Jobs Marketplace Pitch Video

 

SUMMARY

As a designer at Spur, I had the opportunity to write, illustrate, and record the voice over for a whiteboard-style pitch video introducing Spur’s new jobs marketplace.

 

MY ROLE

Writer, Illustrator, Voice Over
Summer 2017

 

THE CHALLENGE


Spur’s mission to improve the financial lives of hourly workers began with the idea to create an jobs marketplace platform where employers could post and workers could search for, claim, and work variety of jobs.

Having piloted the platform over the summer, we wanted a quick, simple, and engaging way to convince employers as well as potential investors to learn more. And with a possible investor meeting at the end of the week, we had just 4 days to do it.

 

THE SOLUTION

We decided to create a whiteboard-style promo video.

So funny story…one day I was in a design meeting in a conference room with a very large whiteboard. During a break, I was doodling on the whiteboard and drew a portrait of one of our managers. It actually came out pretty well and got a lot of positive attention.

Fast forward a few days - marketing and leadership were meeting about how to pitch the Spur marketplace, and they invited me to the meeting.

“What if did one of those whiteboard-style videos, and Tom could draw it!” offered the marketing director excitedly, citing my recent doodle as evidence of my ability.

Honestly, I had never done anything like that before. And we only had 3-4 days. It sounded terrifying and exciting and I said “let’s do it!”

Right then and there defined the process, schedule, and guidelines:

  1. Video needed to be 90 seconds or less

  2. Had to be completed within 4 days

  3. I would mimic the whiteboard style using an iPad and Procreate app

  4. I would write the script

  5. I would provide voice over

  6. Another team member would help me record the voice over and edit the final video with music

The video was storyboarded before we left that meeting providing me the outline needed to write the script.

I got to work on the script immediately, using Google docs to be able to get and give quick feedback.

I worked through a first version of script and started drawing example illustrations to give a feel for how the video could look and feel.

As I got feedback on the script, I refined it and the drawings, and matched them in the script document.

 

With final approval on the script, Sam help me record the voice over audio (multiple times). I finished the drawings in Procreate and exported the animations, and Sam took my audio and animations and used her amazing After Effects skills to put it all together, including adding music.

 

LESSONS LEARNED

Progress is better than perfection

This was a fast project which meant no time to waste and no time to get lost in nit-picky details. It was the ultimate example of fast feedback and iteration, and thanks to that, we shipped something valuable and on-time even if it wasn’t perfect.

  • Would have loved to have drawn it all over again, cleaner, crisper and more consistent

  • Used a co-worker’s iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, and ended up getting my own for Christmas so that I could keep improving my drawing

You can accomplish anything with a plan

As long as you have a plan for what needs to get done and how you think you’ll do it, you can accomplish big things even in a very short time.

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