SHOW & TELL CAN WORK TO FUND A NEED

06 Jan SHOW & TELL CAN WORK TO FUND A NEED

The client is a city entity responsible for the economic development and improvement of the downtown area. Central to attracting downtown business each December is a nationally renowned, 100-foot Christmas tree erected in the heart of the city. It’s become a major tourist destination for the past 35 years with its own fan club, volunteer “caretakers” and numerous, steady stream of visitors.

The good news: The beautifully decorated tree is directly related to a substantial increase in business downtown and provides positive PR for the city. The bad news: The artificial tree’s scaffolding is rusted, rotting to the core and dangerous to erect. For years, the city commissioners have allotted funds to patch the rusted scaffolding but now they want a detailed report about its decline before deciding whether to continue funding and whether to continue with the same company that has tended to the tree at cost all those years.

What’s the most obvious way to convince a committee about the importance of doing anything? Of course, show and tell with video. A written report of stats and facts with photos and diagrams may be convincing on its own. But combining the report with a graphic, well-crafted story in video is the powerful, persuasive path to getting a line item in the budget annually.

The client decided that incorporated into the Christmas tree story video would be a Rust 101 lesson. A respected rust expert was tapped to do the show and tell on camera, thus establishing the funding need in a short, compelling video (in progress at this writing). Stay tuned for the line-item decision to preserve and protect the tree using the same company. Optimism prevails.