Touching Studio : An authentic touch to advertising｜以真心触动广告

When SHP+ met with creatives of the production house Touching Studio, we ended up not knowing about the company’s establishment in 2012, or its early days, or even the reason behind the company’s name, because for them—that’s all history. Touching Studio lives and operates in the present. And in this present, Touching Studio is a disruptive collective, populated by multi-tasking creatives, who rarely work with agencies, don’t actively approach clients, and help brands to resonate with the young audience without looking phony.

在采访了Touching Studio的创意人后，我们既没有了解到2012年该企业初创的情况，也不清楚他们早期的经历，以及品牌名称的背后故事都没问到，因为对他们来说，这些都是过去式。而Touching Studio是一家活在当下的公司。如今，Touching Studio是一个颠覆性的集体，由身兼数职的创意人士组成，他们极少与广告代理公司合作，也不积极开发客户，而是善于帮助品牌自然不落俗套地与年轻观众产生共鸣。

Executive producer Roy Ling and studio’s hotshot director Gerhan attempted to decode Touching Studio’s DNA for us. Roy did most of the talking, comfortable in the familiar role of the company’s spokesperson. The first thing he told us from the get-go is that Touching Studio is not a production house in its traditional meaning. They prefer to present as a “community” of like-minded creatives, who share the same values and have a common direction. “We have a Touching group chat, let’s say counting 25 people overall, and 10 as “close family”. Touching is like an equivalent of a music label, but for filmmaking, on a mission to give a platform for talents to grow”.

执行制片人Roy Ling和工作室导演Gerhan试图为我们解读了Touching Studio的DNA。作为工作室的发言人，Roy驾轻就熟地与我们侃侃而谈。谈话一开始，他便明确地告诉我们，从传统意义上来说，Touching Studio并非一家制片公司。他们更喜欢被称作为一个“社区”，一个由志同道合的创意人士组成的，拥有相同价值观和统一目标的集体。“我们有一个Touching的社群，大概二三十人，彼此更像是家人’ 。Touching有点像个音乐厂牌，但对于影视制作来说，它的使命是给有才华的年轻人一个成长的平台。”

The first thing you see on Touching’s website homepage is an apt slogan “We are born to tell stories”. Storytelling, the filmmaking genre which has enjoyed immense popularity in China relatively recently, manifests across their entire portfolio. Over the past few years, Touching has shot commercial films for brands like Champion, Oishi, Puma, Monster Energy and Nike to name a few. The majority of these campaigns is executed in storytelling creative and Gerhan’s name is on most of the credits. Like Roy, who might take on the roles of executive producer, post production director, or even an editor depending on the project, Gerhan is more often not only the director, but a creative director. Gerhan is from Inner Mongolia and came to filmmaking via design, editing, and later a passion project of shooting documentary-style videos for his friends. Many of who, like Gerhan himself, came from the Chinese subculture scene. A strong interest in organic melange of authenticity, Chinese culture and subculture in all its diversity are distinct markers of Gerhan’s style, and clearly in line with overall Touching Studio values.

打开Touching的网站主页，首先看到的是一句贴切的口号:“我们生来是讲故事的人。”近年来，讲故事类型的广告影片在中国广受欢迎，这也体现在他们的全部作品中。在过去的几年中，Touching为Champion、上好佳、彪马、Monster Energy和耐克等品牌都拍摄过广告短片。这些广告大多着重于故事创意，而Gerhan的名字则常常出现这些影片的片尾。根据具体项目，Roy可能会担任执行制片人、后期制作导演，甚至是剪辑师等角色，同Roy一样，Gerhan也身兼数职，不仅是导演他还常担任创意总监。Gerhan是内蒙人，他有设计和剪辑背景，后来因为帮朋友们拍摄纪录片而逐渐进入了影视制作行业。他们中的许多人，和Gerhan本人一样，都来自中国的亚文化场景。Gerhan风格的鲜明标志是对真实性、中国文化和亚文化多样性有机融合的强烈兴趣，这一独特风格也非常符合Touching Studio的整体价值。

Monster Energy

When we asked what was the studio’s most representative work, Roy paused for a moment, replying with “In the commercials, you can only input parts of you”. From the commercial films Touching did, the recent Yuanqi Senlin x Bilibili spot are the closest to the description. The local brand with a hefty goal to compete with Coca-Cola came to Touching Studio without a detailed brief, just giving a phrase “破土而出” (roughly translated as a metaphor for a breakthrough) and an unreal time frame. But for the Touching team a “mission impossible” of this sort seems like something of a norm – three days to come up with a concept and craft the final creative, couple days to locate and nail real artists, two days to shoot all of them in various locations— the team creates, executes and delivers fast.

