Here’s a creative challenge we were recently handed: We needed to develop a community-outreach campaign for a good-sized regional business. This business does a lot of great work in the neighborhoods it serves. 
 
The campaign was envisioned for lots of media: Social. Local TV. Outdoor. Web. Print. Radio. You name it. 
 
So it was to be highly visible—by design—and needed to get the people in the community to recognize, and to remember, this great business and all they do. It also needed to convey some broader overtones, so it would be warmly received by "upstream constituencies” such as big corporate and individual donors and even the state and local government, who had a say in regulating this business. 
 
But there was only one wrinkle. The pandemic. 
 
A way around
 
If you’ve read any of these articles from Copel Communications, you’ll know that we’re fond of the adage: “Crisis equals opportunity.” 
 
So here, we were unable to do basic things such as schedule still or video shoots. There were some serious constraints in terms of social distancing and health protocols—moreso than you might imagine. 
 
Did we mention that this business is in the healthcare business? ‘Nuff said. 
 
So. How do you create—and then execute on—a multimedia pride campaign, designed to tug on the heartstrings of all who see and hear it, when you can’t even produce anything professionally? How can you fake it, and make it look professional? 
 
Answer: You don’t. You embrace your constraints and make them work for you, not against you. 
 
A simple premise
 
As we’d noted above, this business is in the healthcare business. So it really serves the community, not in any figurative sense, but hands-on and genuine. Incidentally, the workers at this business had been especially battered by the pandemic: Not just the safety protocols and risk of infection, but the extra hours, the stress, the feeling that they weren’t being recognized for all of their sacrifices. 
 
So they needed some pride, too. At least, that’s what we perceived. 
 
Do you see where all of this is going? 
 
Per our agreement with the client, we provided several different campaign creative concepts for them to choose from. We had a hunch they’d opt for the one we’re about to describe, and they did. 
 
This business serves the community using some of the most cutting-edge high-tech paraphernalia you can imagine. We’re talking millions of dollars’ worth of stuff. They have one gadget, for example (and we’re purposely being cagey here, since we need to maintain confidentiality), that’s one of only a few in the whole world. 
 
They’re proud of that. They should be. 
 
But—and here’s where we came in—the technology isn’t the focus of the pride campaign. If you saw a picture of that million-dollar gadget going by on the side of a bus, you wouldn’t be exactly moved. 
 
But what about the people who operate it? 
 
What about the people who take your call, to book your opportunity to avail yourself to this technology? 
 
What about the people who are keeping the lights on in the facility? Who scrub the floors? Who serve the lunches? Who hold the door for you? 
 
Aha. 
 
There’s the pride. That’s what you, as the audience, can feel proud about. 
 
And guess what? If these people are the stars of the campaign, then they can recapture a little bit of lost pride, too. 
 
Great! Book the photo shoot! Bring in the video crew! 
 
Oh. Wait. We can’t do that. 
 
What to do? 
 
When less is way, way more
 
As we’d teased in the headline of this article, we used this apparent disadvantage to our advantage. And we can tell you how we cracked this problem with one simple, modern word: 
 
Selfie. 
 
That was the plan. Everyone has a mobile device. So we created prompts/checklists for these people to shoot selfie pics and vids, in which they would talk about their role in the company, and how they serve the community, and just how hard they work and how much they care. 
 
Then they’d simply email the results to our production team.
 
And get this: The end product is more convincing, more immediate, more visceral, than any studio shoot. Slick productions look too slick, too cheated, too rehearsed, too fake. The selfie pics and vids, by contrast, look real. Because they are. 
 
Now, we did do a little to dress them up properly. We certainly edited them for clarity and brevity. We added nice graphics, music, and effects. We touched up the stray hair or blemish, and blurred the occasional non-licensed logo that might’ve shown up on someone’s shirt or in the background. But that’s about it. 
 
Forget about professional actors. Forget about professional photo and video crews. For this assignment, in this context, the self-shot selfies—replete with blurs, noises, and shaky handheld camerawork—were infinitely more powerful. 
 
