Evolving Wisdom is a producer of self-empowerment content with many different brands, which all market materials designed to help their clients self-actualize in the modern world. They’re also a long-time client of ours here at People Project Media.
Most of the work we do for Evolving Wisdom is for their Feminine Power brand. However, we recently got the opportunity to tackle a project for their Jean Houston brand and learn a little more about one of the other arms of the company, which is always fun!
Jean Houston is a well-known teacher of self-actualization and a leader in the Human Potential Movement. Over the years she’s worked with such high-profile clients as Hillary Clinton, and today she hosts an online course called Unlock Your Quantum Powers.
Project Scope
I was approached by the Evolving Wisdom marketing team to help produce some video content for the course in a new marketing push that was going up in late 2021. They already had a series of videos with Jean where she told stories, talked philosophically, and invited viewers to join her course where they could “unlock” their potential and live the lives they were meant to live.
What they wanted us to create was a series of 2 ads that could be used on social media and 5 “content videos” that would be sent to potential customers through blog posts hosted in an email drip campaign.
Their ultimate goal was to generate “hundreds of leads” that were ready to buy the course. As is always the case with clients, they didn’t just want a video. They wanted the marketing prosperity that videos can give when crafted well and distributed effectively.
Getting To Know The Brand
Now, I’ll be honest – when I was approached about this project, I was somewhat hesitant. I’d recently done some video work for their Feminine Power brand that turned out very well. However, I didn’t know the Jean Houston brand nearly as well. I’d spent the last two and a half years learning the FP brand through back-up recording courses, editing transcripts, cutting videos, Audio Engineering, etc. I’d been listening to the thoughts and ideas of Claire Zammit for years, and I couldn’t say the same about Jean Houston.
That said, two years of brand immersion is not a luxury that producers always get, so I decided to do the next best thing. While I was waiting for Jean’s team to get their materials together, I listened Jean Houston’s course while out on my runs. Every morning I’d pop in my headphones and immerse myself in the lessons of Unlock Your Quantum Powers.
I also studied Jean’s style guide and customer avatar. An avatar is a fictional representation of the type of customer with the problems that the product best solves. It’s a representation of Jean’s “Ideal Customer”, and it’s an essential piece of information that a producer needs to know when cutting together video used to sell a product.
Another method I could have used (and will in the future if I continue to cut video for Jean) is to read her books. Jean is a prolific author, and one of the quickest (and in my opinion, most enjoyable) ways to understand someone’s ideas and style is to read their books. However, this project demanded a quicker turnover than allowed for leisurely reading, so I made do with studying Jean though the course that I was going to be marketing.
As I expected, I very quickly began to pick up patterns of thought, ideas, and themes that I would later incorporate into the ads and content videos. Through listening to her course, I was able to understand some of the main thrusts of Jean’s ideas, how they fit together, and some of the highlights of what she would be talking about in the product I was marketing.
Our Our Video Editing Process
Here at People Project Media, we have a very specific process for cutting video content which involves three draft levels:
- The Content Draft
- The Creative Draft
- The Final Draft
The Content Draft is just the basic story told through sync/interview. I deliver this draft to a client before I create movie magic because it’s much easier to edit before it’s been fancified with music, b-roll, and effects. I like to make sure that the story is there before I start to craft.
The next draft is the creative draft. This is where the music, b roll, and effects have been applied, though the video, sound, and color are still rough. This is where the magic happens. Clients are shown an unpolished but emotionally mature draft of their video content. At this point they have opportunities to make comments on the music, b-roll, and anything that’s not final polishing.
Once approved, the video is then finalized and polished. Color and sound balancing have been complete, and the video is ready for delivery. Clients have a final opportunity to change minor issues at this point.
The process is very linear, and clients are not allowed to make changes at different stages without incurring extra costs. For example, making content drafts at the final draft stage might require quite a bit of work and several extra hours on my end. Which I then have to charge the client for.
However none of this was the case with the JH QP marketing team. They were on-point with review and always respected whatever stage we were at during the process. Everything turned out swimmingly.
Trouble Finding Stock Avatar Footage
One issue I had during the creative draft was finding compelling footage with Jean’s avatar. Media libraries often contain what I like to call “media gaps”. These gaps are certain industries or demographics which their library does not sufficiently provide.
When I am editing stock-heavy ads or branding videos I pull from two libraries, Pexels and Envato Elements. Both have a media gap for senior individuals I was looking for media that showed people in the avatar’s demographic engaging in activities like painting, listening to music, reading, and working on artistic pursuits. However, there wasn’t much variety beyond exercise classes, sitting with grandchildren, and random dancing. I’m just as confused as you are by that last one.
Pexels is better than Elements, I will say, probably because Pexels goes out of its way to create a diverse stock library (which is great for a media producer). However, there still was significantly less footage for this age demographic than a younger model set.
That said, with enough digging, I was able to find the footage that I needed in the demographic that Jean’s audience fit into. Sometimes stock libraries are like thrift stores: you’ve got to dig a little to find the gems.
Designing Quantum Titling
Once the creative drafts were approved, I jumped into sound, color, and titling. One of Jean’s main concepts is that human beings, through imagination and spirituality, can tap into the “quantum field” and harness its power. She has combined quantum theory with self-help in a way that helps clients to “live the life that they want to live.”
I wanted the titles to reflect this quantum immersion, so I did some research on what the quantum field might look like visually. I’d recently read The Elegant Universe, a book about String Theory, which gave me my first (albeit immature) understanding of Quantum Mechanics.
From my research, I discovered three things that I wanted to incorporate into the titling.
- A common visualization for the quantum field is a series of oscillating planes/grids.
- Through Quantum Mechanics, we understand that light is both a particle and a wave, and can be understood as either.
These two elements gave me an idea for how to construct the titling for these videos. I did some work in After Effects, and this is what came out.
The titles are also in-brand with Jean’s colors and use Jean’s typography.
Project Conclusion
In the end I delivered two social ads and five content videos to the JH QP marketing team for use in marketing the course in November of 2021. The team loved all of the videos, and the project has lead to more video projects with different EW brands.
Here are the final ads.
Lessons Learned
- Take your time in brand research. There are marketers who say that the less you know about a brand, the better it is for marketing. I disagree. While marketers can get caught up in “technobabble”, a healthy knowledge of the brand you’re marketing translated into an audience-specific marketing language and medium is a powerful combination. It also builds authority when the concepts in the marketing and the product itself are congruent. Plus, it’s fun to learn a little bit about the clients who you’re producing for. Do your homework, dive in. It will pay off in the end.
- A project manager is a godsend. As the producer I often fill this role myself. But this project had the lovely Renee from Evolving Wisdom as our project manager. It was great to have someone else do the wrangling, scheduling, and pestering of people on the team to give me the feedback I needed to move forward. One of the biggest struggles I have is client feedback. Clients are busy and often struggle to make the time to review my work, which bogs down the creative process. That said, having Renee as an internal, dedicated project manager was one of the nicest things I’ve ever had. I hope to have an internal project manager someday at People Project Media!