Client: Rodgers
Project: Direction, Production, Animation
We met Rodgers at its watershed.
The company - 70 years young - enjoyed a hard-proved reputation for pulling rabbits from hats. Want a tricky entitlement secured? Want opinions swayed? Want barriers-to-entry lowered and red tape cut? Rodgers would deliver, if anyone could.
By the time of our first face to face, they’d begun seriously looking ahead to the next decade, asking themselves what, if any, responses to anticipated change made sense.
The core principles driving their success were well-understood internally, especially by the company’s senior (by tenure) leaders. Externally, its glowing reputation illuminated the right boardrooms, courthouses, town halls and high offices. But outside those circles - that is, among the land development industry beyond Rodgers’ own jurisdiction, and among prospective hires - the organization remained a best-kept secret.
Together we resolved to change that.
Asset Creation
We called about a dozen Rodgers team members and gathered our own impressions of how the organization ran and what made it great. By the time we hung up the last phone call, we‘d been converted into koolaid-drinking true believers: the Rodgers team really did (and does) operate differently.
We set out to make a series of short docs that would lay a finger on that difference.
First we made a pair of videos.
One focused on Rodgers’ unique capabilities in executing its clients’ goals; the other explored its internal culture and structure.
Among the campaign’s other goals, we wanted to remind Rodgers’ employees (many of whom have worked there for decades and lost their gut-level sense of the company’s uniqueness years ago) that their work has value and is well-respected by their peers.
After the positive (ok, we’ll drop the modesty: glowing) reception the first two videos received, we outlined a more ambitious proposal for the new year.
We would film the internal discussions taking place as Rodgers’ ten-year planning initiative got underway, and make a series of short documentaries we hoped would give an honest overview of that process, warts and all.
This was a bold plan on Rodgers’ part. It would mean letting the most junior team members in on the deliberations and decision-making of the company’s top leaders. It would be an unusual showing of trust.
But of course, as we’ve learned and continue to observe, showings of trust are far from unusual at Rodgers.