For the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, Ztories created 8 TV Spots designed to support the branding position we originated for them, "Focused on You." Each spot addresses a particular demographic niche with its own cultural and employment challenges for small towns of the Red River valley. The institutional commitment to individual needs emerges through the telling of personal stories: a Latina from Texas jokes about the lack of local salsa music; a lifelong farmer agonizes to find a new career, a young farmer seizes upon auto racing to break away from the fields; a single mom works while she gains a nursing degree, a soccer mom does online learning at the kitchen table. We interviewed people over the phone, got their stories in their own words, then illustrated each spot in a whirlwind 16mm film shoot.
Admissions Marketing:
DVD segments
After completing the Denison main fundraising campaign videos, we worked with Admissions to repurpose the footage as a high-energy yield DVD. They have found it motivating and emotional with a wide variety of prospective student audiences: alumni volunteers love to show it to their friends and family; international students appreciate seeing glimpses of campus life; the coaches find it persuasive with athletic recruits; and the admissions counselors feel very good about the DVD's ability to distinguish Denison from other worthy schools in a way that is compelling, enjoyable, memorable, classy, and most important, accurate. See Perry Robinson's comments here.
Professional School Recruiting:
Web or Email Movies
In this series for a major regional law firm, we let their associates address the distinctives that make the Vorys firm unique. The plan for the messages flowed directly from in-depth research which revealed 9 specific areas of difference with other firms including people, work/life balance, career opportunities, client relationships and ethical values. We shot in high def video, using 35mm cine lenses to create depth by reducing the depth of field. The full site, which was created by Shift Global, can be seen here. We did all the shooting, editing, and video compression for hundreds of clips that we captured in five cities in the midwest and Washington DC area. We also captured organic, kinetic still images from the high-definition files which were used in the website and print publications for the campaign.