Author: tdarnell

It happened like this: Last year, my instructor, Donna Davis, mentioned that Starbucks had recently hired former Washington Post editor, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, to head up their visual brand storytelling efforts. I was intrigued, so I went home and did some googling. That night I watched every single Upstanders video, and read the accompanying articles, and became familiar with the name Josh Trujillo, Senior Manager for Photo and Video at Starbucks. From then on I knew that was the type of work I wanted to pursue with my two degrees in Strategic Communication and Multimedia Journalism.

Fast forward a year. I’m in a multimedia foundations course, and my instructor, Wes Pope, mentions that he knows Josh Trujillo. I geek out and ask him to connect us so I could interview him for this class assignment/blog post, et voilà! This is what I learned from Josh, who I recently met in person (!!!) and whose work I greatly admire, but first a little background:

Josh was an accomplished photojournalist when he made the move to Starbucks. He was hired to do photography at Starbucks, but ended up having to adjust to doing video and learning how to edit with Premiere on the fly. In advance of our conversation, I took a look at some of his early work with Starbucks, and assessed it with the lens of both a strategic communicator and visual producer:

Click here to watch one of the first big projects he produced.

I liked it because I felt a sense of “authenticity” in its presentation. Everything from the story, to the visuals, to the sequence of shots, and the editing decisions add up to a piece that is a short but illuminating piece of branded content. It’s a straightforward and insightful piece and as a strategic communicator I think it, like Upstanders, achieves the goal of unique engagement with the socially conscious segment of Starbucks’ primary stakeholder group, the consumer base. It enables a connection between Starbucks coffee drinkers, and the Starbucks coffee growers, and it demonstrates a personal (less so corporate) commitment to the latter, another group of vital stakeholders. This is great storytelling rooted in journalism, and it reinforces positive brand association. A+

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If there is one thing you take away from this post it’s this:

A sense of authenticity and a mission statement that alignment with his own personal creed and journalistic mission are two of the main reasons Josh made the jump from being a journalist at a newspaper, to a journalist working for a corporate brand: “This is an interesting place to be. One of Starbucks core values is to be authentic. I have used that many times in my career here. Journalism is all about authenticity. And that is what Starbucks was looking for when they hired me and a group of other journalists to help tell the Starbucks story. On our team we have Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a former top editor at the Washington Post, we have Linda Thomas, a former news anchor here in Seattle, we have the former news director from a local tv station and a television morning show editor. All here at a Coffee Company.” He is adamant that nothing can ever replace true journalism, the press, the fourth estate. And likewise he drives home the point that journalism is a profession and “news is not free.” While branded storytelling will never replace the press, being able to pay journalists or storytellers for their work is one of the reasons why the field of branded content is growing and is an exciting field to be in currently. At the moment, a lot of smaller newspapers and media outlets can’t compete with the level of resources big brands like Starbucks have to offer. Along the same lines, I also asked him about working for a consumer brand versus a traditional media publication, and if that at all influenced the way he and his team tell stories. He said it didn’t. He’s allowed to be a journalist, and is allowed creative freedom and doesn’t let the marketing and public relations pressures get in the way of his ethics as a storyteller.

If you’re not familiar with Upstanders it is Starbucks’ “first original content series, which aims to inspire Americans to engage in acts of compassion, citizenship and civility. ‘Upstanders’ features ten stories, each told in written, video and podcast form, about ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities.”

According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “’Upstanders’ is a unique set of stories told in a unique way. When we turn on the news or scroll through our social media feeds, we are inundated with stories of discord and dysfunction. But there is more to America than that. In cities and towns across the country, there are people who are courageously, selflessly, collaboratively, and thoughtfully creating positive change. We want to share their stories, which are often ignored by traditional news organizations, with millions of our fellow Americans through Starbucks unparalleled platform.” (Starbucks Newsroom, 2016)

On the topic of Upstanders, I asked Josh specifically about the second episode entitled, “A Warriors Workout,” because it is one of my favorite Upstanders stories. It moved me, and brought my friend, a veteran of the US Army, to tears when we watched it. I wanted to know how much time it took and what the process of gaining trust and getting Brian, Dave, and others to open up about their struggles with substance abuse was like.

Josh: We had to spend some time with them and make them comfortable. Dave later said that he thought his athletes opened up to me because I am a veteran, and as a journalist spent time in Afghanistan. I was able to talk their talk and understand them and their experiences. There were moments where the questions and topics were uncomfortable, but working alongside Rajiv Chandrasekaran was incredible.

Watch the film for yourself:

I also asked Josh what, if anything he learned from doing this piece in particular, and if it had any personal impact on him?

Josh: It opened my eyes to the needs of our service members and others in our community. It made me realize that collectively we can make big differences, with small, individual acts. My own family now makes regular meals for a homeless shelter in our neighborhood. There is so much need in our communities —but with the buzz of our daily lives it is so easy to ignore. If it’s easy to ignore then it is even easier to not act upon.

