Atlantis approached us with a very clear challenge. How do you bring to life Dubai’s iconic hotel and resort in a fresh and different way, showcasing everything from the multitude of restaurants to the quality of the rooms, from the stunning waterpark to the late night entertainment, weddings to conferences, all without resorting to cliché?

We spent a couple of days in Atlantis for the briefing, soaking in the atmosphere and participating as a consumer. And the insight came from that immersion process. We realised that visiting Atlantis was all about discovery. And who better to bring alive discovery than kids?

The idea we developed was ‘When Kids Discover Atlantis’. Simple and effective. It allowed us to see the resort through fresh eyes, show lots of benefits and re-intepret the experience in a very different way. We suggested shooting 20 short films, each focussing on a different element of the Atlantis resort and each dramatising the discovery from a child’s POV. We decided to base each film on a fact – which was then seen from a kid’s perspective. So for instance the fact that Atlantis is home to 65,000 marine animals led to the idea of seeing a young girl trying to count them all and falling asleep just before finishing. And the fact that Saffron has 50 chefs making over 200 dishes so you could eat in the restaurant every day for a year and never have the same combination twice led to us showing a boy eating lots of different meals – a brilliant platform to dramatise variety being the spice of life.

Executionally this is the perfect model for how Horse’s Mouth works.  20 short films written, directed, edited and finished by a very small team of Howard, Paul, Adam and a PA and editor.  We wrote the scripts and had them approved, then shot for two weeks in Atlantis – aiming to shoot two a day plus pick-ups. We worked as a micro-crew across the whole resort using everything from a high end Red camera to a range of Go-Pros for stop frame and POV in Aquaventure.

A very happy client, millions of YouTube views, re-usable content and a load of new visitors to Atlantis.