Delving into a Cirkus case study: from workarounds to production-ready workflow
Cirkus is an all-in-one collaboration and task management platform designed specifically for post-production teams. Developed by the experts behind farmerswife, Cirkus is built around the day-to-day realities of post: bringing together tasks, assets, reviews, notes, deadlines and quotes into a single, intuitive workspace.
Designed to withstand the pressures of modern production, Cirkus helps teams stay aligned as priorities shift and feedback evolves – giving everyone clarity on what’s happening, what’s changing and what needs attention next.
Evolving with the Content Landscape
Digital media agency Blue Juice has been running since 2009, and in that time, the content landscape has changed dramatically.
“When I started the company, it was all YouTube and Vimeo — no social media as we know it today. Now we’re involved in immersive video, 360 video, virtual production, as well as all the staple marketing and social content.”
Craig Sawyer, Creative Director of Blue Juice
As formats diversified and client expectations grew, so too did the complexity of managing projects, people and equipment. What once worked for a small team handling straightforward online content was no longer fit for a business delivering across immersive, social and virtual production workflows.
Before Cirkus
Prior to adopting Cirkus, Blue Juice had trialled several project management platforms, including Asana. However, as a tool built to serve multiple industries, it often required adaptation to suit the realities of content production.
The team needed functionality that reflected the specificity of post-production, including:
- Asset management
- A quotation system
- Custom fields that properly reflected content production
Cost was also becoming a concern.
“When we moved from five to six users, we effectively had to pay for ten. Adding one freelancer doubled our project management cost.”
Craig Sawyer
With software subscriptions already mounting across the business, this pricing structure became a decisive factor in seeking a more suitable solution.
Moving to Cirkus
Blue Juice began using Cirkus in November 2025 and fully onboarded the team in January 2026. Although they’re still refining workflows, Cirkus already integrated into daily operations.
“For me, I use it extensively for creating quotes. It saves probably 90% of the time it used to take manually creating quotes. I can quickly drag and drop and create predefined pricing for various elements.”
Craig Sawyer
Today, Cirkus is used across the company to:
- To monitor all projects and new business
- To track post-production edits (internal and client review)
- To support accounts with invoicing
- To monitor kit resources and see when additional hire may be needed
“I feel I have much more visibility over availability and am able to look at kit resources and know when we might need to hire kit in because we’ve got jobs happening on the same day.”
Craig Sawyer
Early Impact and Long-Term Potential
The immediate benefits are clear:
- Significant time savings in quotation creation
- Reduced project management costs compared to Asana
- Greater transparency across schedules and resources
“I’m sure that once the rest of the team gets up to speed with how Cirkus does things — which is slightly different to Asana — there’ll be lots of improvements there as well.”
Craig Sawyer
Crucially, the transition process itself played a major role in the successful adoption.
“The onboarding process was amazing. Joel has been absolutely fantastic. I don’t think we would have signed up had we been left to our own devices and had to try and work out how to set up Cirkus.”
Craig Sawyer
As post-production workflows become ever more complex, tools designed specifically for the sector are increasingly essential. For Blue Juice, Cirkus is already proving to be more than a project management platform: it is becoming a core part of a production-ready workflow.