Thanks to Josh for taking the time to answer my questions, and to Josh, Rajiv Chandrasekaran for inspiring me to find stories that matter and shed light on my own community. And finally, a big thanks to Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks for his visionary leadership and foresight in investing in his company’s visual storytelling and producing Upstanders for the benefit of us all, budding storytellers and extraordinary citizens alike.

Here is a great piece of advertising.

If you’re not familiar with lucha libre, the words are Spanish language, and they refer to a type of wrestling that is athletic entertainment popular in Mexico especially. It is very similar to what we know as WWE wrestling here in the U.S. Likewise the term luchador refers to a fighter or wrestler.

Roger Ross Williams (Look him up! Amazing body of work!) created this video, which was based on a profile of Cassandro, the Mexican lucha libre luchador written by William Finnegan for The New Yorker.

There are three points I want to focus on in considering this piece: the subject, the lighting during the interview, and the beats that build the arc of the story. Take a look:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-the-drag-queen-cassandro-became-a-star-of-mexican-wrestling

The subject: I love how musical Cassandro is on camera. He is very expressive and adds to that with his hand and shoulder movements. And his voice is so animated, especially as he’s talking about putting on his make up and feeling beautiful and ready for the stage right from the start of the interview.

The lighting: In class we briefly talked about Spike Lee and the importance of lighting people of color properly. We learned about the ratio of light to dark, and where the light should be in relation to the camera. I’m curious about the way Williams decided to light Cassando, and whether or not there were factors beyond his control that made directing the light a challenge because there are shadows created by the contours of Cassandro’s face, and at times he appears shiny. The shine could be due to his makeup though.

This is small thing, but there also seems to be a mix of natural light and artificial light, based on the change in the light on his face around 3:54, and then again if you pay attention through the rest of the piece. I had this issue in a piece I made last year, so this is a reminder for me about why natural light can be both a gift and a curse during long sit-down interviews.

The story beats: The story arch is very much like a roller coaster that peaks and falls continuously as we hear about the early years of Cassandro, his early years as a gay wrestler, his coming out as an éxotico and being able to embrace himself and be embraced by others. Then the toll his art has taken on his body, and how he’s “made peace with the pain” and has overcome that challenge by teaching. And then the big reveal, long before Cassandro there was 6 year old Saúl Armendáriz, and he was sexually abused for eleven years, until he came to a turning point in his life and decided to fight back. Then we slowly start to descend, but it’s not a straight line to the conclusion: domestic violence, death and loss, addiction, self-harm, defeat, redemption. All of this is illuminated and the overall piece elevated by the music and pristine audio, the use of archival footage, and the selective use of slow motion in pivotal moments, including the pull out on the family picture that slowly reveals Sául’s father as he admits that his father abused his mother (8:15). The use of fade to black was great, and the final fade to white I loved because white represents hope and freedom.

I hope you enjoyed this piece as much I did!

I follow Wieden + Kennedy’s London office on Facebook, and by the end of this blog post I know you’ll want to too. This post is about three elements of the “1000 Years of Less Ordinary” Finlandia vodka campaign: video portraits, sound, and the “unaswered question.”

The video portraits: I love the initial video portraits. There are so many interesting looking people, and then there is the text, which is presumably their ages. You get a few seconds to take in some of the individuals and then around 0:12 the portraits speed up, and you only get a flash of each person. This is important because it builds intrigue and if you’re like me, it hooks you and you continue to watch for another few seconds instead of scrolling on to the next thing in your social media feed.

The music: All the while the music, which sounds like a racing heart, with sounds of people physically exerting themselves builds and builds. This technique may make you feel as if your adrenaline is high. It did for me, and my curiosity and excitement about what would come next built too: Who are these people? What’s their story? What makes them remarkable at age X?

The unanswered question: And finally, we are introduced to one of the most important characters in the story: vodka. But it’s not just any vodka, it’s Finlandia vodka that appears very clearly at 00:50. This sets up the central question. The unanswered question. What is 1000 years of less ordinary? And what does Finlandia vodka have to do with being less ordinary? This is a significant point in the arch of the story because we need the unanswered question for us to care about these subjects and their lives, and above all for us to care (and want to buy) Finlandia vodka.

Finally, the big reveals of each subject in the montage of portraits, and it becomes very clear that Finlandia vodka is their vodka of choice in their less ordinary lives. My favorite quote of them all, “Be nobody’s bitch but your own” from Cassandro, the Mexican drag wrestler. Now we understand what less ordinary looks like, and what less ordinary people drink. Don’t we want to be less ordinary? Hell yeah we do!

Great advertising! Read the short explanation about the concept here.