Age-friendly communities. The phrase sounds a bit dry. Vibrant, multi-generational communities are important for everyone, but the idea doesn’t exactly leap off the page (or screen) at you.
Enter Yvonne Goldsberry, President of the Endowment for Health. Dr. Goldsberry holds a Ph.D. and a bunch of other impressive degrees. But that doesn’t mean she wants to communicate in a dry, academic way. She wanted to mix things up a bit and present the concept in an interesting and engaging way – and have some fun while doing it.
The goal of the video was to introduce this important concept and show a different side of the organization. Yvonne is relatively new to the Endowment for Health, and this video was a way for her to talk about the mission of the organization while also introducing herself. The work the Endowment does is serious, but it doesn’t have to be delivered in somber tones.
We proposed a concept that would allow Yvonne to be more free and more herself while setting a more approachable tone for the Endowment. We shot her in front of a white screen as if she was rehearsing for the actual shoot. This created a looser and fun environment for her and the video. It also allowed us to include the inevitable outtakes to keep the light-hearted feel going. The white backdrop gives the video a clean feel and made it easy to introduce graphics. That, and props introduced at key moments helped to illustrate the importance of age-friendly communities.
The video was used at the Endowment’s Annual Meeting, but was also an important part of its Annual Report which uses an interactive app that hosts digital content. By producing a video in a way that’s interesting and entertaining, the Endowment helps to reinforce the idea that they are doing new things in different ways.
Kudos to Yvonne for her willingness to put herself out there, and to trust that we’d make her look good. It was a leap of faith and it paid off.
