Get to know Living Wage employer Gusto.film

16th July 2020
We love chatting to Living Wage employers and it’s particularly interesting to hear how they are pivoting and adapting to the current Covid situation. We recently caught up with Tom Staniford, Creative Director of Gusto.film, to find out more about how his business is doing.


What is Gusto.film and what kind of work do you make?

Gusto.film is the creative video agency for brands that make life better. We produce video content that uncaps the human spirit and work with brands that do the same for their customers. But zoom into a day to day level and that typically involves strategy development, concept creation and then delivering the best medium for the project. This could be a recipe how-to, a cinematic brand story, a live-stream from a mountain or just a very simple playful animation.


Can you tell us about a cool project you’ve worked on recently?

At the moment we’re fiercely producing an abundance of video content to help the University of Sussex welcome back their students, reassure them it’s safe, and celebrate (remotely) with those graduating. Over lockdown we teamed up with Samaritans Brighton to remind those who were living alone that they do have someone to talk to when things get tough. We spent days coming up with overly elaborate ideas for the visual before realising less was more in this case – so we filmed a single, slow moving shot of a girl in distress waiting to finally speak to someone. 

And in true lockdown style, this was my partner acting and the location was our bedroom! Samaritans HQ then picked it up and decided to run it as a TV ad. See it here.

Why is paying a Living Wage important to your business?

More than anything, I believe paying a fair wage makes your team feel valued. If our team were paid just enough to survive they’d be less likely to be leading a happy life… and a happy colleague is more creative, more productive and more loyal. We’re super transparent about our company finances with the team – I could image nothing worse than knowing the company you’re working for is making big bucks whilst you’re being paid pittance. When we as a company do well, the team does well.

How are you adapting to the pandemic and are there any revelations going into the future?

We adapted pretty quickly to the pandemic as we’re a nimble size team. We are back out into the throngs of filming and productions, following strict guidelines that are there to protect our team and clients. Otherwise we’re working from home and co-working space once a week until our main office re-opens.  

The pandemic has given us a chance to get out from inside of our jar and properly look at the label on the front of our company and what our mission is… apart from just “make videos.” I’m super excited to now be able to articulate that ethos and use that to inform hiring decisions, the kind of clients we work with, how we approach productions in future. That ethos is to max out potential, commit with whole of heart and essentially uncap the human spirit. 

Thanks for chatting to us Tom!