当我们问及工作室最具代表性的作品是什么时，Roy停顿了一下，回答说：“在广告中，你只能表达你的一部分。” 而在Touching Studio过往的作品中，或许最具代表性的是近日的《Bilibili X 元気森林》。怀揣与可口可乐叫板的宏图大志，中国本土品牌元气森林找到了Touching Studio，他们没有具体的要求，只是给出了一句话：“破土而出”并要求在最短的时间内完成。但对Touching Studio这样的团队来说，完成“不可能完成的任务”似乎已经见怪不怪了——于是，三天之内出概念并打磨好最终创意，随后几天用来寻找和搞定真正的艺术家，两天之内完成在不同地点的拍摄 —— 这个团队创作迅速，执行老练，交付速度令人惊叹。

“We never find clients, we never sell/pitch. It’s mostly recommendation from past collaborations, I guess”, shares Roy. The kind of clients Touching works with don’t have time for bidding, and need to fully trust their production team. Some of the clients have agencies, but most don’t. “From the creative part, we don’t like to give many options, but would rather spend more time to understand the clients needs better. Then we present only one idea. If they agree— we continue developing it, so there’s no detours”, Roy continues.

“我们从不主动去开发客户，去销售或是争取什么。我感觉我们的客户来源多是过去合作伙伴的推荐，”Roy分享到。大多Touching的客户并没有招标的时间，他们需要一个可以完全信任的制片团队。有的客户有代理，但大多数并没有，“从创意的角度来看，我们不喜欢给出太多的选择，而是愿意花更多的时间去更好地了解客户的需求。之后我们只提出一个创意。如果客户喜欢我们就继续发展，这样就可以少走弯路了”，Roy告诉我们。

There’s no notion of a ‘dream client’ for Touching either, it’s more about a dream project.

The team views the limits of commercial filmmaking too restrictive and creatively craves more. For them, advertising is just a phase, and without other projects, they are not even comfortable calling themselves filmmakers. “You see, commercial works— we respect those jobs. But originally [filmmaking] comes from movie work. We haven’t made anything that could last forever. To us, we have this image, that director is someone like Spike Lee, someone big like that. We’re just problem-solvers. All advertising just solves problems”, continues Roy.

对Touching来说，也不存在什么“理想的客户”，只有“理想的项目”。他们认为商业广告制作的局限性太大，并渴望能有更多的创意方向。广告制作对他们来说，是职业生涯中的一个阶段，他们甚至不愿意称自己为Filmmakers。“你看，广告的确有价值，我们也尊重这份工作。但‘Filmmaking’这个词最早来自电影产业。而我们还没有创造出任何可以称得上是永恒的东西。对我们来说，我们总觉得，导演得是斯派克·李那样的创作者。我们只是解决问题的人。所有的广告只是解决问题而已”，Roy说到。

So we asked, if commercial films are just a phase that allows Touching Studio to practice skills, what is their actual end goal? In Roy’s words: “One goal is to establish a good relationship and trust with our clients, so we can have more creative freedom in their projects. The other goal is applying our skills to projects other than advertising— music videos, documentaries, and other visual storytelling”. Like the music video for Guizhou native YEHAIYAHAN, that won the prizes of Thunderdance, and Queen Palm International Film Festivals.

于是，我们问到：如果拍摄广告只是一个让Touching Studio打磨技巧的阶段，那么他们真正的最终目标又是什么呢？Roy解释说：“一个目标是与我们的客户建立良好的关系和信任，让我们在他们的项目中有更多的创作自由。另一个目标是将我们的技能应用于广告之外的音乐视频、纪录片以及其他视觉叙事的项目中去”。例如，拍摄贵州音乐人YEHAIYAHAN的MV，该MV获得了Thunderdance和Queen Palm International Film Festivals的奖项。

Chacha_Moonlight_Master

Touching Studio is a peculiar team of creatives. They seem to hold Chinese subculture, minority representation, cultural authenticity close to their heart, and this ethos shows in their works. They keep the attitude of intolerance to just replicate and fake their way through things. Instead they approach each project with a lot of background research and putting everything they have into creating something meaningful. They refuse to just superficially show whatever thing is in trend now. “We’re open to different flavor. It’s like shopping in a convenience store looking for drinks. Out of hundreds of options, you have to see what Touching Studio is. You know the flavor, maybe you want to drink it right away, or maybe try it later”.

Touching Studio是一个特立独行的创意团队。他们对于中国的亚文化、少数民族的代表性和文化的真实性始终保持靠近，这些精神又体现在他们的作品中。他们对于千篇一律的重复和虚伪的做事方式保持着不宽容的态度。相反，他们在每个项目上都做了大量的背景研究，并将他们所拥有的一切都全情投入到创造有意义的内容中。他们拒绝只在表面上肤浅地去追求当下潮流。“我们乐意去接受不同的口味。这就像在便利店买饮料一样。在数以百计的选择中，你必须对Touching Studio有所了解。你熟悉它的味道，或许你想马上喝一口，或许你会想着下次再来品尝”。