want to know what happens next.

Protect & Lubricate doesn’t ask you to care about WD-40. It asks you to care about what’s happening between two people, and then lets the product become part of the payoff.

Sometimes I think the best way to make an advert people want to watch is to stop thinking about making an advert and start thinking about making something worth watching. Scenarios and characters people can relate to, leaning into familiar tropes and playing with character stereotypes are all things audiences can digest incredibly quickly – so when you turn those expectations on their head, they feel like they’ve earned the reward.

Q: What does it mean to have creative work from East Anglia recognised on this stage?

A: A huge amount. We’re incredibly proud to be based in East Anglia, and there’s some phenomenal creative talent here.

You absolutely do not need to be in London to create work capable of reaching a global audience. This film was conceived, produced and made by people from this region, and it’s subsequently been watched around the world. Great storytelling has zero link to location. The laughs we have thinking up creative ideas from our garden office in Old Catton should be proof of that!

There’s a brilliant creative community here, and awards like the EAMAs give us an opportunity to celebrate it together and shout a little louder about the work being made on our doorstep.

Q: What advice would you give to someone considering entering the EAMAs in 2027?

A: Do it! Absolutely don’t hesitate for a second.

I think we’re all guilty of finishing one project and immediately racing onto the next without stopping to acknowledge what we’ve actually achieved.

Entering awards forces you to do that. To look back at the work, remind yourself what went into it and recognise the people who helped make it happen.

And don’t assume your work isn’t big enough, your company isn’t big enough or that somebody else deserves to be there more than you. Put the work in the room and let the judges decide.

Scary? Yes. Humbling? Also yes. But worst case, you spend an evening surrounded by brilliant people from our region, in a nice outfit, eating yummy food. Best case, you end up slightly stunned on a stage on Friday night holding an award – with absolutely no planned speech… eek!

Why We’re Sharing This

We created the EAMAs to shine a brighter light on the brilliant marketing, creative work and talent coming out of our region. SubMotion’s story is a perfect example of why that matters – a Norfolk-made piece of creative work, produced by an East Anglian team, going on to reach audiences all over the world. We want to celebrate that work, give the people behind it the recognition they deserve, and show the wider industry exactly what East Anglia is capable of.

The 2027 EAMAs will be back next year, and we can’t wait to discover, celebrate and share more stories from the incredible marketers and creative teams across our region.