One of the main responsibilities of an advertiser is to find a hard-hitting theme.
You want to surprise your audience with a theme that is on the one hand representative of your brand, and on the other hand, really grabbing and imaginative for your audience and your cause. Last year, we had one theoretic concept that we actualized in two very different ways: LETTERS.
People love getting letters. Especially in this time when letters are not written so often anymore. Our lives are full of letters, even if they're emails or social posts. It's nothing more than a letter in a different way. People like connecting with others through the written word.
We wanted to take the idea of a personal letter and put it into the form of a video instead. We've adapted this visual theme from a few different angles and for different purposes, with great results. We want to show them together here because both the result and purpose of these two films were very particular to the brand and the milestones they were looking to achieve.
Fundraiser
Last year, the SAR Academy and SAR High School together were looking for a heartfelt film to show at their annual dinner in order to increase school pride across the wider SAR community, including alumni, donors, parents, grandparents, and students. What better way to show the community's love for the school than by drawing on the many love letters that they receive?
While likely no one (or very few) would sit and read through the letters if they were sent out in written form, a film is the ideal way to showcase that love. We wanted to put images to those letters and make them come alive.
Acceptance Letter
This next idea came early on in working with educational institutions who were getting plenty of applicants… but a good chunk of those applicants were not enrolling into the school because often they have two or three school choices.
Usually schools send out acceptance letters in that enrollment phase. We wondered what would be if instead of sending a boring “You are accepted” letter in the mail, if they were to send it in the form of an exciting personal video? The video acceptance letter was born.
The letter-idea for Ma'ayanot came about via a totally different process than the letters concept for SAR. We wanted the girls themselves to welcome the incoming accepted students, and rather than talking directly to the camera we had them write their thoughts and read them for us, making an event out of the act of writing a letter, giving the girls time to be thoughtful about their answers.
While most schools write a formal letter of acceptance, we wanted to help Ma'ayanot stand out by making a letter in film form, and written by fellow students, rather than by administration, to meet the girls on a friend-to-friend level. After 8th graders and their parents have been to the open house and have seen every "promotion" from the school, pre-registration was the time to get "personal" with them and welcome them as friends, rather than just as nameless students.
Lexus
While our SAR film was released in January 2018, and our Ma'ayanot film was published a month later in February, this Lexus film was posted to Youtube a month after that, in March 2018.
The similarities are striking, don't you think? Great minds think alike.
We hope to share with you soon the latest film we produced for Lexus ourselves :)