Be careful what you ask for

When briefing in work to a writer, focus on the "what", look to them for the "how"

The execs at TomTom came to me with an ask to create a talking-heads video, “like Apple” (it’s always Apple) to be shared with employees to get them excited before the launch of the company’s new chapter.

This felt wrong for a variety of reasons: 1. it wasn’t best suited to film; 2. it violated my rule of “no single-use content” as the film would be for internal use only (at great time and cost) and only one touchpoint; 3. it didn’t seem like it’d be very inspiring to employees.

Considering the goal, not the ask, I pitched a brand-agnostic documentary that would bring the company’s mission and vision to life: through the stories of partners, tech visionaries, academic experts, and leaders in the problems the company’s tech is solving.

With the executive management team’s buy-in, the film was designed to feed the company’s content strategy over the upcoming 18+ months.

I planned the documentary to be evergreen (as much as possible) and modular so that it would build up the asset catalog; could be easily edited to serve different touchpoints; create cutdowns for planned social campaigns and for extemporaneous newsjacking posts.

To stretch the budget and multi-purpose design even further, I wrote commercials within the film for the company’s products, which then ran as external campaigns after. There was also a pilot segment in the spirit of Bill Nye the Science Guy for a developer’s YouTube series, inviting customers to show off the solutions using the company’s tech. Every interview—over 40 in total— was transcribed using Otter, to create a written bank of sourced quotes for future articles, case studies, and white papers.

The documentary aired to 700 employees at the De La Mar theater in Amsterdam. The excitement in the theater was palpable. In a post-screening survey, the audience reported an engagement score of 100%, a first at the company, whose employees are notoriously critical and skeptical of marketing.

The following month, segments from the film were used to announce and promote the new strategy externally. The stock price jumped up, investors shared their enthusiasm for the new direction online, organic press mentions tripled, and engagement for the external launch campaign bested all previous efforts.

The client gave me the what, I provided the how, resulting in efficient, budget-stretching, results-getting content and creative.