Project: The Kid & The Machine, Series B Announcement & Product Launch
Creative + Production: TigerLily
Paid Media: None. Zero. All organic.
The Challenge
Tavus tapped TigerLily to create a short film to relaunch their brand, announce a $40M Series B round of funding, and launch their newest product. The film drove an 10x increase in product demos, garnered 1.9M organic views, and delivered a 5:1 ROI in the first week.
All without spending a single dollar on paid media.
10x+ product demos and sign-ups
300%+ website traffic vs. prior weekly average
5:1 campaign ROI realized in the first week
Creative Development
The Brief
Tavus is building emotionally intelligent AI. They had a big round to announce and new capabilities to show the world. What they didn’t want was another founder-talking-to-camera video or a product walkthrough that nobody shares. They called us to figure out something better.
Strategic Approach
Why Narrative Beats Explainer
Working closely with the founders, we wrote and produced The Kid & The Machine, a narrative short film that throws back to the halcyon days of computing. Instead of explaining what Tavus does, we gave their technology a human story. People don’t share feature lists. They share things they feel something about.
We owned the whole thing: creative development, storyboarding, animatics, production, post-production editing, VFX, color and finishing. Then we built the rollout—social teasers, a trailer cut, and the hero film, phased across platforms for organic distribution.
Results
All organic. No paid media.
3x in new enterprise customer deals
3x in pending deals closed on launch
10+ new investor meetings in week one
“The feedback & results has been SO amazing. Thank you TigerLily for going on this journey with us.”
“This video is better than 99% of our music videos.”
— Alex Pall, The Chainsmokers / Mantis VC
“We need a full Netflix original on this.”
“Best product launch video I’ve ever seen.”
“Great creative work only happens when the client is as invested in the vision as the agency — and Tavus understood that from day one. Their conviction gave every decision a backbone. There was no second-guessing, no retreating to safe ground. That trust gave us the freedom to authentically capture the wonder of early computing and use it to point forward. Because the best work doesn't just communicate. It reminds people why they got excited in the first place.”
— Lisel Larson, Creative Director, Eicoff / AAF-JAX Judges Award Final
The Outcome
The client greenlit episode 2.
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