The Relationship
Some client relationships are transactional. You do the work, deliver the files, move on. And then there’s UPI.
United Pacific Industries make products that genuinely help people — a back brace that keeps an active person moving, a wristband that quiets nausea on a rough crossing, a mouth guard that gives a couple their sleep back. Real products solving real problems for real people.
That’s the kind of brief The Tropics was made for. For four-plus years, across three distinct brands and more productions than we can count, UPI have trusted The Tropics to bring their products to life on screen. Not just to execute briefs, but to shape them. To show up with ideas, understand the category deeply, and deliver work that holds up — regardless of whether the budget is big or tight.
That kind of relationship doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built shoot by shoot, brief by brief, through consistent creative input, reliable delivery and the kind of on-set energy that makes clients genuinely enjoy the process. Jakub Jelinek and the UPI team keep coming back because the work is good and working with us is easy. That’s the whole model.
"What's kept the relationship going this long isn't just the videos. It's showing up with ideas, understanding the category, and making the whole process easy enough that they keep coming back. That's what four years looks like."
How We Work Together
Working direct to client is a different kind of engagement. There’s no agency layer filtering ideas before they reach the person who matters. No brief arriving three steps removed from the original conversation. Just a direct line between the people who understand the brand and the people who’re going to make the content.
That directness means more creative trust flows both ways. UPI bring us their challenges — a new product to launch, a demographic to reach, a budget that needs to stretch — and we bring them solutions they hadn’t considered. Sometimes that means a fresh creative approach. Sometimes it means pulling an idea back to something simpler and more effective. Either way, the conversation is honest and the output is better for it.
Casting across the UPI brands draws on a mix of trusted recurring talent and community networks. Dhani Weir and Michael Mauro feature across multiple campaigns — they know the brands, they’re great on camera, and they make everyone around them better. For the Sea-Band campaign, Alec McCloskey cast his own children — Luc and Frances McCloskey — bringing an authenticity to the family content that simply can’t be manufactured. Other campaigns have drawn on Star Now and Alec’s extended personal network to find the right faces for the right brief.
Every production across the UPI relationship delivers the same core output suite — but the creative thinking behind each one is built from scratch for that brand, that product, that audience.
KEY OUTPUTS
Standard output per campaign:
- 1 × hero brand film (16:9)
- 1:1 reformat for social— 9:16 reformat for social
- 30 and 60 second cutdowns from the hero edit— Platform-specific edits as required
The output suite is consistent. The creative approach never is. That’s the discipline.
Thermoskin — Life Unstoppable
Thermoskin makes braces, supports and compression products for people who refuse to let pain slow themdown. The “Life Unstoppable” campaign was built around that truth — showing real people in demanding real-world situations where the product quietly does its job in the background.
The back brace shoot placed talent Ryan Parker across two contrasting Melbourne locations in a single day — Johnston Street Collingwood and an active building site on St Georges Road Fitzroy. Urban environments. Physical demands. A product that earns its place in both.
The building site shoot required full PPE compliance for the entire crew — a production layer most video companies don’t regularly navigate, and one that The Tropics handled without disrupting a frame.
Recurring talent Dhani Weir features across Thermoskin productions — an experienced on-camera presence who understands the brand’s energy and consistently delivers.
Sea-Band — Nausea Relief
Sea-Band’s acupressure wristbands work quietly on the wrist. The content needed to work the same way — present, effective, never overstated. The “Nausea Relief” campaign ran to approximately seven executions across the series, each one finding a different human moment where the product earns its place: travel sickness, morning sickness, motion-related nausea on the water.
This is the campaign where AI earned its place. A static car shot was animated using Runway ML to createa convincing stormy driving sequence — a specific creative problem solved with a specific tool, without replacing any of the craft around it. The result is seamless.
That’s exactly how The Tropics uses AI: purposefully, invisibly, where it matters.Alec McCloskey cast his own children — Luc and Frances McCloskey — in the family executions. Real kids. Real reactions. A real family dynamic that shows on screen in a way no casting agency can replicate.
Michael Mauro features across multiple Sea-Band executions — a trusted face across the UPI family of brands who brings warmth and credibility to every frame.
Sleep Doctor — Snoring Relief
Sleep deprivation is a subject most brands either ignore or turn into broad comedy. Sleep Doctor trusted The Tropics to find the middle ground — honest, warm, a little playful, and always rooted in the genuine experience of a sleep-disrupted life.
The “Snoring Relief” campaign covered multiple product lines — mouth guards, nasal strips, sleep aids — each with its own scenario, all belonging to the same tonal world. Shot across two locations in a single 10.5-hour day: a city office on Level 12, St Kilda Road for the sleep-deprived work scenarios, and a residential home in Elwood for the bedroom and bathroom product moments.
Talent Nicole Dominic and Michael Mauro carried the campaign with exactly the right combination of relatability and comedic timing. The office scenes — a woman nodding off at her desk with fake eyelids drawn on, her cardboard cutout standing in while she sleeps under the desk — are the kind of ideas that only work when the performance is completely committed. They were.
Alec McCloskey directed both the performance and the pace of the day. Stephen Di Gravio as 1st AD kept the floor moving without losing the warmth on set that makes this kind of content land.
Why This Relationship Works
Four years is a long time in production. Clients move on, budgets shift, agencies get reshuffled. What keeps a relationship like this going is simpler than most people think.
We show up with ideas. We understand the products well enough to have an opinion about how they should be presented. We cast with care and build sets that feel like the world the audience actually lives in. We deliver on time, every time, and we make the whole process feel easier than it should be.
UPI came to us for a production company. What they got was a creative partner who knows their brands almost as well as they do. That’s the relationship. That’s why it keeps going.
"A bigger budget gets a bigger production. A tighter brief gets tighter thinking. Either way the work holds up."