RS · Brand campaign · 2026
RS: Be Bold
A brand campaign for an audience that felt left behind.
- Client
- RS
- Type
- Brand Campaign
- Year
- 2026
The film
Be Bold, the campaign film. More from this campaign.
The problem
RS had grown into a global distributor of high-quality components, however its content had not grown with it; it carried neither the range of the brand nor the standard of the work it enabled.
What they needed was a brand awareness campaign that showed both. The difficulty is who it had to reach. Engineers, makers and innovators judge advertising by the same standard they judge their own work, which is an unusually high bar and an unusually fast one. They can read a poorly researched ad in seconds, and once they have, nothing after will be enough to convince them otherwise.
One insight decided the whole campaign
Our audience research kept returning to the same thing. The engineers, makers and innovators who reach for RS share one quality above all others: the courage to trust that they will find the solution, however hard the problem is.
That is the campaign. Not the catalogue, not the stock levels, not next-day delivery, but instead the disposition of the person reaching for the part.
We filmed the people who are already using RS, not the parts RS sells
Three teams, all supported by RS: VanDijk-Racing Powerboats, competing in Zapcat racing in Belgium, Drone Team Twente in the Netherlands, and c-cube.
We filmed the work, the setbacks and the unguarded reactions: the material B2B advertising almost never shows, because it is the material that cannot be scripted. The parts appear where they genuinely belong in what is being built, rather than at intervals.
The execution was deliberately B2C-grade for a B2B audience: cinematic film, FPV drone work, an original score, motion graphics, and out-of-home and social cutdowns across four markets in their own languages.
A year of pre-production before a single frame
The campaign took a full year of preparation before anything was shot. We embedded ourselves in RS’s world; interviewing their engineers, their marketing team and the maker communities they sponsor, to understand precisely who the campaign was for.
There are no shortcuts with this audience. The depth was not optional, it was mandatory.
What was delivered
- A hero commercial in 1:1, 4:5, 9:16 and 16:9
- Every format in four languages: English, French, Dutch and Flemish
- Three individual stories: Drone Team Twente, Zapcat and c-cube
- 15 branded static campaign assets
- Cinematic film and FPV drone footage
- An original score, composed in-house
- Motion graphics and titling
From the shoot
Frequently asked questions
Who produced the RS Be Bold campaign?
DOT Video Agency produced Be Bold for RS, a B2C-grade brand campaign aimed at a B2B audience. DOT filmed three teams RS sponsors: Drone Team Twente, Zapcat and c-cube.
Why film a distributor's customers instead of its products?
Because the people who actually reach for the parts are engineers, makers and hobbyists, and a film pitched at procurement does not speak to them. So the campaign filmed three teams who build with RS components rather than filming the components. An engineer watching someone build a racing drone recognises their own work. A catalogue film only reaches someone who has already decided to buy.
What does a multi-market campaign like this cost?
A commercial or campaign from DOT runs €10.000 to €50.000. Every format was built natively in four languages rather than subtitled afterwards, which is a production decision before it is a budget one. Our price bands are published for every service.
Tijmen van Grieken, co-owner, DOT
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