Stonegate Pubs | Pulse Studio

Project Overview

When Stonegate Group wanted to recruit new pub operators for its Craft Union estate, they approached Pulse Studio to create a series of documentary-style recruitment films centred around real operators and the communities they serve.

Rather than producing a traditional recruitment advert, the campaign followed genuine Craft Union operators through their everyday lives, giving prospective applicants an authentic look at what running a community pub is really like.

This film tells the story of Jackie, operator of the Blue Anchor in Bermondsey, capturing everything from quieter moments with regulars to busy events filled with football, live music and bingo.

Filmed across multiple days in London, the finished content combined interviews, observational filming and real customer stories to create a recruitment film built around people, personality and the reality of the role.

Project

Documentary Recruitment Film Series

Client

Stonegate Group

What We Did

Recruitment Video Production, Documentary Video Production, Interviews, Social Video Production

The Brief: Show What Running a Pub Is Really Like

Craft Union wanted recruitment content that felt genuine rather than promotional.

The objective wasn’t simply to tell potential operators why they should join Craft Union. The campaign needed to give viewers an inside look at the role by following someone already doing it.

Jackie and the Blue Anchor provided exactly that opportunity.

As well as running the pub, Jackie had become an important figure within its local community. Capturing that relationship gave us a way to communicate both the practical reality of becoming an operator and the more personal reasons someone might want to do it.

The production focused on:

A real day in the life of a Craft Union operator
The responsibilities involved in running a pub
Jackie’s relationship with her regular customers
The importance of community
Live entertainment and sporting events
The variety involved in the operator role
The rewards and challenges of running a venue
Why someone might choose to become a Craft Union operator

The aim was to help prospective applicants picture themselves in the role, rather than simply presenting them with another recruitment message.

A Documentary, Not a Recruitment Advert

From the beginning, we wanted the series to feel closer to a short documentary than a conventional recruitment video.

Rather than relying on a presenter, scripted voiceover or direct sales messaging, Jackie became the narrator of her own story.

Our interview explored what brought her to the Blue Anchor, what her typical day looked like, what she found rewarding and the relationships she’d developed with the people who regularly visited the pub.

We also interviewed customers themselves.

This gave us another perspective on Jackie and the role she played, allowing the film to demonstrate the impact of the operator rather than relying solely on Jackie or Craft Union to describe it.

It’s an approach we regularly use in our recruitment video production projects: find the genuine stories behind a role and allow the people experiencing them to do the talking.

Showing the Role Through Real Moments

One of the challenges with recruitment marketing is giving candidates an honest sense of what a role actually involves. For Craft Union, that meant capturing both sides of life as an operator — the everyday responsibilities of running the venue alongside the relationships, events and community that make the role rewarding.

We therefore filmed observationally throughout the Blue Anchor, capturing Jackie opening the pub, serving customers, interacting with regulars and hosting busy events including football, bingo and live entertainment. Rather than heavily directing these sequences, our crew worked around the natural activity within the pub.

That helped the finished film retain the authenticity of a documentary while still giving us the visual variety required to create an engaging recruitment film. For our recruitment video production projects, this type of real-world footage can be particularly valuable. It allows potential candidates to see the job being done, rather than relying solely on an employer’s description of the role.

Recruitment Content With Personality

Craft Union didn’t want the finished film to feel overly polished or corporate. The personality of Jackie, her customers and the Blue Anchor needed to remain at the centre of the story. That meant leaving room for humour, emotion and spontaneous moments alongside the more structured recruitment messaging.

The result was a film capable of communicating important information about becoming an operator without feeling like someone was reading from a recruitment brochure.

For employers, this can be an important distinction.

Candidates increasingly want to understand the reality of an organisation before applying — its people, culture, environment and expectations. Using documentary-style corporate video production can give them access to those things while still allowing the employer’s key messages to emerge naturally through the story.

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One Story. Multiple Recruitment Assets.

The main documentary formed part of a wider recruitment campaign for Craft Union.

Alongside the 1–3 minute hero film, the production also created:

Two 15-second social media edits
An event-focused short-form video
A community-focused short-form video
A library of still photography featuring Jackie, customers and the Blue Anchor

Planning those outputs before filming meant the production could generate a wider bank of recruitment content rather than a single standalone film.

The shorter edits could introduce different elements of the role across social media while directing interested candidates towards the wider Craft Union recruitment campaign.

It’s the same approach we use within our social media video production work: plan the campaign as a collection of assets from the beginning rather than trying to create everything from one finished master video afterwards.

The Finished Stonegate Recruitment Films

Outcomes

The finished film gave Stonegate and Craft Union a recruitment asset built around a real operator and her genuine experience of the role.

Rather than explaining the Craft Union opportunity entirely through marketing copy, prospective applicants could follow Jackie through different aspects of her working life and hear directly from the people around her.

The combination of interview-led storytelling and observational footage allowed the film to communicate both the responsibilities involved in running a pub and some of the less tangible aspects of the opportunity — particularly independence, personality, relationships and community.

The additional short-form edits and photography also gave the recruitment team a wider bank of content that could be used across the campaign.

Results

The Blue Anchor documentary became one film within a wider series of operator stories produced for Craft Union, allowing different people, locations and experiences to communicate the recruitment proposition.

Rather than relying on one generic employer-brand film to speak to every potential applicant, the format gave Craft Union the opportunity to build its recruitment campaign around multiple genuine examples of people already doing the job.

The project demonstrates how documentary storytelling can turn recruitment content into something candidates may actually want to watch — while still communicating the information and reassurance they need before considering an application.

Planning a Recruitment Video Campaign?

When you’re competing for the right people, a job description can only communicate so much.

Recruitment video can show prospective candidates the people, culture, working environment and reality of the role, while existing employees or operators can provide credible first-hand reasons for joining your organisation.

For larger recruitment campaigns, a series of individual employee or operator stories can go even further — allowing candidates to see different roles, personalities, locations and career paths rather than trying to communicate everything through one film.

At Pulse Studio, we create recruitment video production for organisations looking to attract candidates through real employee and workplace stories, from individual recruitment films to multi-video employer-brand campaigns.

If you’re planning a recruitment campaign and want to show candidates what working with your organisation is actually like, get in touch with our team to discuss your project.