University of Minnesota
Higher Education
Background
More content series than ad campaign, the initiative was born of one key goal: demonstrate the University’s real value to Minnesotans. While Minnesotans certainly know the U of M, they don’t always know what it actually does for the state and its residents.
Work
So, how do you show everyday Minnesotans the value of a public research institution? You show how the U’s daily discoveries affect their daily lives—in as beautiful and cinematic a way as possible. You use the power of storytelling to bring the drive to discover home to Minnesota’s doorstep—and across all their social media feeds. In the form of an immersive campaign that always provided viewers a pathway to take their discoveries to the next degree.
I was honored to lead the ongoing University of Minnesota "Driven to Discover" campaign from 2018-2020. The endeavor was a wild—and enormously fulfilling—ride, including more than five total weeks of on-location shooting, which took our small-but-mighty production team on a series of road trips all across the state in search of the stories that resonate most with Minnesotans.
BRAND CAMPAIGN | CONTENT CREATION | VIDEO PRODUCTION
TV Spots
On TV and social media, a :60 trailer introduced the series and hinted at what was to come. In strategically-implemented flights that followed, energetic :15 videos teased 8 different degrees of discovery, each focused on a story of university research that was having a direct impact on the lives of Minnesotans. Original music was recorded by members of the University marching band, and VO was selected to reflect the campus community: youthful, vibrant and diverse.
Short Films
Short documentaries took the stories of discovery to the next degree. Through a series of interviews with professors, research assistants and Minnesotans overlaid with cinematic footage from around the state, we were able to reframe the stories as a dialogue with residents. Clearly demonstrating the impact this work has on our state and the people who call it home.
Content Streams
In the second year of the campaign, we evolved our approach from telling eight distinct stories, to instead focus on three content streams, with several stories in each stream. The three streams were: Food & Agriculture, Health and Water—each a topic data had indicated was of particular importance to Minnesotans throughout the state. Building on the successful formula from year one, each stream had a :15 teaser that pushed to longer form content telling the individual stories. Utilizing another successful tactic from year one, we geo-targeted content to location, so we could get a sense of the state-of-mind of the viewer and serve up content that was relevant to their current location.
Campaign Photography
A cornerstone of the ongoing campaign, intimate portraiture shot by Alexander Zoltai (who also shot all video content) captured the spirit of Minnesotans and the exuberance of discovery.