The day is 21st January, 2015… For many of the Simply66 team, this day was marked in their calendar as an exciting moment, but for a select few of our Virtual Receptionist team, this day was marked D-Day!
After weeks of discussion back and forth between Tom, Creative Advertiser at Simply66, and the team at North East based video production company, Candle & Bell, the stage was set. As the sun rose on a seasonally chilly January morning, no amount of coffee was sufficient to calm the nerves of the stars of our new promotional video. For they knew, as the phones began to ring, and the birds ceased to sing their morning song, the time had come for Candle & Bell to commence shooting.

“We thought long and hard about how best we could connect with our target audience. Simply66 is not just another run-of-the-mill, call centre based, call answering service, our girls have personality and charm that we wanted to ensure came across to any prospective customers – a video was our best shot at this”, explains Vicky, Head of Commercial at Simply66.
Under the stewardship of Maria Caruana Galizia (who’s resumé includes work on such TV success stories such as Sinbad and Game of Thrones), the filming got successfully underway. “At first I was worried about appearing on camera, but the Candle & Bell team helped ease my nerves as soon as we started shooting”, confessed Julia, one of Simply66’s Virtual Receptionists.
With Creative Catering supplying a delicious buffet, both the Simply66 and Candle & Bell teams were on form, creating a fantastic video portraying the brilliant atmosphere present in the Simly66 offices. However, as with every great video, comes a wonderfully funny outtakes video!
Behind the Scenes – Simply66 Promo Video Shoot from Candle & Bell on Vimeo.
Hilarious… We know, but come on, eye contact!
With takes kept to a minimum, and the production running smoothly, the shoot was wrapped early in the afternoon, when a fully audible sigh of relief was released within the Virtual Receptionist office, as discussed by Steph, another of our receptionists. “What began as a stressful day turned out to be quite fun and relaxed! Don’t get me wrong, I was delighted when it was over, but we were all happy with the work we did with Candle and Bell”, she said.
After the post-production process was completed, we were all very excited to see the final product. This called for an office-wide premiere! At Pebbletree HQ, the office gathered around the flatscreen, the popcorn was served, and, with the stars peering from the hands and scarves they used to cover their eyes, we all watched on with impressed eyes… A categorical success!
“It was everything we had hoped it would be. A professionally produced video that captured the very essence that makes our Simply66 team so different to the competition. We have a great service, provided by a great team of receptionists, and our aim was to make this clear to businesses who want a call answering service with a difference”, boasts Tom.
We hope you enjoy both the video and the outtakes as much as we have. If you would like to see more footage from the day, there is a selection of images below. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn where we will be posting both images and videos from the day, and other events in the future.
So if you are struggling to juggle answering your phones with the day-to-day running of your business, but are worried about automated responses, call centres or expensive contracts, you need not look any further… Leave it to us!