Better Together: Charades

As part of the FAIRWINDS "Better Together" campaign, we partnered with Skystorm Productions and Say it Loud to create a series of commercials aimed at raising brand awareness and drive membership. The idea was to showcase humorous moments that wouldn't make sense to try to do on your own — just like it didn't make sense to attempt to journey toward Financial Freedom without your friends at FAIRWINDS.

Before production even began, the largest struggle was convincing management that it was okay to be funny. When the project began, the direction was to create something more akin to those Publix commercials that can be a bit melodramatic as they lean on an emotional tug at your heartstrings. While those commercials are very well produced, the issue is they just don't tend to be as memorable as those that play on humor. On top of that, we had already attempted a series of commercials the year prior (before I was involved in these productions) that failed to gain traction.

While I was eventually able to successfully make the case for humor to our executives, the next hurdle was deciding on the concept itself. Originally, my pitch was to play on the idea of a extreme sports fan. You would have seen vignettes of "FAIRWINDS Super Fans" in their daily life dressed head to toe in larger-than-life attire and treating their financial wins the same way someone treats a Super Bowl victory. I storyboarded 3 ideas and did and created an animatic of my favorite to present it to our CEO. He was...not a fan. He didn't understand the concept and didn't resonate with the humor.

So then we pivoted to a concept that our partner agency, Say it Loud, had been working on: "Better Together."

I have a background in video production and was recently promoted to be our company's first Creative Director — so it was my job to work with both Skystorm and Say it Loud to bring this new concept to life.

First, I worked with Say it Loud and our then VP of Creative Marketing to hone the concepts and created the final scripts for the commercials.

Then came the production itself.

Skystorm — our production company for this shoot — gave us Daryn Johnson as our Director for all three commercials and I was responsible for partnering with him on selections for our principal actors, selections for background talent, and working with their props and wardrobe departments on what the cast would use and wear. I was also on set for each shoot and acted as a co-director to give some direction on takes and performances.

For this particular shoot, I also helped with the VFX during the shot of the actress on her phone. At time of filming, we were also still working on changes to our website — so we didn't have live screens to use just yet. I had suggested we use a green image with tracking markers (which I had to make quickly on set using my personal iPad that I had brought with me) and load it onto the prop phone. That way she could "scroll" naturally on set and we could replace the screen in post.

Overall, I'm still extremely proud of what we were able to produce as a group on a relatively small budget — and I still have people bring up these commercials to me without even knowing I was involved in it's production.