It’s a brave new world out there folks… a brave new social media world, full of funny cat videos and epic fails. It’s a force for good AND evil, as we’ve all experienced, no doubt. A double-edged sword, if you will. You can say anything to anyone and everyone, practically anonymously, and lets just say, some of us are abusing the privilege.
On the social media network known as Twitter, the web is a curated place and everyone’s a critic. Dissenting opinions can be found about everything under the sun- even glamorous televised events like The Academy Awards. It’s common, apparently, for people to live-tweet these kinds of shows and talk doody about the appearance of whatever celebrity happens to be on TV at the moment, or, negatively compare themselves with said celebrity.
Every single tweet has the possibility of causing a rampant internet meme, or unstoppable viral hashtag, or self-replicating social media germ. As humans, we generally sort of assume that when we see something happen, and nobody calls it out as bad, then it must be acceptable behavior. As such, we might repeat it ourselves and thus pass it along, and reinforce it’s power. So its easy for the negativity to get out of hand.
As a countervailing force, the megabrand Dove and social media platform Twitter have kinda partnered up to encourage Twitter users to tweet nicely in regards to each others’ appearances. No need for snarky hashtags like #uglybutt or #nicedressNOT. Replace them with #SpeakBeautiful and we’ll all pass along the good vibes and help shore up some corporate branding while we’re at it. Nothing wrong with that.
To introduce this #SpeakBeautiful message, Dove and Twitter used a commercial, and I storyboarded it. In this spot, we see a negative tweet, and then we corkscrew out to reveal that it is printed on a domino, and further reveal that a long line of dominoes is behind it. A negative chain reaction is pending… but a POSITIVE tweet comes out of the blue and sets it in motion. From there, the dominoes fall along a different path, a positive one, and from a nice overhead resolve, we see the fallen dominoes spell out “#SpeakBeautiful.” Here’s the boards:
I’m overwhelmed with all the feels, man. Real feels. Here’s the final spot- click the pic and it’ll open a new window to check out, and you might have to scroll down a bit to find it- I can’t imbed the video, as it’s not available on youtube (its a Twitter campaign).
My boards look pretty close, the biggest differences being the more simplistic arrangement of the overall domino setup in the final spot. And I feel like the stainless steel flooring is a little bright, and makes the hashtag hard to read at the end. They changed the color of the positive tweet; we used a bright pink in my version. Makes sense, since blue is a Twitter color. And my version contained some optional angles that weren’t used in the final- no problem, there’s never enough time to show all the interesting angles anyway.
One remarkable thing about this project was the mountainous levels of approval it had to summit to be produced- it had to meet the approval of the Director, the Producers, the Creative Agency, executives at Dove, Twitter, the Academy, and the Broadcast Network. Wow! Anyone along that path could have nixed it. But, conceptually, the idea was strong, the goal laudable, the storyboard flawless. When something positive comes your way, you pass it along 🙂
That reminds me, I’m actually on twitter, and it’s a good way to stay in touch with my latest project updates and network with other talented artists. So, follow me if you like: @max_forward.
Thanks! See ya next week.
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