From Our Family to Yours

Goldberg Segalla Holiday Greeting

Project Objective

Increase brand awareness during the 2017 holiday season through the development, production, and dissemination of a non-denominational holiday greeting.

Challenges

1. Creating engaging, non-denominational imagery

2. Sourcing recipes from employees in 19 different offices

3. Conducting the video shoot during standard work hours, in a location open to all employees

Planning

Despite not being shared with clients until mid-December, planning for the 2017 holiday greeting began the second week of September. During a weekly department meeting, we discussed possible themes for the 2017 greeting, as well as past pain points to account for during planning and execution.

I suggested the theme we ultimately chose — the connection between food, family, and holiday traditions. The initial idea involved coordinating a baked good potluck across all 19 offices, obtaining high-res photos from each location, and filming high-quality video footage in the three largest offices. After consulting with HR and learning of the difficulties in coordinating events across even a handful of offices simultaneously, it was decided that our greatest chance for success was to film solely in the Buffalo office, and to ask employees to share their recipes via an online form.

I then put together a production timeline that included a late-October film date, and pitched the complete plan to the firm’s Managing Partner, who quickly approved the idea. From there, I worked with Operations and a freelance videographer to book an on-site filming location and coordinate space and lighting requirements. Simultaneously, I utilized JotForm to build the recipe submission form and prepared a series of employee communications encouraging participation.

Production

Video pre-production took place on October 24 and involved three hours of baking cupcakes and putting together edible decorations that looked like penguins, polar bears, and snowmen. The baked goods were then brought to the office the next day for filming, along with additional baking props and topping materials.

Filming took place in the office’s fourth floor kitchen, which could not be entirely closed off to employees due to its dual function as a connection between the floor’s lobby and office spaces. In the end, no issues came up due to the open nature of the four hour shoot, and it actually proved to pique employee interest in the project — helping to drive recipe submissions the following days.

Recipe collection opened Thursday, October 26 with an email to all firm employees. Many team members submitted recipes immediately, and by the following Tuesday, 14 of 19 offices were represented in the submissions. On November 8, five days after the planned submission deadline, we received a recipe from the 19th office and were able to move onto layout.

The cookbook layout, video editing, printed note card design, and promotional email writing all took place simultaneously throughout the first three weeks of November. The goal was to have the entire package complete and ready for leadership approval no later than November 29. In the end, we finished production ahead of schedule and sent the package for approval on November 21 — eight days early.

Promotion

The printed note cards, which featured a still from the video shoot, arrived at attorney desks the week of December 4. We chose to email the official firm getting out on December 12 to give the attorneys time to send out their personal cards.

In addition to sharing the complete multimedia package via email through the Concep email platform, we uploaded the video to the Goldberg Segalla YouTube channel, and posted all of the content to our website.

Results

Upon sending the holiday greeting email, we received immediate, positive feedback from our external contacts. Many team members on the legal side forwarded us praise from high-ranking contacts at our client’s corporate offices, and two informed us that they received personal calls from senior vice presidents praising our work.

Internally, GS employees also praised the package and shared it with family and friends outside of the firm. We also fielded a few requests for printed copies of the cookbook, which we were able to fulfill through our in-house printing capabilities.