Brand: Pew Research Center
Summary: My goal was to bring together researchers from across the Center to collaborate in a way the Center has never done before. I pitched a fully animated video series to discuss Americans' trust (or distrust) in various institutions: police, elections, news media, science, and the economy. This pushed the Center outside of its comfort zone creatively.
Doing all of this while we were scattered across the world, and in the middle of a pandemic, made the project challenging but extremely rewarding.
Role: Creative Direction, Strategy, Production, Post-Production
Challenges
1) Misinformation: due to many factors like misinformation and polarization, there’s a sense that America is fragmented. How can the Center serve as a trusted, unbiased source of information to help Americans navigate the country's most important issues?
2) Organizational Silos: the Center was once made up of separate research projects that did not overlap or collaborate with one another. Over the last decade, the organization has made a concerted effort to bring all research areas under one umbrella and into a stronger, cohesive brand. “Trust in America” sought to further bridge researchers from different teams and connect the dots in the data, to tell a unified story.
Original Strategy
1) Foundation: In fall of 2019, I presented a business case to senior leadership. "Trust" was a focus for the organization's research agenda and I aimed to expand our data's reach through an animated video series. Once leadership agreed to the project, I facilitated many meetings and discussions to get researchers on board as well. Afterwards, I recruited Fabian Tejada, a well-respected motion designer I once volunteered with, to help me lift the animation mountain off the ground. While I started this project with a fellow co-worker, after her departure, I recruited a new project manager to team up with. The three of us were the core team moving this product along.
2) Animation: My vision was to create 5 "episodes" that would release altogether online. Historically, the Center approached video by shooting a "talking head" format, but I suggested we attempt to explain the data and the themes via illustration that comes to life. Our social media team is always eager for more visual content so this would serve them better.
3) Cross-team collaboration: The Center is still tackling silos that exist amongst the different research areas. However, what most don't see is the natural water cooler chats that happen amongst researchers in the office, where they bond over commonalities in the data. After witnessing this for years, I believed we could scale and formalize this interaction for a digital product. For "Trust in America," I suggested we pair researchers from different teams to discuss a theme they both see in their own research.
PIVOTING & Creative Methodology
The Pandemic: Because the video series was meant to depend on audio and motion graphics, rather than video capture, my vision was luckily spared despite a worldwide pandemic. Our freelancer was already going to work remotely with us, from Arizona, so a collaboration process was in place. I did, however, have to figure out remote audio capture with many researchers working from different time zones around the world. Luckily our cell phones' voice notes app are well equipped with capturing decent audio clips. Coupled with some direction on best environments for recording, along with editing in Audition, we ended up with viable sound.
The Production Process 2.0:
Conclusion
The series was always meant to be evergreen as it covered topics that are unfortunately still ongoing in America. Despite the fact that the series was released in January 2022, it continues to get views and comments on Youtube. Internally, the researchers were exposed to their counterparts' findings as well as the video production process. "Trust in America" sought out to inform the general public, push our creative boundaries, and reinforce internal relationships across teams. It accomplished just that.
Watch all 5 episodes
(playlist below)
(playlist below)