A few weeks ago, we received a call from a consultant. He wanted to hire ‘the best’ company to make a brand film. He looked to California to hire ‘the right director and cinematographer’. He knew he needed a big brand film to maximize the potential of his brand. An agency was hired to scale up a this ‘small, promising brand’. He said, ‘this is a great idea that just hadn’t taken off yet’…
World-class work gets done wherever world-class thinking lives. A ‘marketing consultant’ hired an LA agency and a name director to produce a film for a promising regional brand. Months later the work was not done. The client wasn’t happy, the job wasn’t meeting their expectations. That’s where this project began for us. The conversation tends to go like this. ‘We are in a bind, we already spent our budget, and we have two weeks to fix, finish, and ship something that actually does what we need – can you help us?’
The work shown here is a rescue. What made the difference wasn’t a bigger budget or a famous zip code. It was a fundamental understanding that telling a story that moves the needle is much harder than blowing your budget on a named director and fancy gear. We quickly demonstrated what was possible when the people on the project understand the difference between aesthetics and impact.
The right creative partner is rarely the shiny new object from the big city. If your next project needs world class thinking this is where world class work lives.
About seven years ago the largest employer in the state asked for a brand film. Everyone seemed very impressed with our experience, and the quality of our work.
Turned out the problem was we lived here. We were not from Manhattan, or Brooklyn or Los Angeles. So how could we be trusted with getting the story right for a multi million dollar company – or even a small one like this?
This is in no way about the consultant or his client. They were both great and professional to a fault. It IS about a phenomenon we seem to run into either directly, or by inference every few years. We can’t be ‘that good’ cause we live here – where you live.
We did not. I had nothing to lose so I asked ‘What did we do wrong?’ ‘I hear what you are offering but you CAN’T be that good – you live here’. Bottom line…not all world class creatives live and work in New York, LA etc. Moral of the story? We and many other good creatives prove every day you Can live in a small town – and do world class work.
What goes around…A few years later, another department in this same large company decided to do an MBA Case Study on our company. I outlined how the first company I co-founded went public on the NYSE, and the second – with fellow co-founder Oprah Winfrey – was sold to NBC for $400 million…(See arthurbell.com for more)