Creativity is universal
 
A degree of constraint is often, counterintuitively, liberating. This story is a classic example. Lacking a budget or resources forces you to find creative alternatives. And they’re often better. 
 
Have a creative challenge you need help solving? Contact us. We work on these all the time. 

​Be sure you profit from the experience
 
You do great work. You know that. Your clients know that. But does the world know that?
 
It certainly should.
 
While there are many ways to promote your practice, nothing succeeds like success. So don’t keep those client victories a secret.
 
But this isn’t as simple as it sounds. You’re probably under NDA with your client. You can’t reveal competition-sensitive information. Many times, the client won’t want the world to know you’ve solved a problem of theirs, since that’s an admission that they even had a problem in the first place.
 
Hmmm. So what do you do?
 
Time it right
 
Just when you and your client are basking in the glow of a job well done, is the time to tap them for a little favor, in terms of a testimonial request. “Dear Jan, It was such a delight to work with you and your great team on this project, and it got such great results, would you mind writing a sentence or two that I could use on my site as a testimonial?”
 
Here’s the part where you can help them along. Depending upon their personality/time constraints, you might add something like: “Just mention things like how long we’ve worked together, the value you got from our project, what it was like to work with us, and so on. You can just jot a few bullet points if you like, and I can clean it up for you, if that’s easier for you. I’d love to use your name, title, and company as attribution, but if you don’t feel comfortable, we could anonymize it, along the lines of ‘COO of a Leading National Financial-Services Firm.” You can pick and choose among the various elements that were used in that imaginary example.
 
Get your clearance, Clarence
 
Even if that Airplane! reference flew over your head, don’t forget to get your client’s blessing on anything with their name on it (anonymized or not) before you use it. That’s even more important if you’re going to copy-edit their input, per the “bullet points” suggestion above.
 
It’s more than a courtesy. It’s ethical behavior. And not doing it could land you in trouble. So don’t go paving the road to Hell.
 
Tell a story
 
We like the term “client success story” a heckuva lot more than “whitepaper.” Everyone wants to hear a story. By contrast, who, honestly, gets excited about the prospect of reading a whitepaper?
 
Just as you carefully and tactfully solicited client input and permission for the brief testimonial quote, so, too, can you solicit their help when it comes to a success story. Clearly, the more info you can reveal, the better, but even if you have to anonymize it, you can use that to your advantage. We’ve worked on some incredibly sensitive projects over the years, ranging from headline-grabbing court cases to countless projects in the national-security realm, and we can’t—and won't—go into any more detail than that. So sometimes the body of work will need to stand in for details. It may seem like a fine line in the abstract, but when you need to decide what to reveal or not reveal, it’s actually very clearly delineated when you get there.
 
Once you know your boundaries, craft your tale. The structure is straight out of Harvard Business Review: Open with the seemingly-insurmountable teaser of a problem, then lay in with the brilliant thought process that led to the breakthrough solution. We’ve posted about this process before (both here and here, for example), so we won’t belabor it here.
 
Leverage it
 
“Content marketing” is one of the hot buzzwords du jour. It simply means “genuinely good information that people want, in contrast to trying to trick a search engine with regurgitated garbage.” So guess what? If you can pull together good testimonials and good client success stories, they’ll aid your cause. Big time. You simply need to push them out through all your available channels. Post the testimonials on the “Testimonials” page (duh!) of your website. Publish your client success stories on your site and on LinkedIn. You can transform a success story into a press release (see our related post) if it’s timely and newsworthy enough—meaning you could then release it to the wire services (many of which are free these days). Heck, you could even call it a “whitepaper” if you like. See if we care.
 
Save time
 
Doing all this yourself, and doing it right, will really pay deep dividends. But it may not be one of your core competencies, or you may simply lack the time to do it right. Not a problem. Contact us. We tackle these kinds of assignments all the time, and would love to avail you to their business-boosting power.