STORY AGENCY

WE EXIST TO HELP YOU

ACCELERATE THE CHANGE YOU’RE MAKING IN THE WORLD

THINK A NEW THOUGHT

One of our guiding principles is to create content that can transcend it’s core audience and create opportunities for dialogue and value exchange between aligned groups – thus providing added value to our client.This was our guiding principle in creating this vision statement for CEO Eric Harr’s innaugural year of the Vatican supported Laudato Si Challenge.

Not only was the piece designed to inspire and galvanize his stakeholders around the core principle that we have control over the narrative that guides capitalism and our actions within it, and that we can change it to serve our common good – but it was designed to be broad and universal enough in its stance to have utility for other groups with similar values, and to be shared by them with their stakeholders.

This is exactly what happened. The piece was utilized at Impact Summit Europe, TBLI, etc, and in various Venture firms and Family office settings. Thisnot only allowed its important vision to be shared more broadly, but also increased the awareness of the challenge, and provided opportunities for dialogue and partnering.

Our goal with every piece is to seek this kind of translateable utility and broad appeal so that such ‘off-label’ uses can be leveraged to increase the impact and reach for our clients and provide them with new opportunites, advocates, and audiences.

A YEAR IN SIX MINUTES

One of the best ways to spread a cause is to give it a face. to provide a way for someone is to put themselves in the shoes of the people engaged in that cause, and through that person, and their classic narrative journey, to come to understand the logic of the movement and to care about it. One of the other very important considerations is to introduce structural novelty – something that can grab the viewers attention without getting ignored as known information, and that can allow it to occupy a fresh space in their minds so it has a place to remain and a greater chance of being remembered. For The Hult Prize’s UN finals, to give the audience a sense of what was at stake as the final six teams competed, and to get them on board with the vision, we practiced these two simple principles.

The teams are essentially presenting six minute pitches that are the culmination of a years work – so – we built the video to mirror their pitches. this is their year’s work, compressed into the same six minute timescale. This creates novelty that structures the information and gives the audience more reason to pay attention, and following their journeys of transformation places the argument about the cause in the emotional context of a sympathetic protagonist. By the end, you know what it took, what it means, and why it’s important – your sympathies are elicited and you engage as they present their pitches, because in some small way, you now understand what it took and what’s at stake.

This also demonstrates the degree to which we can take essentially unstructured documentary footage and novelly craft it to build entertaining and compelling narrative arguments.

10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW

An important consideration in delivering an effective piece of visual storytelling is – do you understand what moves your audience? and can you offer real value to them that brings their attention to your goal? Sometimes the story you need to tell is wildly compelling on its face…but sometimes it’s not.

Advertising storage space rental is on the less than compelling end. But we fully believe that clear understanding of people and their motivations and of the nature of storytelling and value creation can work miracles. We got to know the organization and understood that what is important to them is being there for people intakes of transition. So, that’s what we did. we created value for people in a time of transition – advice for soon to be first time parents. The video, on a small budget and barely any distribution spend, was picked up by Huffington Post, Mashable, Buzzfeed, and may other outlets, and garnered 40 million views across all instances of the video…all for an ad for storage.

Is the fate of our environment and the least among us compelling? absolutely. But, is there a lot of content out there around those issues? and is there some danger that a your subject – a lengthy written document by an aged religious leader – might not immediately warrant wrapped attention outside of your core audience? probably. That’s why we believe that novel and clear insight into the motivators of that larger audience, and a focused on eye how to deliver value to them can make all the difference, as it did here.

ACCELERATE

Once the core information that needs to be conveyed has been determined, there are an endless number of creative approaches that can be taken to communicate that information.

An important consideration is how you allow form to follow function. So, for this piece about slowing down to speed up, we created a visual and auditory cacophony that embodied that tension and created a playful contrast with the message. We also utilized the power of examples that were self-evident, and familiar in the life experience of our audience, so that any new arguments we were presenting had the force of common sense, and lived experience, as well as corroborative company.

The result is a compelling argument that feels both fresh and self evident. and a piece that was honored with a Vimeo staff pick, and was, as we noted earlier, picked up and shown in a broad range of ‘off-label’ settings that garnered added value for our client.

THE GOLDEN THREAD

Sometimes the most effective way to tell a story is to do it simply. To put a beautiful and vibrant face on it and to let powerful human voices tell the story.

We find that in our Social Impact work, this is often the case, and this piece demonstrates an approach that foregrounds quality visual storytelling, and the humanity of our subjects, in order to emotionally connect with our audience.

As our clients can attest, we are adept and comfortable in many cultural contexts, and are naturally inclined to put people first and see for real human connection. This isn’t a job-to-be-done, for us – it’s a chance to connect with human beings that will enrich our lived experience, and we see it as our job to translate that real connection into an artistic medium to allow others some measure of the same experience through our work.