The Isles of Scilly Steamship Group has been connecting Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly for over a hundred years.
They operate the lifeline transport link between the mainland and the islands: Scillonian III sailing from Penzance to St Mary’s, Skybus flights from Land’s End, Newquay, and Exeter, the freight service that keeps island life running, and Land’s End Airport itself.
It’s a company with real significance. Not just a travel brand, but the thread that holds an island community together.
We’ve been working with them since 2015. What started with the travel brand, Isles of Scilly Travel, has grown into a partnership that now spans the whole group. Destination campaigns, social content, corporate storytelling, launch marketing, and more recently, their Content Library. Over a decade of working together, and the relationship keeps evolving.
Every year, we produce a flagship destination film for Isles of Scilly Travel. It’s become a cornerstone of their annual marketing: a film that captures the full experience of travelling to the islands, from the Cornish coast to the first sight of Scilly on the horizon.
The journey is as much a part of the story as the destination itself. The anticipation of boarding Scillonian III at Penzance harbour. The moment the engines start and the Cornish coastline begins to fall away. Or the view from a Skybus Twin Otter as you climb above Land’s End and the islands appear below you, impossibly blue.
We film across spring and summer to capture the islands at their best. Aerial footage is always a focus: drone work over beaches, coves, and those stretches of turquoise water that make people do a double take when they realise this is still the UK.
In recent campaigns, we’ve brought real travellers and lifestyle creators on board to add fresh, authentic perspectives. Rather than scripted pieces to camera, the approach is personal and relatable: genuine reactions from people experiencing the islands for the first time, or falling in love with them all over again.
It’s a company with real significance. Not just a travel brand, but the thread that holds an island community together.
We’ve been working with them since 2015. What started with the travel brand, Isles of Scilly Travel, has grown into a partnership that now spans the whole group. Destination campaigns, social content, corporate storytelling, launch marketing, and more recently, their Content Library. Over a decade of working together, and the relationship keeps evolving.
Scilly is always a highlight in the PixelRain calendar.
Travelling to the islands is one of our favourite filming jobs, and the journey itself is half the fun. The views from the skies on a sunny day are out of this world. It’s incredible to think that a part of the UK can look this tropical, and the crossing is short enough that it never feels like a chore.
The islanders have always been incredibly accommodating, and over the years we’ve built up our own little routine out there. We’ve got a few spots we never pass up the chance to visit. Ice cream at Troytown Farm on St Agnes being a particular highlight: the Peaches and Cream flavour is heavenly. Only once we’ve finished filming, of course.
Every shoot brings something new. Early starts, ferry crossings, golden-hour flights, and the warmest welcomes from people who genuinely care about their islands and how they’re represented. That connection matters to us. It means the content always comes from somewhere real, not just a brief.
Not all of our work with the Steamship Group is sun-soaked beaches and turquoise water.
We recently produced a corporate film for the group that took us into a completely different side of the business. The kind of places cameras don’t usually go. The engine room of Scillonian III, absolutely immaculate and kept in tip-top condition by a team who work under some seriously challenging weather conditions. Getting up before dawn to run sunrise runway checks and test equipment with the fire crew at Land’s End Airport, the whole thing lit by a golden sunrise that almost made the early alarm worth it. Watching the Skybus engineers care for the Twin Otters with real precision. Following the freight crew as they deliver goods between the islands through the shallow waters around Scilly, their routes looking even more impressive from the air.
It’s a different kind of film to the destination campaigns. Less glamorous on the surface, but arguably more important. It tells the story of the group: who they are, where they started, the people behind the brand, and what’s to come. For us, getting that close to the operational heart of a business is always where the most interesting stories live.
The Steamship Group are one of our Content Library clients, and it’s a great example of how the service is designed to work in practice.
After each shoot, we extract the strongest clips and deliver them as a library of individual assets, formatted and ready for social platforms. The team at Isles of Scilly Travel have been using the library to create their own content: pulling clips for Instagram reels, stories, and Facebook posts whenever they need to keep their channels active.
That’s exactly what the Content Library is built for. Giving marketing teams the raw material to stay visible between shoots, without starting from scratch every time. Their team picking up clips and building their own content from them is the best proof that the system works.
