Ryobi Generates New Buzz for Its Garden Range with Nifty Little Bee in Latest TVC

If one wanted to show the world from a bee’s point-of-view, who would you turn to? That was the question that Fenton Stephens put to director Justin McMillan when briefing him on the new Ryobi Garden television campaign. The answer? Recruit a two-time world champion drone pilot and spend hours mapping flight paths through a variety of suburban gardens.

The resulting film is a charming, topsy-turvy adventure that follows a bee as it fills its pollen sacs and then takes the long route home to its rooftop hive. Along the way, Maverick - a nickname bestowed to the tiny hero - takes detours through a number of backyards and interacts with a collection of gardeners, all of whom are using their Ryobi tools to create beautiful outdoor spaces.

“With our extensive range of cordless power garden tools, we have a solution for all types of yards in all sizes of homes. We needed a concept that would allow us to showcase a number of gardens while still being a single, cohesive story that positions RYOBI as an authority for all gardens. By using our bee character, dubbed “Maverick”, we’ve found a neat solution and a new spokes-creature.”, said Kon Romios, Ryobi’s GM of marketing.

With a storyline that could have come straight from a Pixar short, it was obvious that the sound design and music was going to play a major role in highlighting the action and creating emotion. For this task, Rodney Lowe from Production Alley was engaged to create the soundscape and composer Bryony Marks, who wrote the music for Ryobi’s long-running ONE+ campaign, was given free-reign to let her imagination soar.

What made this collaborative experience all the more special was the social distancing factor. While the concept called for a bee zooming around gardens great and small, all the pre-production, client meetings, brainstorming sessions and even the shoot day supervision were all conducted over Zoom, a very 2020 experience. This included a still shoot with Brisbane-based photographer Damien Bredberg that happened in conjunction with the filming.

“This production threw up plenty of challenges; the biggest being having to supervise the shoot remotely from Victoria as it happened in Queensland. Despite this wrinkle, we’re thrilled with the result and can’t wait to introduce gardeners of all varieties to the Ryobi range and our fuzzy little friend,” said Alex Fenton, chief creative officer of Fenton Stephens.

The 'All Gardens Great & Small' campaign will also be supported with print, outdoor and digital executions.