Role: EP, D, W and Ed
The Ask: Create sharable video content with celebrity spokesperson as part of larger PR campaign.
My Role: Executive Producer, Director, Copywriter and Editor
The Challenges: As part of her spokesperson agreement, Sarah Chalke would also appear at a media day with journalists and content creators. We had to coordinate our day of filming to coincide with the media day. Once that day was set, we had 4 weeks to develop concepts.
The account team developed a few ideas before they brought me on board. None seemed to have an inherent story that would be engaging. So, I lead the team to brainstorm some other concepts. With her comedic background in mind, we then hired improv comedians to polish the concepts and write the scripts. After multiple revisions and rounds of client feedback, we shared the concepts with Sarah who had final approval.
Sarah agreed to her role because she had a personal experience with the birth of her first child. However, she didn’t want to include or reference her ordeal in any of the content. Sarah rejected all of them. She didn’t want to be in a scripted video. Chaos ensued. The client agreed to push the dates to accommodate the feedback.
Knowing the work of the March of Dimes, I suggested we lean into that relationship and surface an emotionally engaging story of one of the MoD families. After pre-interviewing them to learn their story, I wrote the outline/script. This one Sarah approved.
The Results: The documentary-styled film featured Sarah sympathetically relating to the challenges the parents of a premature newborn. Baby’s firsts never go as imagined and preemie’s dramatically change that experience. Shares exceeded client KPI’s.
The initial concepts presented to client
My thoughts about making it into a documentary
The first outline of the beats
