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Crafting Purpose-focused Food & Lifestyle Brands

How A Sense of Purpose Led to Creative Content to Save an Industry

Andrew Davis has a soft spot for the print  media industry. He’s also got keen radar when it comes to identifying problems, and acting upon them to find solutions.

Such is the case with his role in trying to help the print media industry.

Now, Andrew didn’t suddenly wake up one day and realize that the print industry has been severely impacted by the disruption caused by digital technology and the Internet.

Rather, what Andrew found was that one print industry-related audience in particular was underserved with information to help them navigate the disruptions in the industry, i.e. the front line sales people. These are the people charged with selling print ad space to agencies, media buyers and brands.

I discovered it’s way more fun to be driving this through my sense of purpose. It’s the most fun I’ve had creating content in a long time.

While Andrew saw there was plenty of advise for others in the print industry about how to navigate change, from publishers to editors to designers, help for the sales people was practically non-existent.

The depth of despair that these people are in hit Andrew full force one night, in a cocktail bar after a publishing event. Over drinks, Andrew’s bullish view of the print industry was met with skepticism by print media sales people who saw themselves in dead end jobs with no room for growth.

Out of this insight grew Reboot, a one-day workshop for training print media sales people, developed in partnership with Publishing Executive Magazine.

Suddenly, Andrew realized, he was driven by a sense of purpose to help improve the lot of print media sales people.

Purpose as a Vector for Content

“My sense of purpose is that I can have personal impact on the publishing industry,” explains Andrew, “and if I can convince one print media sales person to make a huge change for their publication, as a result of the videos I’m recording, then I’m making an impact on the world.”

There was something else that Andrew discovered about having a sense of purpose, beyond impacting the world, and it had something to do with the impact on how he felt about this work.

“I discovered it’s way more fun to be driving this through my sense of purpose,” explains Andrew, “and that actually is infectious. It’s the most fun I’ve had creating content in a long time.”

Having Fun With Purpose-focused Video Content
Andrew took the fun and infectious nature of creating purpose-focused content and blended it with his creatively zany approach of addressing the viewer directly, using a GoPro camera to capture his dialog. Then, using Final Cut Pro, including their stock sound effects, Andrew edited a series of high-energy videos titled Reboot Ride-Along (view the series playlist).

Desired Outcomes of the Video Content
Ultimately, beyond fun and a sense of purpose, there has to be metrics that show that this approach is achieving its desired outcomes.

With the videos, Andrew began getting immediate feedback from his target audience that the videos were engaging, helpful and inspiring. He knew he was really onto something.

The goal of the Reboot video series is to inspire print media sales people to sign up for the Reboot: Radically Transforming Media Sales event in New York City, on October 5th and 6th.

Through the partnership with Publishing Executive Magazine, they have already built up a Reboot-focused mailing list of over 10,000 prospects, after just 4 weeks. From this master list, they are building a targeted list of people interested in the two day workshop.

To date, Andrew is well on his way to his goal of getting 100 people to attend the workshop.

We’ll update this post with the final results, come October 5th!