We came across the people at NetApp on a Qora where they were looking for an innovative video production company. We told him about several options from all around the country, but that we were naturally partial to ourselves. We told him about our award winning history and how our customers are getting more customers as well as great results from our work.
We also explained how we take the time to understand a client’s problem and come up with a great solution. And how we use real live professional artists to create our artwork instead of dinky clip art, like a lot of companies will do. The client told us that he was in charge of ergonomics at NetApp. The idea behind ergonomics at NetApp was to address the workers who sit, hunched over their desks, getting carpal tunnel syndrome, getting bad necks, bad backs, leaving work and not being efficient, not being healthy. And he wanted to do a video.
And it led to a conversation about creating a series of videos to let people see that there is a problem with the way that they’re working, operating and not being ergonomically correct, and how they’re going to have detrimental effects if they don’t improve.
He called these people office turtles, and he talked about wanting to turn these office turtles into office athletes.
They had a system in place for people to go online and learn about ergonomics and how to sit better, when to stand, what movements to do, etc. But this system required an expensive license. So we figured we could create a video course to replace their expensive system. The ROI was obvious.
In addition, they found that engagement on their existing system was low because they were on word based sites or pages on their website. So if they could replace it with video, the training would be much more engaging. What’s more, they could couple the video with exercise tutorials they were loading onto office kiosks: 50 inch LCD screens with a stretching post designed to go to every office around the globe.
So their success would be if the first few offices have people sign in and users start seeing the issue and how to solve it with the stretches. NetApp would be able to measure it very easily.
As far as concepts, we ran them through our idea factory process, which is something we’ve honed over 10 years, to come up with the best ideas and concepts. One that we and the customer loved the most was to basically look into the future a hundred years. We pitched them on the idea of some kids walking through a museum of relics and the relics would be what the old office used to look like and what it was for an office turtle.
So the office turtles were these hunched over people that started to resemble actual turtles. And actually, we found out that people hunched over are now growing a little bone spur on the back of their skull. Anatomy is changing based on technology – in a bad way.
NetApp loved the idea. So we start the video with the kids going through a museum a hundred years in the future and how Ergonomics changed the worker from the office turtle to the office athlete, which a hundred years from now everybody would be.
As far as the general look, style and tone of the video, we were thinking we could be live integrated with animation or it could just be animation, but we knew a few things. One is this is a multinational, a global company. So we want to make sure that all characters are either multiethnic are represented across the globe, all different looks styles.
We didn’t want anyone taken aback or feeling like they’re not represented. So if you go for a hand drawn style, it’s very easy to represent everyone. If it’s an actual person, people have a tendency to judge them right off the bat. So when you use whiteboard or hand drawn animation, those barriers and those walls that exist in other types of videos don’t exist. But we had to make sure it was very high end. So we did a mixture of hand drawn art that we could actually animate.
The client was active every step of the way in this project. We always set up once or twice weekly calls to check in to make sure that we’re going down the path. We’re very collaborative and this particular client became a friend because we talked to them so often.
One challenge we faced with this project was we had to think about where the characters in the background were going to appear on screen because not only was this video going to be on the web but it’s also going to appear on interactive screens. So we had to make sure that everything was large enough so that it was easy to be touched and interacted with. And if you hit a certain part of the video and you want to learn more, you have a new video that would open. So we had to think about design in a different way.
The client reacted to this video with huge praise. And multiple things happened. They turned what was going to be a very soft launch into a major event at their newly renovated briefing center up in Silicon Valley. Our video and the characters in the video are going to be turned into costumes. Actors are going to wear these costumes around at the event, showing the office turtle turn into the office athlete. And immediately upon the launch, the success was high enough, that they immediately ordered or asked for help with more.
Production Company: Rip Media Group
Client: NetApp
Executive Producer: Maury Rogow
Creative Producer: Barry Silver